Documents / FOIA release
This Top Secret study by the Interdepartmental Coordinating Group on Germany and Berlin, dated July 12, 1961, and released by the Central Intelligence Agency, answers NSC Directive No. 58 of June 30, 1961. It sets out courses of action for the Berlin crisis but does not judge their merits. It covers imminent presidential decisions, a three-phase timetable running to January 1, military preparations and mobilization, covert action, economic sanctions, public information, negotiating positions and checkpoint procedures for East German personnel.
“The Advance”7 pages
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pressures of world opinion, the pressures of our Allies, or because we ourselves felt that entering into discussions constituted a necessary part of our public propaganda posture. We might also wish to use them to gain time, to stretch out the progression from stage to stage of the Western program, and to define our objectives more clearly. Under such conditions, we might envisage a conference of the kind through which the Four Foreign Ministers went in the spring and summer of 1959 at Geneva. In such a conference the Western Powers would attempt to achieve as wide a public understanding and support of our position throughout the world as possible. They could also use the occasion to try to ascertain more clearly what the basic Soviet objectives might be and what might eventually be the outline of some acceptable arrangement, but such an arrangement would probably not emerge as a basis for negotiations during the conference itself. 5. An important consideration at such a conference would be the propaganda effect of Western proposals. The Western position would, therefore, ideally display some imagination and initiative, yet at the same time not expose for premature rejection by the Soviets proposals which, at a later stage, the West might wish seriously to consider as a basis for an arrangement with the Soviets. Here would be the occasion for presentation of a revised Western Peace Plan, an all-Berlin proposal, an all-German or all-Berlin plebiscite proposal, and other proposals with some appeal to world public opinion but unlikely to be negotiable with the Soviets (drafts of these exist or, in the case of the Peace Plan, the German Foreign Office is preparing a streamlined version). 6. A major difficulty in the staging of such a conference would be to have it break up under such conditions as would not accelerate the onset of the crisis. If the Western deterrent had not yet reached a point where the Soviets would at least hesitate about pushing ahead with their threat to sign a peace treaty with the GDR, they would then presumably take action to call such a peace conference. 7. An additional problem would be the inevitable wave of hopefulness which any conference or meeting will engender through the world. The counsels of relaxation will be strong, and the Soviets may do their best to conjure up some new "spirit" such as that of Geneva (1955) or Camp David (1959) to keep the West
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 163 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.