LOS ANGELES, CA.- A chilling typed letter signed by President John F. Kennedy, urging swift production of nuclear missiles during one of the most dangerous periods of the Cold War, will be auctioned by Nate D. Sanders Auctions on January 29, 2026.

Dated July 28, 1961, the letter arrived on Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg's desk precisely three days after Kennedy's nationally televised Berlin Crisis address—a speech in which he requested $3.247 billion in emergency defense appropriations and warned Americans to prepare fallout shelters. The document captures a president still reeling from the Bay of Pigs disaster, determined to close a perceived missile gap before the Cold War turned hot.

"The security of our Nation is at stake. Indeed our very lives may depend upon whether we accept the challenge of our time with spirit and determination," Kennedy wrote. "The United States cannot afford the luxury of avoidable delays in our missile and space program."

A President Under Siege

The letter was written during what historians recognize as the most perilous stretch of Kennedy's presidency. Just three months earlier, the Bay of Pigs invasion had ended in catastrophe when approximately 1,400 Cuban exiles were overwhelmed by Castro's forces—a failure Kennedy privately called "the worst experience of his life."

Six weeks after that humiliation, Kennedy met Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the Vienna Summit in June 1961. Kennedy's assessment was bleak—he told journalist James Reston afterward that Khrushchev "savaged" him. The Soviet leader came away believing the young American president was weak and could be pressured.

Goldberg's Secret Weapon

At the time of the letter, Goldberg headed the Missile Sites Labor Commission, established by Kennedy through Executive Order 10946 on May 26, 1961—one month after the Bay of Pigs. The Commission's mission: ensuring uninterrupted operations at missile and space sites vital to national security.

Labor disputes had been crippling missile construction across the country. At missile bases in Wyoming and South Dakota, jurisdictional disputes and work stoppages were disrupting ICBM silo construction. Kennedy's letter implored Goldberg to prevent any delays that could weaken America's nuclear deterrent.

The Commission proved remarkably effective. Kennedy later documented a dramatic reduction in work time lost to labor disputes, reporting that "every missile site has been finished either on or before schedule."

The Road to the Cuban Missile Crisis

The letter's timing proved prophetic. Just sixteen days after its date, East German troops began erecting barbed wire barriers that would become the Berlin Wall. Castro's response to the Bay of Pigs pushed Cuba firmly into the Soviet orbit, and major Soviet arms deliveries to Cuba commenced in September 1961.

The nuclear standoff Kennedy feared arrived fifteen months later. In October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war—making Kennedy's July 1961 warning about "our very lives" hauntingly prescient.