Cuban Missile Crisis

I was watching a vid of DNI Blair yakking about the Cuban missile crisis today. He was in junior high at the time, is somewhat older than I am. He told the story in an interesting way (as if it were unfolding today), making sure to include the bit about Turkey, which many readers of the public press were clueless about at the time.

The DNI position was a consequence of 9-11, was first held by Negroponte, the bro of the OLPC guy. To make room for it, the DCI position had to be discontinued, meaning Porter Goss was the last one. Leon Panetta is D/CIA, reporting to the DNI as head of like one of like sixteen little agencies. We were reviewing this bureaucracy on Synergeo today, as Dick was bringing up those drones again, linking to this New Yorker blog about "cubicle warriors" (see message 56443).

Anyway, those thirteen days in October brought the USA and USSR into a perilous confrontation. Avoiding another nuclear conflagration is a number one priority of the intelligence community, by definition, as any species stupid enough to use nukes against itself, ala Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lacks sufficient intelligence to merit Planet Earth as a lasting home (would be my assessment at least).