JFK’s presidency was short, but the secrets he carried during the Cold War were enormous. Behind the speeches and the smiles, Kennedy was running secret backchannels to Moscow, trading messages through reporters and diplomats to stop nuclear war in ways the public never knew. He didn’t trust the CIA after they misled him during the Bay of Pigs, so he created his own quiet network—one that helped prevent a full-scale U.S.–Soviet conflict during the Cuban Missile Crisis. What Americans didn’t know