Credit: LBJ Library Photo by Yoichi Okamoto. Serial Number: A808-5.
Dean Acheson served as Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 in the Truman administration. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he advised President Kennedy privately and attended meetings at the State Department, but not ExComm meetings at the White House. Acheson advocated a narrow air strike only against the missile sites, ignoring Soviet bombers and antiaircraft units. On October 21 he was sent to Europe to brief French President Charles de Gaulle and West Germany’s Chancellor Konrad Adenauer about the situation. In the aftermath of the crisis, he remarked that the successful outcome was down to “plain dumb luck.”