"What we had been doing, on recommendations of the What we had been doing, on recommendations of the ExComm, included the following: the blockade itself, at the risk of armed conflict with Soviet warships; forcing Soviet submarines to surface; high-level and low-level reconnaissance flights over Cuba; a large-scale airborne alert with significant risk of accidents involving nuclear weapons; continuing reconnaissance, even after several planes were fired on and one shot down on Saturday; and full preparations (if they were wholly a bluff, they fooled us) for invasion and airstrike. With the exception of the dangerous airborne alert, every one of those actions was illegal under international law, a violation of the U.N. Charter (unless as an act of war sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council). More significantly, every one of them threatened at least conventional armed conflict with the Soviet Union. I myself had accepted the general wisdom that the stakes in this confrontation, in global political terms, were quite high: enough to justify certain risks. I was prepared to support non-nuclear threats, willing even to take some risks of conventional war. I was, in short, a Cold Warrior working for the U.S. Defense Department. My emotions Saturday night on the thought of an unnecessary missile trade made that as clear as could be, not least to myself. But to be willing to take an estimated 10 percent chance of nuclear war?! … In order to avoid a public trade of the Turkish missiles? Who were these people I was working for? Were they all insane?"