SAN CRISTOBAL, Cuba - (KRT) - A three-day conference on the 1962 Cuban missile crisis ended Sunday with a visit by former adversaries to an old Soviet missile site and the sobering realization the world was only a "hairs-breath" from nuclear war.

At the same time, several former aides to President Kennedy who attended the conference warned that President Bush is misinterpreting history by citing Kennedy's actions during the missile crisis as justification for a preemptive military strike against Iraq.

While most of the information discussed at the conference, held on the 40th anniversary of the Cold War's worst moment, treaded old ground, newly declassified documents revealed details about a little-known incident illustrating how close the world came to nuclear confrontation in October 1962.

On October 27, 1962, the most dangerous day of the 13-day standoff, a U.S. Navy destroyer dropped depth charges on a Soviet submarine near Cuba without realizing it was carrying a nuclear weapon. Angered and fearing death, the Soviet submarine commander ordered a nuclear-tipped torpedo readied for launch.

"We're going to blast them now!," a former Soviet submariner recalls his commander shouting. "We will die, but we will sink them all - we will not disgrace our Navy!"

At the last second, the commander decided to hold his fire after consulting with other officers. He ordered the submarine to surface.

"Nuclear war was averted by a hairs-breath," said former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, a conference participant who only recently learned that four Soviet submarines near Cuba were armed with nuclear weapons. " … If that torpedo had been fired, nuclear war would have started right there."

While the conference, attended by Cuban President Fidel Castro, former U.S. and Soviet officials, academics and others, focused on events 40 years ago, some participants drew a parallel between the 1962 crisis over the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and the gathering war clouds over Iraq.

In a speech last Monday, Bush cited a speech by Kennedy during the height of the missile crisis as an endorsement of the idea of attacking potentially deadly enemies even if they have not struck first.

But Theordore Sorensen, a former Kennedy speechwriter who attended the conference, said Kennedy's decision to establish a naval quarantine around Cuba, rather than invade the country as his military advisors were recommending, was the opposite of a pre-emptive strike.

"Kennedy, by considering all the options, by preserving his options, was able to peacefully resolve the Cuban missile crisis," Sorensen said. "I'm concerned that President Bush is taking what looks like the easiest option, which is to bomb the hell out of Iraq."

"It's important that everyone proceed cautiously. … Don't rush into pre-emptive strikes," he added.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a former special aide to Kennedy who was also in Havana, said Kennedy "regarded war as a last option, not as a first response."

"It's a bad interpretation of history," he said of Bush's speech.

The conference, billed as the "The October Crisis: A Political Vision 40 Years Later," was a generally friendly affair, more like a 50th college reunion than a sparring among old adversaries. Most of the protagonists know each other well. This is one of a half-dozen conferences held on the missile crisis in recent years.

Still, the gathering brought together an odd assortment of characters: On Sunday, as they visited the old missile site, aging Russian military officers crossed paths with Brooks Brothers clad U.S. academics and Cuban generals decked out in boxy green uniforms.

William Ecker was there, standing next to an old warhead bunker. It was his first visit here in forty years, when as a young navy pilot he flew an F-8 aircraft 400-feet off the ground and took a photograph that provided Kennedy with indisputable proof that Soviet missiles were on the island.

"I was here for only two or three seconds and I was smoking," said the crew-cut Ecker, referring to his air-speed. "We were shot at when we came over."

A few feet from Ecker, Dino Brugioni, a former CIA intelligence officer who interpreted U.S. spy photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and Anatoly Gribkov, a former Soviet general who in 1962 was in charge of the missiles, peered at forty-year-old spy photographs of the San Cristobal site.

"This is how we followed them (the missiles)," Brugioni told Gribkov, pointing to tire tracks in the photograph.

"There are the missiles!," Gribkov responded through an interpreter, pointing to a silo in the photograph. "The missiles are inside!"

The conference was divided into three major sessions, the first dealing with the period leading up to October 1962, the second dealing with the 13-day crisis itself, and the third dealing with its aftermath.

The sessions themselves, which took place around an enormous square conference table, were generally closed to the media. But Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Fernandez, a key organizer of the conference, said Sunday that Russian, Cuban and American participants were able to discuss the crisis with "respect" and "dignity."

But differences clearly remain. At the meetings Castro criticized the Soviets for lying to the U.S. about placing nuclear missiles on the island - something experts say gave Kennedy the political high ground when he had proof that the contrary was true.

Outside the conference hall, at least one former Soviet military official took a shot at the United States' foreign policy. "Who gave the right to the United States to command the whole world?," bristled Dmitry Yazov, a former Soviet Defense Minister who commanded a rifle regiment in Cuba during the 1962 crisis.

Some of the previously classified documents released at the conference provided a startling window into the crisis and showed, again, how close the world came to a nuclear confrontation.

On October 27th, as the U.S. destroyer was dropping depth charges on the Soviet submarine, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and McNamara, the Defense Secretary, were being inundated with the latest military information - and discussing possible air-strikes and a massive U.S. invasion of Cuba.

First came a report of "possible Soviet ground forces with modern equipment" in Cuba, along with continued construction of strategic missile sites, according to notes of the meeting. Then came a report of a missing U.S. spy plane over Alaska, and the downing of another U.S. spy plane over Cuba. "The president has the feeling that time is running out," Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the Joint Chiefs chairman, tells the group after returning from a meeting at the White House. "I read the Chiefs' memo to the meeting, saying we should attack no later than 29 October."

"Should we take out a SAM (missile) site?," Taylor asks.

"No, we would open ourselves to retaliation," said Gen. Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff. "We have little to gain and a lot to lose."

"I feel the same way," said General Earle Wheeler, the U.S. Army's chief of staff. "(Soviet Premier) Khrushchev may loose one of his missiles on us."

The meeting ends with a report that "the (Soviet) missiles are on the launchers."

The crisis ended the next day when the Soviets agreed to remove their missiles in exchange for a pledge from the U.S. not to invade the island.

McNamara said the lesson of that day_and the entire 1962 Cuban missile crisis_is that "military operations are so complex they can't be easily controlled."

"The combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons is gonna lead to the destruction of nations," he said.

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