Administration Quote by Robert McNamara

“Kennedy, who had campaigned strongly on the “Missile Gap” issue, soon discovered as president that the Soviet Union didn’t have the 500 missiles feared—it…

— Garrett M. Graff

It is true that at the time [1962] we had a strategic nuclear force of approximately five thousand warheads compared to the Soviet's three hundred.

— Robert McNamara

“updates to the nation’s nuclear weapons policies represented just the third major shift in the Cold War; following Eisenhower’s “massive retaliation” and the “assured…

— Garrett M. Graff

“But there was even more that Khrushchev knew and Kennedy didn’t—secrets that Khrushchev had chosen not to reveal at the time and that remained…

— Daniel Ellsberg

Kennedy said that if we had nuclear war we'd kill 300 million people in the first hour. McNamara, who is a good businessman and…

— Norman Thoma

There was the Missile Crisis, but one can't attribute to the [J.F.] Kennedy years anything like the problems that [Franklin] Roosevelt stood over and…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

We wanted to be certain they didn't have a bigger deficit, and Kennedy agreed with me.

— Wilbur Mills

Most people give Kennedy a passing grade, a good grade on the Cuban Missile Crisis handling, but what they don't realize, if he had…

— Louie Gohmert

Look at what President Kennedy managed to achieve during the Cuban missile crisis. If Bush had been president in 1962, do you think he…

— Bianca Jagger

“York posed the question, how many nuclear weapons are needed to deter an adversary rational enough to be deterred? Concurring with Bundy’s judgment—as who…

— Daniel Ellsberg

You know, it's very clear, as one looks back on history again of the Cold War that, following the crisis in Cuba, following the…

— Alexander Haig

America was good enough to make a small compact lighter weight nuclear weapon. The Russians still had these big clunky heavy ones, so they…

— Burt Rutan