'Bitter Defeat': Top CIA Official Denounced JFK's Resolution of Cuban Missile Crisis

Deputy director condemned Kennedy for not going to war.

Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Marshall Carter was likely not alone in the sentiments he shared with CIA Director John McCone on Oct. 29, 1962.

Key figures in the Cuban Missile Crisis: From left, President John F. Kennedy, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union.

On the very day the Cuban Missile Crisis ended peacefully, Carter expressed his frustrations over the outcome in a memorandum sent to CIA Director John McCone:

You will recall in my memorandum to you of 18 October, I stated that if the United States decided to take action (against Castro and the missiles of Cuba) in the limited time available, then its objective must surely be the total destruction of the Castro regime and the installation of a government in Cuba favorable to Western ideology.