IN the first hour of a big story, a wire-service reporter's zeal and television's vivid eye often provide the best witnesses of the event. But then come the consequencesnot so easy to photograph or to flash as a bulletin. Any confrontation so major as the Cuban crisis leaves behind it an international trail of responses, regrets and reappraisals. Sometimes these become the most lasting effect of the event, as peoples and their leaders take new account of the shifting forces, and respond accordingly.
Such reconsiderations are often private, and quite different from what is publicly saidwhich is one reason why those who...