Documents / FOIA release
This is the Central Intelligence Agency's Current Intelligence Weekly Summary of 23 March 1962, a secret digest from the Office of Current Intelligence covering world events. It reviews Soviet foreign policy on Berlin, the Berlin air corridors, disarmament and a nuclear test ban. It also covers Algeria, Argentina's elections, the Congo, Laos, South Vietnam, Guatemala, food rationing in Cuba and Middle East tensions. Special articles assess Brazil under Goulart and Turkey's economic prospects. It contains no UFO material.
“Headquarters”1 page
Approved for Release: 2026/03/06 C03176167 - /sseafwi A CURRENT INTELLIGENCE WEEKLY SUMMARY to demonstrate further that present procedures in the Ber- lin Air Safety Center (BASC) are inadequate for air safety. The Soviets apparently hope thereby to gradually build a case for demanding changes in the BASC operations which would increase Communist control over Western flights. The Soviets have again tried to persuade the US chief controller in the BASC of the necessity to provide the Soviet representative with the esti- mated time of Western flights over the Mansbach radio beacon, a navigational aid in the south- ern corridor located just out-. side the East German border. They could interpret Western compliance with this request as conforming with their demand of 15 February that estimated time of crossing the East Ger- man "national" border be pro- vided with Allied flight plans and as implicit recognition of the East German law of 1 August 1961, which required aircraft entering East German territory to give notification by radio. Stromov, the chief Soviet controller in the BASC, has frankly acknowledged that So- viet moves in the corridors are linked to the US—Soviet talks at Geneva. He remarked to his US counterpart on 16 March that if the Geneva conversations were successful, the situation in the corridors would change for the better. On the following day, the Soviets discontinued trans- port flights at altitudes from 7,500 to 10,000 feet-—normally used by Western commercial air- craft. Soviet flights since 17 March have been conducted be- low 7,500 feet. Moscow may also be employ- ing a new device in order to achieve Western recognition of the USSR's right to use the cor- ridors for local flights. On 19 March, Stromov formally re- quested of the chief US con- troller in BASC the installa- tion of a low-power radio link between the BASC and Karlshorst, which would be added to exist- ing communications facilities. He alleged that the present telephone circuit had been faulty on occasions and that the new link was necessary to ensure contact with Soviet headquarters, particularly at times when Soviet aircraft were operating in the corridors. Karlshorst does call the BASC constantly to check the time and location of Soviet and Western flights, to dictate protests to the West, and to obtain detailed reactions of Western BASC representatives to Soviet flights. The sharp increase in telephonic communi- cations between Soviet repre- sentatives in BASC and their headquarters in Karlshorst dur- ing periods of Soviet corri- dor flights is a further re- flection of Moscow's intention to maintain tight control over these operations. Moscow is apparently in- creasing its harassment of West- ern ground access routes to Berlin in its continuing ef- forts to demonstrate that all forms of access to the city are contingent on Communist suffer- ance. On 20 March, Soviet con- trollers at Babelsberg refused for a time to clear an outbound US Army convoy of five vehicles on the grounds that they had not received advance notification /areas? 23 Mar 62 WEEKLY REVIEW Page 2 of 22 Approved for Release: 2026/03/06 C03176167
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 42 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.