During the weeks before the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, there were many meetings of the National Security Council. The story made the rounds of the staff and later appeared in print about one of the meetings that took place just before the situation was made public. General Curtis LeMay, a high-ranking Air Force officer previously in attendance, was missing. One of the President s aides was concerned and asked, Where s General LeMay? The President ignored the aide and continued with his opening remarks, but after a minute or so, believing the General s presence to be critically important, the aide persisted with an interruption: Excuse me, Mr. President, General LeMay isn t here, shouldn t we wait for him? At this point Kennedy is said to have stopped, removed his glasses, looked straight at the aide, and said, No. We don t want him here. We re here to decide whether or not we want to bomb Cuba. If we decide we want to bomb Cuba, we ll put Curtis in the lead airplane, but we don t want him helping us make that decision. This story is sometimes used to illustrate the difference between strategy and tactics. The strategy involved deciding what to do. However it s likely the act of excluding the General was a tactic aimed a keeping minds open and forcing a war council to consider one or more alternatives and forge a strategy or two to get the missiles removed from the Caribbean island.

In the late 1960s, the Radio Corporation of America...