Thirteen Days (book) Thirteen Days (book) Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis is Robert F. Kennedy's account of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The book was released in 1969, a year after his assassination. "Thirteen Days" describes the meetings held by the Executive Committee (ExComm), the team assembled by US President John F. Kennedy to handle the tense situation that developed between the United States and the Soviet Union following the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, from Florida. Robert Kennedy, who was the US Attorney General at the time, describes his brother John's leadership style during the
Cuban Missile Crisis island. US officials attempted to use a Corona photoreconnaissance satellite to obtain coverage over reported Soviet military deployments, but imagery acquired over western Cuba by a Corona KH-4 mission on October 1 was heavily covered by clouds and haze and failed to provide any usable intelligence. At the end of September, Navy reconnaissance aircraft photographed the Soviet ship "Kasimov", with large crates on its deck the size and shape of Il-28 jet bomber fuselages. In September 1962, analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) noticed that Cuban surface-to-air missile sites were arranged in a pattern similar to those used by