ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the steps leading to the crisis, and then to its resolution, solving the mystery of the dramatic and dangerous tank confrontation at Checkpoint Charlie. In late October 1961, armed American and Soviet tanks squared off against each other at Checkpoint Charlie, the notorious crossing-point between East and West through the recently constructed Berlin Wall, in the potentially most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War. New disclosures and a re-examination of the record yield an entirely new Soviet perspective on the crisis. The Soviet plan was to meet and match US moves - the United States was the apparent initiator and pace-setter in the crisis. The revelation that F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev used a back-channel exchange to defuse the confrontation at Checkpoint Charlie also places their communication during the Cuban missile crisis in a new light.
