Cuban Missile Crisis Calendar Paperweight Presented to Secretary McNamara by President Kennedy

Paperweight: silver plaque mounted on a walnut base (4 1/2 x 3 3/4 in.; 115 x 96 mm), the plaque engraved with a calendar for October 1962, the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis (16–28 October) are more boldly and deeply engraved, above the calendar the plaque is engraved with the initials of the recipient ("R.S.McN.") and the President ("J.F.K."). Signed Tiffany & Co. Sterling. — Accompanied by a first edition of Robert F. Kennedy's Thirteen Days (New York, 1969) and a print of a UPI telephoto of McNamara receiving a briefing from a Defense Department Intelligence Consultant during the Missile Crisis.

Sheldon M. Stern. The Week the World Stood Still (Stanford, California, 2005)

One of the rarest and most significant of presidential gifts. The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the most harrowing confrontation of the Cold War. Triggered by the decision of the Soviet Union to place in Cuba ballistic nuclear missiles capable of reaching the continental United States—a decision made in response to the efforts of the United States to overthrow Fidel Castro's regime—the world's two military superpowers began a thirteen-day standoff that nearly spiraled into nuclear war. The crisis was resolved, after much confidential and back-channel negotiation, when the Soviets agreed to dismantle the missiles and return them to the USSR. In exchange, the US publicly pledged never to invade Cuba and secretly agreed to remove the Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Nuclear Missiles it had deployed in Turkey and Italy.

During the crisis, President Kennedy convened a special advisory body known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or ExComm. This Executive Committee was formally established on 22 October 1962, exactly halfway through the thirteen-day impasse. In addition to the President, ExComm had twelve members: Vice President Lyndon Johnson; Secretary of Defense McNamara; Secretary of State Dean Rusk; Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor; John McCone, the director of the CIA; General Maxwell D. Taylor, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Under Secretary of State George Ball; Llewellyn Thompson, US Ambassador to the Sovier Union; Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric; and Dean Acheson, former Secretary of State. Meetings of ExComm were often joined by advisors from various departments and agencies, including the CIA, the departments of Defense and State, the Office of Emergency Planning, the United States Information Agency, and the White House. A total of twenty-four men are known to have attended at least one ExComm meeting.

The day after the crisis ended, 29 October 1962, JFK told an aide, "I want to get a president's commemorative for the Executive Committee of the National Security Council who've been involved in this matter. What I thought of is something that would have the month of October on it and … have a line drawn around the calendar days. … In other words, like a page out of a calendar" (Sheldon M. Stern, The Week the World Stood Still, p. 203). As made by Tiffany, each calendar was also engraved with the initials of the president and the individual recipient. 

About thirty-five calendars were presented by Kennedy. In addition to ExComm members, he gave several to other military advisors and White House staff, including General Curtis LeMay and Admiral George W. Anderson among the former, and press secretary Pierre Salinger and personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln among the latter. The President also made a point of giving one to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who helped the White House maintain a semblance of normalcy during this critical period. Her Cuban Missile Crisis Calendar is now at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum. Lyndon Johnson's is housed at his presidential library in Austin, Texas.