LONDON — President Kennedy’s extraordinary relationship with Britain’s ambassador in Washington during the Cuban missile crisis more than half a century ago is chronicled in a series of newly released top-secret cables.
They show how David Ormsby-Gore, an old friend of Kennedy’s appointed as envoy in the hope he’d have easy access to the White House, was the first person outside the administration to learn the Soviet Union had deployed medium-range missiles to Cuba in 1962. Over the following days, he would stay in constant communication.
The cables, published Thursday by the National Archives in London, help to explain why British prime ministers place such emphasis on a good relationship with the US president, even when, as Theresa May is finding at the moment with Donald Trump, it leads to criticism at home. The access Harold Macmillan enjoyed to Kennedy’s thinking shows how what’s often called ‘‘the special relationship’’ can mean insights unobtainable any other way.
Ormsby-Gore was asked to ‘‘come unseen’’ to meet the president in the White House just before lunch on Sunday Oct. 21, 1962, the sixth day of the crisis. ‘‘We were quite alone, and he told me that no one else outside the US government was being informed of what was going on,’’ the envoy wrote in a cable to Macmillan. ‘‘He then said that the situation with regard to Cuba had completely changed.’’
So secret was the briefing that Ormsby-Gore didn’t trust it to the Foreign Office’s communications network. Instead, he returned to the embassy and sent a four-sentence coded note to Macmillan, marked ‘‘personal for prime minister.’’
It said that at 10 p.m. that evening London time, the premier was to stand by his teletype machine to await a personal message from Kennedy. ‘‘The president particularly stressed that not only are the contents of the message confidential in the highest degree, but that the fact that you are receiving a message at this time should on no account become known.’’
Kennedy’s note, marked ‘‘eyes only,’’ said Macmillan should expect a briefing the following morning from the US ambassador, ‘‘but I want you to have this message tonight so that you may have as much time as possible to consider the dangers we will now have to face together.’’
Macmillan’s response to Kennedy the next day, beginning ‘‘my dear friend,’’ was supportive. But a separate note to Ormsby-Gore showed the premier’s reservations about Kennedy’s move to confront the USSR. He feared that even if nuclear war was averted, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev might demand concessions over the status of Berlin, now divided by the wall.
‘‘Since it seemed impossible to stop his action I did not make the effort, although in the course of the day I was in mind to,’’ the prime minister told his ambassador.
Macmillan pointed out to Kennedy that people in Western Europe lived their daily lives within range of nuclear weapons. ‘‘We have got accustomed to it,’’ he said. But he urged the president not to give way over Berlin.
Ormsby-Gore was at pains to reassure his boss about Kennedy’s intentions. ‘‘I have no doubt that he has no present intention of trying to seize Cuba,’’ he wrote.
On Berlin, the ambassador said he received assurances from Kennedy that would satisfy Macmillan but ‘‘could not possibly put on the record’’ because ‘‘they were so frank that I doubt very much whether he would repeat them to any member of his administration except his brother Bobby.’’
On day nine, Khrushchev sent an angry reply to Kennedy. That evening, the president dined with Ormsby-Gore at the White House. ‘‘The president and his brother asked me how I thought the whole affair would end,’’ the ambassador reported. He replied it would either be war or a negotiation, and he urged Kennedy to stand firm.
Four days later, the Russians backed down.
