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American Experience

JFK and Crisis: The Cuban Missile Crisis

Over the course of 13 days in October 1962, President Kennedy avoided war with the Soviet Union through a willingness to proceed with caution -- and a gamble that Premier Nikita Khrushchev was just as horrified at the prospect of nuclear obliteration as Kennedy was. The negotiation would come to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis and would be one of Kennedy's most lasting legacies.

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