Q: I am a consultant from the United Nations. Do you think that the situation today has changed, and that we have reached a comfort zone with these weapons whereby they may be used?

SORENSEN: That's a very good question. I think that Washington D.C. and Moscow learned a very real lesson in 1962. There is no experience like gazing down a nuclear gun barrel at the other side and seeing them gazing back to make one recognize that there has to be some other way to resolve disputes.

But as your question suggests, there are other nuclear powers, or potential nuclear powers, in the world, some of them in very incendiary regions that haven't had that experience. I only hope that they can watch this movie, study our history, and recognize that while weapons of mass destruction may have some deterrent value, to actually employ them would be madness.

Q: Mr. Sorensen, how historically accurate is the movie?

SORENSEN: The movie is not a documentary. It has the chronology slightly wrong on some of the events that took place. It obviously overstates a little bit the part played by Kevin Costner in order to have a star in the movie. I'm in favor of having a star because I want as many people to see this movie as possible.

I think it short-changes, in some ways, the roles of Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations and McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Advisor to the President, and indeed, General Maxwell Taylor. The movie paints the military all black and the others all white, simplifying good and bad for dramatic purposes. But in fact, Gen. Taylor was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the only one who actually attended our sessions each day. While he was often on the other side of the issue, I found him to be a very thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable person.

The movie also paints General LeMay as evil. That part is right.

Q: Mr. Sorensen, there is a fascinating moment in the film where Dean Rusk is instructed to get unanimity out of the OAS. We are next shown a tantalizing scene in which that apparently was achieved. How was that done? What implications does it have for the future?

SORENSEN: The OAS, though often ignored, played a crucial role in that situation. Cuba's voting participation in the OAS had been suspended, so it had no vote during that period. If I recall correctly, one representative had not yet received instructions from his capital and therefore felt he had to abstain. But everyone else voted to endorse and to authorize the quarantine, and indeed to participate in it. As I recall, Latin American ships participated in the quarantine.

It is another example of how, if we did not have multilateral organizations we would have to invent them. The OAS and the United Nations are the only such bodies that can play that kind of role in a moment of crisis.

Although there are all kinds of rules and resolutions against them, nuclear weapons seem to stay around, whether licitly or illicitly. It would certainly be a much safer world if we could limit nuclear weapons, in the same way that the United States would be a much safer nation if we only had the fewest number of guns floating around in our society.

There has been talk of reducing nuclear weapons to the barest minimum where they could perhaps serve some deterrent purpose. Mutual deterrence worked during the worst days of the Cold War only because there were rational people on both sides who recognized that there was no such thing as nuclear victory. They realized that a first nuclear strike would result in a counterstrike that would wreak such devastation as to make life intolerable for those who survived.

I am concerned about nuclear weapons falling into the hands of those who for emotional, nationalistic, or other reasons, may not think rationally when it comes time to choose whether to use those weapons or not. That is the danger I think this generation faces.

Q: Could you tell us a bit more about the United Nations and the Security Council? You mentioned that Adlai Stevenson's role was a bit short-changed in the movie. I'd appreciate hearing more about that.

SORENSEN: As you saw in the movie, when the President came back from Chicago he met with the ExCom on Saturday, October 20. We met in the residence rather than in the Cabinet room. At that meeting Adlai Stevenson spoke in favor of a greater emphasis on diplomatic solutions. He mentioned the possibility of doing something about the missiles in Turkey. He also mentioned the possibility of making the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba a negotiable item. He was savaged by some of the others in the room.

But when the meeting was over, the President, Robert Kennedy, and I stepped out on the balcony. The President, admiring Ambassador Stevenson's courage, said to me, "In our draft speech we do need much more of a diplomatic offensive in addition to the defensive naval actions that we are taking." That part of the speech was substantially beefed up in the redraft that took place that afternoon.

I found out years later that had had the letter not worked, had Khrushchev rejected the letter with the two accompanying messages from Robert Kennedy-one about Turkey and the other about the urgency of moving very soon-then the President was exploring still another back-channel. Without it appearing to be a U.S. offer, Secretary General U-Thant might have made a very similar proposal regarding the removal of the Turkish bases to accompany the deal that called off the quarantine when the missiles were withdrawn.

Finally, you will notice from the movie-and this was also true in the letter-that the original plan was that the United Nations would inspect the dismantling and the return of those missiles to Russia.

As it later turned out, both countries had sufficient photographic surveillance methods that the United Nation's system was not needed. I am sorry to say the United Nations said their system would not be ready in time to watch the missiles leave Cuba, since the missiles were leaving immediately-which was exactly the way we wanted it. But the presence of the United Nations, the availability of the U.N. to serve that key role, was indispensable.

Bear in mind, I cannot help but add that this was a President of the United States who, unlike any president before or since, said in his inaugural address that the United Nations was the last best hope of mankind.

Q: Do you think, as some have suggested, that the timing of the film's release was meant to sell the need for missile defense shields?

SORENSEN: No, I don't think that the movie's release was coordinated to help or hurt any political or legislative cause. Many of my friends said to me, "If only this movie had come out a few months earlier," emphasizing how important it is to have a president with foreign policy experience.

If anything, this movie demonstrates how futile a policy of national missile defense would be. There is no such system that could protect all of the United States. There is no such system that would prevent the delivery of nuclear weapons by some other means, such as in a suitcase coming over the border. When we see how many drugs and illegal immigrants come across those borders, we realize that no such system could protect us.

This movie demonstrates that no military answer is superior to a negotiated solution to remove the danger of nuclear weapons.

Do you want to add to that, Peter?

