‘They handled it exactly the right way’: How the Kennedys averted the 1962 Cuban missile crisis

The cabinet was divided over what action to take, with further U-2 flights revealing that the missile bases were nearing completion. The Joint Chiefs of Staff preferred a course that involved military action. “There had to be a final decision made… as to what our reaction was going to be,” Dean Rusk, the then US Secretary of State, told Timewatch. “We were sitting around the cabinet table, and the president was the last one to come in, and we rose as he entered the room. And he looked around the table and said, ‘Well, gentlemen, today we’re going to earn our pay.'”