Polish leader Władysław Gomułka and British journalist David Astor discuss the stand-off between the United States and the Soviet Union in the situation of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In response to President Kennedy's letter protesting the placement of missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev proposes a resolution to the crisis. When the time seemed right he would offer to dismantle the missiles already on the island (the MRBMs or R-12s) if Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba.

Alexei Adzhubei, Khrushchev’s son-in-law and the editor-in-chief of Izvestia, reports on his meetings with US journalists and officials in Washington, DC. Especially significant was his 30 January meeting with President John F. Kennedy in which Kennedy compared the communist revolution in Cuba with the 1956 Hungarian Revolution suppressed by the Soviet Union. Adzhubei also described Kennedy's comments on German reunification.

The conversation was recorded after the Cuban leader refused to see the Soviet envoy for three days in a reaction to the new demand. Castro starts by declaring his disagreement with the decision to remove the IL-28s but, assures Mikoyan that the revolutionary leadership discussed the issue and agreed to the removal. Mikoyan presents all his arguments to show that the withdrawal of the planes would end the crisis and make the US non-invasion pledge more credible. He acknowledges the “negative psychological effect” of the decision and reiterates that all the rest of the weapons would stay in Cuba so its security would be guaranteed without the obsolete planes. They also agree on the rules of verification of the withdrawal.

Protocol 71 gives details to the immediate fallout of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the Soviet perspective. Thanks to Castro’s so-called Armageddon letter and his five points, by December 1962 (date of this protocol), Khrushchev was calling the Cubans “unreliable allies.”

Protocol 66 is the first Malin note dated after the Cuban Missile Crisis, on 11 November. The tone of the protocol indicates that Castro is not pleased with Khrushchev's handling of the crisis, and there is a growing sense of distance between Cuba and the Soviet Union.

According to Protocol 63, Khrushchev probably assumed that Kennedy’s patience was at an end and the Cuban Missile Crisis might either be resolved or spin out of control, and the Kremlin again considered how it might respond to a US attack. If anyone suggested a preemptive strike, or even a retaliatory strike, against a target outside of the Caribbean, Malin did not note it for the official record.

Protocol 62 illustrates how it was Khrushchev who raised the stakes during the missile crisis and dictated a new letter to Kennedy indicating he would only remove the missiles from Cuba in exchange of the United States withdrawing its military bases from Turkey and Pakistan. The Pakistan demand would later be dropped, however and the US would only agree to remove its IRBMs from Turkey.

Protocol 61 indicates Khrushchev was already taking steps away from the crisis unfolding. Khrushchev decided that the ships carrying the IRBM missiles (the R-14s) on the high seas should turn around and come home.