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
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## TOP SECRET ## THE USE OF FORCE AFTER ALLIED ACCESS TO BERLIN IS BLOCKED 1. While it is correctly recognized in the Acheson Report of 27 June 1961, that additional military analysis and planning would be needed in order to give effect to its principles on the use of force, a political framework is also needed before the planning can be carried further. A part of this would be provided by a clear statement of the purposes and objectives of forcible action. Another part would be some delineation of the scale on which increased military forces would be available, and the timing. 2. The Report calls for broader freedom of military action should Berlin access be blocked. This wider availability of ways to use force can in fact exist only if partial mobilization some months beforehand has led to substantial reinforcement of US forces in Europe. 3. If partial US mobilization and some deployment to Europe are begun soon enough, the United States can have a capability to apply against a Soviet/GDR blockade an amount of non-nuclear power well beyond what is now planned. The amount, and hence the results, will depend on how much force is mobilized from the reserve components and when that mobilization is begun. If allied access to Berlin is blocked before US mobilization is under way, the initial capability to carry out the non-nuclear ground operations described in the Report will be very limited. During the first week after blockage, only by weakening the general war deployment in Europe could more than one US division be used to restore ground access. Within about three weeks, a capability to use three US divisions for that purpose without interfering with war plan deployments could be created by moving two STRAC divisions to Europe. But without prior mobilization, it would require about three to four months before that capability could be significantly increased without major risks elsewhere. 4. Prior US political decisions and actions are also necessary in order to obtain maximum Allied force contributions. The range of non-nuclear options can be broadened extensively by Allied participation, but to get whatever Allied contributions are obtainable will require convincing evidence before hand that the United States really regards expanded non-nuclear ground action as worthwhile.
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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.