Free The Longest Romance by Humberto Fontova

Fidel or Raul. Conspicuously absent (for those who know the matter) was the most tension-filled incident of all. Think of what the Discovery Channel’s crackerjack writers and producers could have produced using the following incident starring Soviet Premier Khrushchev, as witnessed and later described by Sergei Khrushchev, the premier’s son:
    â€œâ€˜Nikita Sergeyevich, a very disturbing message has also come in from Castro.’ Oleg Aleksandrovich [Troyanovsky, the premier’s assistant] again spoke in quiet and measured tones. ‘The text itself is still at the Foreign Ministry, but I have written down its main points.’
    â€œâ€˜Yes?’ asked Father impatiently.

    â€œâ€˜Castro thinks that war will begin in the next few hours and that his source is reliable. In the opinion of the Cuban leadership, the people are ready to repel imperialist aggression and would rather die than surrender. We should be the first to deliver a nuclear strike.
    â€œâ€˜WHAT?!’
    â€œâ€˜That is what I was told,’ Troyanovsky responded, without visible disquiet.
    â€œâ€˜What?’ said Father somewhat more calmly. ”‘Is he proposing that we start a nuclear war? That we launch missiles from Cuba?’
    â€œâ€˜Apparently.’
    â€œâ€˜That is insane!’ Whatever doubts Father might have had about his decision to remove the missiles had vanished completely. ‘Remove them, and as soon as possible. Before it’s too late. Before something terrible happens.’
    â€œThe meeting’s participants stared at one another incredulously. To start a world war so cavalierly! Obviously events were slipping out of control. Yesterday the Cubans had shot down a plane without permission. Today they were preparing a nuclear attack.
    â€œTo general approval, Father ordered that an immediate order be sent to Pliyev through military channels: ‘Allow no one [Castro or his people] near the missiles. Obey no orders [from Castro or his people] to launch and under no circumstances install the warheads.’” 1
    So much for JFK cowing Khrushchev with his bluster and naval blockade. Khrushchev was cowed all right, but by the genocidal lust of his errant Caribbean satrap (and Discovery Channel business partner), not by the commander-in-chief of a nation with a nuclear warhead superiority over his own by a margin of 5,000 to 300.
    Khrushchev snickered the truth in his memoirs: “It would have been ridiculous for us to go to war over Cuba—for a country 6,000 miles away. For us, war was unthinkable.” So much for the threat that rattled the Knights of Camelot and inspired such epics
of drama and derring-do by their court scribes and court cinematographers (i.e., the mainstream media and Hollywood).
    Considering the U.S. nuclear superiority over the Soviets at the time of the so-called Missile Crisis—5,000 nuclear warheads for us, 300 for them—it’s hard to imagine President Nixon, much less President Reagan, quaking in front of Khrushchev’s transparent ruse as Kennedy did. The genuine threat came not from Moscow but from the Discovery Channel’s production partner, Fidel Castro.
    So naturally there is no mention in the Discovery Channel’s “Defcon-2” of how Che Guevara—thinking he was off-the-record a month later—fully confirmed Khrushchev’s fears (and prudence). ”If the missiles had remained, we would have used them all and fired them against the heart of the United States, including New York.“ 2
    â€œWhat we contend is that we must walk the path of liberation,” wrote Che in Castro’s house organ Verde Olivo a week later, “even if it may cost millions of atomic victims .... What we must consider is the ultimate the victory of socialism.”
    Khrushchev’s response to Castro was low-key and diplomatic: “In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to launch