Nation: Search for a Way Out

• Share

The rhetoric intensifies as Carter tries to defuse the Cuban crisis

Not since the Mayaguez incident of 1975 had the National Security Council been called to a nighttime meeting so hastily convoked at the White House. By 8 p.m. last Thursday, the first of the dark limousines and Government sedans of Jimmy Carter's top security aides began rolling through the gates to let off their passengers at the West Wing entrance. When the summons had gone out from Carter, the officials were scattered across the capital. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski had just delivered a pep talk for the SALT II accords at the posh Cosmos Club. He dashed off before he had a chance to eat, then ordered his driver to stop at a McDonald's, where he picked up a hamburger and a root beer. He arrived at the White House clutching the paper bag and wolfed down the fast-food fare in his elegant corner office before heading for the Cabinet Room.

The emergency meeting began at 8:20. With Brzezinski around the long oval table were, among others: Vice President Walter Mondale, Pentagon Chief Harold Brown, CIA Director Stansfield Turner, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman David Jones and Presidential Senior Adviser Hedley Donovan. They were joined, some 70 min. later, by Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had been conferring in the President's family quarters. At 10:30 the meeting broke up. But less than nine hours later the limousines were back at the White House, and a second round was under way by 7:30 Friday morning. This time Hamilton Jordan, the President's Chief of Staff, sat in with the group. For 1 hr. 45 min. they continued their brainstorming.

Later that morning, yet another traditional portent of stormy political weather in Washington appeared at the White House. Gaunt and dignified, former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, 72, the all-purpose confidant of every Democratic President since Harry Truman, was coming to give what aid he could. Carrying his hat in one hand and his attache case in the other, Clifford strode slowly but purposefully across the North Lawn to the West Wing and Brzezinski's office.

It was crisis time in Washington. The issue was the most baffling, potentially the most explosive and in its way one of the most absurd that Jimmy Carter had faced. Despite almost four weeks of diplomatic efforts, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were stalemated over a smoldering dispute that threatened to flare out of control. The confrontation had even reached the point last week that TASS, the official Soviet news agency, took the unusual step of denouncing Carter personally for "absolutely unfounded and crude attacks" on the U.S.S.R.

The problem was simple enough, though its solution was infuriatingly elusive: The Administration insisted that between 2,000 and 3,000 Soviet troops in Cuba have been equipped for combat and organized as a combat brigade. The Kremlin consistently denied this, claiming that the forces in question have been there for 17 years, and that their purpose is to train Cubans.