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.
“Cooper”8 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
## SECRET "Present contingency planning contemplates that the Western powers will identify their military traffic to the East Germans, if they take over access functions from the Soviets, but not allow the East Germans to stamp Western papers, as the Soviets now do. "The arguments for thus trying to limit the East Germans' role are impressive: (a) If the East Germans insist on paper-stamping, the crisis will be brought to a head at a time when the Western powers fully prepared--physically and psychologically--for counter-action (b) If the Germans back away from paper-stamping, the Western position will have been strengthened. For the debate between ourselves and the Soviets as to whether present procedures constitute merely identification of Western military traffic or 'control' of that traffic will have been resolved in our favor. "The argument against this course of action is that it may be politically infeasible. "The British have only agreed to present contingency planning under great duress; in an emergency, they would almost certainly propose that the East Germans be allowed to perform the functions which the Soviets now discharge. There would probably be considerable European press and popular support for the British position; there would be a disinclination for seeming to make paper stamping a casus belli, no matter how much we explained the underlying issue. "The alliance would thus be divided over an essentially procedural question, at the very time when maximum allied unity was needed as a basis for possible armed action in defense of Berlin. The situation would be the more difficult since there might be some questioning in the US press, public and Congress as to whether we had really chosen the most suitable issue on which to fight. There would also be grave difficulty in making our position plausible to the uncommitted countries.
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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.