12. The quarantine takes effect without incident
On October 25 two ships bound for Cuba were allowed to pass through the quarantine line, though neither vessel was flying the Soviet flag. One of them, a Lebanese flagged freighter, was stopped by the destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., named for the president’s elder brother who had been killed during World War II. Its manifest revealed it was not carrying military materiel, and it was allowed to pass. Later the following day Kennedy ordered low level reconnaissance flights to be conducted over Cuba every two hours, to monitor the status of the missile installations and other Soviet and Cuban activity. He also ordered preparations for an invasion to continue. The Chiefs of Staff initiated a timetable for an invasion which was deliberately designed to reach a point of no return, which once reached would prevent a cancellation by higher authority, a feature of which Kennedy was uninformed.
That afternoon, October 26, the KGB station chief in Washington, Alexander Feklisov, invited an ABC News reporter, John Scali, to have lunch. Feklisov delivered a feeler to the newsman, offering an opportunity for a diplomatic solution to be delivered to the State Department. In response, the State Department sent a message to Castro through the Brazilian government promising that there would be no invasion of Cuba should the Soviets remove the missiles and the Castro government publicly announce that it would allow no further Soviet offensive weapons on the island. That evening a lengthy message from Kruschev was transmitted to the State Department, though it was clearly intended to be a personal message to President Kennedy from Premier Kruschev. It followed up on the meeting with Scali, proposing a diplomatic solution to the crisis.