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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
## TOB SECRET a. Airlift plans are in existence and can be implemented to commence provision of airlift support for Berlin. For the quadripartite civilian airlift, 4 transport units must be retained and certain civil airlift contracts must be applied to replace diverted MATS aircraft. The garrison airlift can be accomplished within existing capabilities. Fighter escort as required will be provided. b. For initial naval harassment of Soviet and GDR shipping and for air harassment, current capabilities will suffice. Intensified action leading to naval blockade measures would make it mandatory to prepare for escalation of the war at sea, and similar considerations apply with respect to some of the proposed air harassments. Since denial of the right to navigate freely on the high seas would unquestionably be viewed as a hostile act of war, decision to visit and search, divert and delay ships should be accompanied, as a minimum, by preparations for war at sea. Personnel augmentation and reactivation of reserve ships will be required for this purpose. c. To prepare a six-division force for large-scale, nonnuclear ground action, mobilization of six reserve component divisions would be required. With the deployment of six divisions to Europe, there would be remaining in the CONUS an Army strategic ground reserve of six divisions. As an alternative, only four reserve component divisions could be mobilized and a force of six divisions still deployed to Europe. However, in this case there would be only four divisions remaining in the Army strategic ground reserve, a situation which would limit our capability to respond effectively to crises in areas other than Europe. d. For any scale of ground action considered, basis augmentation of tactical air strength in Europe should be: 6 USAF and 18 ANG tactical fighter squadrons, and 6 air transport squadrons. This is considered to be the maximum USAF tactical force which can be made available within the time period and still retain a minimum reserve in the CONUS. For air action for operations considered in this study, 21 tactical fighter squadrons and 6 transport squadrons must be mobilized and French bases must be activated. Actions also include reassignment of Air Force Reserve C-124 aircraft to MATS, federalizing six Air National Guard C-97 squadrons, mobilizing the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, and activating necessary supporting elements e. To provide increased SAC readiness, 6 B-47 Wings and 6 KC-97 squadrons would be retained and ground alert would be increased to 50%, including 54 additional B-47's for the Overseas Alert (REFLEX) Forces. The posture achieved would provide a capability for increased airborne alert to a level of 1/8th of the B-52 force
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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.