Kennedy's Decision to Accept Khrushchev's Jupiter Trade

Kennedy was ready to pay the Jupiter missiles to end this. He dispatched his brother Bobby to meet with the Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrinin and accept, in general terms, a Jupiter trade. The deal to remove missiles from Turkey must be kept secret. JFK decided he would pull back. A surface-to-air missile shot the U-2 down. This was probably the moment the US could decide whether to step back from the brink or plunge the world into nuclear war.