Cuban Missile Crisis and that while the Kennedy Administration had agreed not to invade Cuba, they were only in process of determining Khrushchev's offer to withdraw from Turkey. When former US President Harry Truman called President Kennedy the day of Khrushchev's offer, the President informed him that his Administration had rejected the Soviet leader's offer to withdraw missiles from Turkey and was planning on using the Soviet setback in Cuba to escalate tensions in Berlin. The US continued the blockade; in the following days, aerial reconnaissance proved that the Soviets were making progress in removing the missile systems. The 42 missiles and their
Cuban Missile Crisis the Soviet Union and Kennedy's cabinet, Kennedy secretly agreed to remove all missiles set in Turkey and possibly southern Italy, the former on the border of the Soviet Union, in exchange for Khrushchev removing all missiles in Cuba. There is some dispute as to whether removing the missiles from Italy was part of the secret agreement. Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that it was, and when the crisis had ended McNamara gave the order to dismantle the missiles in both Italy and Turkey. At this point, Khrushchev knew things the US did not: First, that the shooting down of the