Early on in the crisis, Soviet military intelligence had reported that “Robert Kennedy and his circle” were willing to trade U.S. bases in Turkey and Italy for Soviet bases in Cuba. The information was considered authentic because it came from an agent named Georgi Bolshakov, who had served as a Kremlin backchannel to Bobby Kennedy. More recently, Khrushchev’s interest had been piqued by a syndicated column by Walter Lippmann calling for a Cuba-Turkey missile swap. The Soviets knew the columnist had excellent sources in the Kennedy administration. It seemed unlikely that he was speaking only
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