Recovered JFK Cuba map to go on display at library

BOSTON (Reuters) – A map of Cuba used by President John F.
Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 with
handwritten notes on the locations of Russian missile sites
will be displayed at his presidential library this summer,
library officials said on Wednesday.

The map is the crown jewel of recently recovered artifacts,
including a missing left-handed suede glove worn by Kennedy
during his inaugural speech in 1961, that are now at the John
F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Kennedy used the map to mark the locations of nine Russian
missile sites in northern Cuba during his first briefing with
CIA and other administration officials on Oct. 16, 1962,
according to Allan Goodrich, the library’s chief archivist.

“There is no replacement for a document like this,” said
Deborah Leff, director at the Kennedy Presidential Library,
which discovered the map’s existence when an analyst at the
National Security Archive found it for sale on the Internet.

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit to secure the map.

The Cuban missile crisis is considered one of the defining
moments of Kennedy’s presidency when tensions between the
United States and the Soviet Union raised fears of nuclear war.

The other recovered artifacts, including the president’s
personal copy of his first book, “Why England Slept,” and eagle
bookends used in the Oval Office, came from the estate of
Robert White, a collector who obtained the items from Kennedy’s
late secretary, Evelyn Lincoln.

Lincoln, who served as Kennedy’s secretary from 1953 until
his death in 1963, kept a large number of his artifacts and
eventually sold or gave those items to White.

The National Archives and Records Administration, which
operates Kennedy’s library and museum, reached a settlement
with White’s estate earlier this year. Library officials said
no money changed hands in the legal settlement.