W ASHINGTON — On Saturday, Oct. 20, 1962, President John F.
Kennedy entered the Oval Room in the family living quarters of
the White House. He joined 12 of his closest advisers, whom he
had called to help him wrestle with the most important decision
of his brief presidency, perhaps even the most critical judgment
in the country's modern history. As the men quietly found seats,
the president said, Gentlemen, today we're going to earn our
pay. Fifty years ago this month, the United States and the
Soviet Union faced off over a threatening hot spot in the Cold
War. On Oct. 16, which would become Day One of the Cuban Missile
Crisis, intelligence officials showed Kennedy aerial photographs
of Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles
off the Florida coast. The deployment represented a serious
escalation in the continuing confrontation between the two
countries and their respective allies. Kennedy's biographer and
intimate, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., described the Cuban Missile
Crisis as the most