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.
“Headquarters”2 pages
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approach, for example, by adding similar unilateral declarations on propaganda activities and by introducing a UN role, the crucial access problem remains its focal point. 22. Mr. Acheson has suggested that certain additional face-saving elements might be added to Solution C, such as declarations on espionage and subversive activities, no nuclear weapons in Berlin, no increase of Western forces in Berlin, stationing of UN observers in Berlin and along the access routes and possibly some all-German features such as recognition of the Oder-Neisse boundary. 23. The advantage of Solution C is that it might also be introduced during the course of emergency negotiations with the Soviets just prior to their threatened signing of a peace treaty and turn-over of responsibilities to the GDR authorities, or even conceivably after the actual signature of a peace treaty. 24. Under the circumstances envisaged of Soviet doubt about our ultimate intentions but heavy involvement of prestige on their part, such an arrangement might prove the best available for cooling off the situation. As with any other arrangement on Berlin, no matter how favorable or unfavorable to the Western position, its basic viability in the long run would depend upon the maintenance of Western world power and firmness of will, given the presumed Soviet objective of eliminating once and for all the Western presence in Berlin and eventual absorption of the city into the Soviet Bloc. 25. In addition to the foregoing, a number of proposals for possible negotiating packages have been suggested as conceivable bases for arrangements on Berlin which might be acceptable to the West. Ambassador Thompson, for example, has suggested combining an attention of the time period in the Western Peace Plan to seven years with an Allied declaration reassuring the Soviets on the frontier question, a NATO-Warsaw Pact non-agression agreement and an interim Berlin solution somewhat along the lines of the Western interim proposals at Geneva. Various additions or permutations can, of course, be made in such packages. A more radical approach has been suggested to include trading recognition of the GDR for a Berlin corridor, or trading termination of the occupation in Berlin for such a corridor. While these deserve further study, the dual problem of acceptability to our Allies and negotiability with the Soviets serves as a distinct limiting factor under present conditions. ATTACHMENT TO ANNEX I
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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.