Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center has created this site as a resource for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Designed to help policymakers, students, and interested citizens draw lessons from these critical events half a century ago, this site not only provides background on the crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster in October 1962 but also offers tools to understand how it can inform contemporary policy.
Kennedy and Khrushchev at Vienna Meeting, 06/03/1961 – 06/04/1961. Photograph of President
President John F. Kennedy Meets with Andrei Gromyko, Minister of Foreign Affairs
3 October, 1962 President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy confer.
The Loneliest Job (JFK in oval office) [George Tames/New York Times/Redux]
President Kennedy’s Decisions Doodle.[ARC Identifier 192810; Item from Collection JFK-JFKPP: John F.
JFK Doodle with Words Missiles, Missiles, Missiles, 10/25/1962. [ARC Identifier 595725; Item
October 29 1962 Meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security
Atom bomb tested on Bikini Island in 1946. [ARC Identifier 6234446; Item
October 29, 1962. Meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security
October 29, 1962: Low-level photography reveals Soviet removal of missile erectors and
Ambassador Adlai Stevenson shows photographic evidence at the United Nations, October 25,
President Kennedy signs Cuba quarantine proclamation, 23 October 1962. Copyright Status: Public
October 23, 1962. Aerial Photograph of Intercontinental Range Ballistic Missile Launch Site
October 23, 1962: U.S. Navy low-level photograph of Sagua la Grande MRBM
President John F. Kennedy announcing the U.S. naval blockade of Cuba on
October 17, 1962: U-2 photograph of first IRBM site found under construction.
October 5, 1962: CIA chart of “reconnaissance objectives in Cuba.” [National Security
Map of Missile Range in Cuba (1). CIA briefing board for JFK
Map of Missile Range in Cuba (2). [ARC Identifier 595351; Item from
Photograph of the Soviet Ship Ansov Departing from Cuba During the Cuban