Curtis LeMay the US Army and Navy frequently suffered budgetary cutbacks and program cancellations by Congress and Secretary McNamara. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, LeMay clashed again with U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Defense Secretary McNamara, arguing that he should be allowed to bomb nuclear missile sites in Cuba. He opposed the naval blockade and, after the end of the crisis, suggested that Cuba be invaded anyway, even after the Soviets agreed to withdraw their missiles. Kennedy secretly agreed to remove US missiles from Turkey and Italy. Unknown to the US, the Soviet field commanders in Cuba had been
Cuban Missile Crisis on how to resolve the crisis had been made exclusively by Kennedy and Khrushchev. Castro was especially upset that certain issues of interest to Cuba, such as the status of the US Naval Base in Guantánamo, were not addressed. That caused Cuban–Soviet relations to deteriorate for years to come. On the other hand, Cuba continued to be protected from invasion. The worldwide US Forces DEFCON 3 status was returned to DEFCON 4 on November 20, 1962. General Curtis LeMay told the President that the resolution of the crisis was the "greatest defeat in our history"; his was a minority position.