[mturmon]

Hmm. I don't disagree, but -- it's "standard" only if you've been paying close attention.

Because the original "standard" version ("encroaching communists") which I first read in Bobby Kennedy's everywhere-available book Thirteen Days was accepted for decades -- up through the 1980s IIRC.

This article (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real...) pegs the date where the old standard story was rendered untenable, and replaced by the new standard story that you mention, as 1997 -- when tapes from the JFK administration became available. The relevant book (https://www.amazon.com/Averting-Final-Failure-Meetings-Stanf...) was copyright 2003, 50 years after the crisis itself.

It's always hard to remember at what point the old story became the new story. Some caches don't even update at all.

[mikeash]

Thanks for the historical perspective. I'm only 35, so I really only saw the "new story." Obviously the phrase "secret agreement" implies that it wasn't known right away, but I didn't realize it became known that recently.

Still, being out there for almost two decades, and being incorporated into the plot of a major movie about the crisis, it doesn't seem like it should still be described as "most people don't hear."

[mturmon]

In general, it seems like a surprisingly lot of the stuff that was known to be fact, surrounding the Cold War, was not actually true at all. This has only become hazily evident with the drip-drip release of sealed archives.