PETER ALMOND: You really covered the key points. The release had no connection to geopolitics or U.S. politics. The two points that I would add are anecdotal to movie making at this scale:

I have been involved with the preparation of this film with my key colleagues for five years. It is rather fluky when the resources come together to actually move ahead and complete a film of this size. It took five years. Quite frankly, it would have been much better if it had taken two years to get it all together.

1. We were quite disappointed with the distribution pattern of the film. It was coincidental that it was released into the winter period, when Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush had started talking about the missile shield. We had wanted the film to be out a good deal earlier so that it might have made a bigger difference in the fall campaign. We wanted it to be released on a very wide platform as soon as possible.

SORENSEN: The idea of combating missile attacks has been around for a very long time. If I remember correctly, we inherited a system when President Kennedy took office in 1961 called the Nike Zeus Anti-Missile Missile. Funny, I never heard anyone refer to it during the thirteen days as being of any use whatsoever.

Q: In the movie, Thirteen Days, emphasis is placed on the linguistic aspects of military strategy, and that this new language is being created in diplomacy. Would you comment on the diplomatic implications of National Missile Defense in linguistic terms? What does that mean for nuclear proliferation, which you emphasize as being the greatest threat?

SORENSEN: The words 'national missile defense' are a contradiction in terms. First of all, what would be the real value, to say nothing of the consequences, of the United States having a true shield that somehow protected the United States but protected no one else in the world? It would destroy alliances of cooperation, confidence in our restraint, and our willingness to share their pain.

The third word, in that trio, 'defense,' is a misnomer. No system has been invented which can provide an absolute defense.

We looked at the question of national missile defense in a wholly different series of meetings, unrelated to the Cuban Missile Crisis, back in the Kennedy Administration. Scientists in whom we had some confidence advised us that no such perfect system was possible. The offense would always get ahead of defense, no matter how thoroughly a defense was developed. No system could sort out 50 decoys coming along with one real missile-and make certain that the actual missile was the item hit and not getting through. "Defense" is a misnomer.

The United States is relatively free from the threat of destruction today. But I am willing to wager that in a list of the 15 most likely means of a destructive attack upon the United States, nuclear missiles flying through space would rank number 15, at best.

Q: What is the cost of this film? How much support did you convince the United States military to give in the making of this film?

ALMOND: It is reported that the movie cost in the neighborhood of $80 million, and that's before the marketing costs. As to the military cooperation, that is a long and interesting story.

We had extended negotiations and discussions, and an exchange of notes with the Department of Defense and their public affairs representatives. Briefly said, they did not approve of the script. They did not approve of subsequent modifications that we made in response to their notes. However, they gave us access to archives, to research data, and to "non-active assets," as they refer to them.

In other words, they would not loan us a destroyer to film. We had to float the Joseph P. Kennedy out of Fall River, Massachusetts into the Narragansett Bay to film that sequence, the sequence of the blockade. We went to the Philippines and rebuilt the RFA Crusader reconnaissance planes from Philippine Airforce rejects. We built the air fleet that you see at Clark Airbase north of Manila in the Philippines. Similarly we shot the jungle sequence and built that entire missile site.

Q: We were surprised by the role of Robert Kennedy. Was it historically correct that he was so close in all the decision-making?

SORENSEN: Yes.

Q: Do you think that the relationship between the presidency and the media was well presented in the movie? Do you think that relationship has changed dramatically today? In what way would that have an impact today on a decision-making process in a similar crisis?

SORENSEN: As indicated in the film, word of the Crisis, without many specifics, began to seep out during the last day, before the President went on the air. I'm not certain now which person made which call, but The Washington Post and The New York Times were the two newspapers, not surprisingly, that had some wind of what was happening.

As the movie accurately depicted, McGeorge Bundy called the publisher of the one newspaper and the President called the publisher of the other. They pleaded with them to not release anything that might endanger lives until the President had had an opportunity to present the full case-what was happening and what our response was going to be-to the American people Monday evening, October 22.

We wanted to avoid panic. We wanted to avoid having the Soviet Union know in advance what our plans were. We wanted to avoid any premature pressures to change those plans. Both newspapers responded that they would wait until the following morning. I doubt that they would today.

GRANOFF: On behalf of the American Bar Association's Section of International Law, on behalf of the NGO Committee on Disarmament, the Global Security Institute, Lawyer's Committee on Nuclear Policy, Lawyers' Alliance for World Security, the sponsoring Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), I want particularly to express our gratitude to the Department of Disarmament Affairs.

In 2000, 187 countries made a legal commitment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was expressed in the recent Review Conference of that Treaty in last spring. In the treaty they confirmed, and I quote, ".an unequivocal undertaking to the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals, the five nuclear weapons states, pursuant to their legal promises under Article VI of that Treaty, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

The highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice, in addressing the legal requirements that flow from that Treaty, has stated that there is a duty to negotiate in good faith and complete negotiations on the global abolition, elimination of nuclear weapons. So the legal norm to that effect has been stated, but clearly the political will has not arisen.

Senator Alan Cranston educated me to realize that a peace based on the threat to kill hundreds of millions of innocent people is an unworthy peace. It is a peace under terror. Hitler had to drag 6 million people to the ovens. We have now put wings on the ovens. As we speak, those ovens are flying about and ready to deliver their horrific payload.

For me, the movie Thirteen Days is a renewed wake-up call. The combination of human fallibility and technological prowess compel me to say it is time that we reigned in these weapons through the constraints of morality, law, and human cooperation.

Ted Sorensen is proof that human wisdom can constrain this horror. Ted Sorensen and the people that we saw in the film are proof and inspiration that we can accomplish the task.
I hope that all of you who watch the movie, Thirteen Days, will join us in working to achieve that goal.

Thank you very much.