faced off at the border. >> i want to express my appreciation to the gentlemen who introduced me because i've never been before called "competent and dedicated." but i did some work on the declassification process and i'm glad to know that people appreciate it. i also was in this building in the 1950s, way down in the basement, when i was working on a thesis for georgetown university for an m.a., which in those days required a thesis and there was stuff in those archives that was credible and i advice you if you have any serious historic research to do do at least part of it in this building. i'm going to start with the berlin wall. and what berlin was like in 1960 when i went there.

you can see there, west berlin is pail white. east berlin is matching the contours of east germany and the checkpoint charlie which i'll talk about and then, of course, the other checkpoint bravo with which we use only one time in this particular exercise. the berlin crisis began in 1958, when krusef said sign a peace treaty for berlin and germany and 5u8 the rights that the allies have enjoyed will pass to the gdr, the german democratic republic because they're the ones who are suffering in berlin and what he called the gdr. and if they do not agree, if the allies do not agree to sign that then i will sign the treaty with

the gdr and they can impose their rules on whoever wants to come into berlin. this was a direct challenge. it created a lot of commotion in the west. it created conferences, one particular conference between eisenhower and this kruskhev but he got to a lot of other places besides disneyland and between eisenhower and the others they held him back for a while and nothing very much had happened except there was a lot of talk. in 1961, john f. kennedy became president. essentially, others had left the problems for him. eisenhower briefed him and said, berlin was the number one problem that kennedy would have to face. and we're going to face that problem this morning and i'm going to talk, however, only

about four particular instances because the thing goes on forever, which you can read in your document. but i'm going to talk about the vienna summitt between kennedy and the beginning of the wall when i was in berlin, about the checkpoint charlie crisis and the confrontation where i was also in berlin. and then, finally, about the cuban missile crisis which had a connection to berlin that most people don't know about. and i'm not even sure it's in the documents. when kennedy became president in january 20th, 1961, he started with two times of staffers. one who were called "the best and brightest" sometimes by themselves. were many people who came from his harvard background. they included experts on the soviet union like george cannon, tommy thompson and others. and then they included some people who were generalists in

foreign affairs. they did not include a single person who was a scholar or an expert in germany. in the senior staff, kennedy had a focus on moscow. he did not have a focus on germany. though germany was his principle problem. he had only one european hand. a person who was then a rather obscure harvard professor who has gone on to other things, whose name was henry kissinger. he joined the white house on a part-time basis because he was very unhappy with the way kennedy and his staff handled berlin and handled other problems because their focus on moscow was in his mind, the wrong thing. he thought they should focus on western europe because that was our principle ally. he liked kennedy. he told me that. he liked kennedy and they had very good conversations but somehow or other, they were not

on the same page. and kissinger was discouraged because they thought kennedy would yield to much to the soviets so he resigned before the end of 1961 with a note to rostou who was also working at the white house and it said -- i'm in the position of a man sitting next to a driver, kennedy, who is heading for a precipice and i'm being asked to make sure that the tires are properly inflated and that the oil pressure is adequate. as far as kissinger was concerned that was not the kind of role that he envisioned for himself and it was certainly not the kind of role he had later. even before kennedy's inauguration, cruzkhef made nice. he said he wanted good relations. he didn't really like eisenhower. he didn't say that to keb did but that was true. he said he wanted good relations and he hoped that they would be

able to get together and work things out. kennedy wrote back and said, yes. i want good relations, also. and he proposed a meeting. kruzkhef state on the invitation and soviet intelligence was pretty good in those days and he knew the merps were going to to attack cuba. he alerted castro and told him to prepare for the attack which castro did as we know. and he also then decide to wait until he could see what the results were of the cuban exercise. we all know what happened at the bay of pigs. i don't need to describe it here but what's interesting is krukhef's reaction which was documented by his son who was written a very warm and loving, but also pretty detailed biography of his father. he could not understand kennedy. he said to his son -- perhaps

lacks determination. he thought there was something wrong with a person who would ladies and gentlemen an attack and not carry it through. it was obvious the americans were running this thing, so why didn't the americans send in marines and carry it out? he, at that point changed his mind about kennedy and said to himself, this is not a man whom i should treat nicely. he's not with it. this is the man whom i should push and push hard because he'll yield. he's weak. and then kruzkhef really wanted a meeting and he sent a letter to kennedy saying let's meet quickly and early and they proposed vienna and that's where they met. the summit held on june 3rd and 4th in vienna was a disaster for kennedy. preparing kennedy for the summitt, some of which i'm ashamed to say were prepared in

the state department by tommy thompson himself, at the kennedy library i was absolute it will shocked at what the people were telling kennedy. his own people were saying to him -- well, you're going to have a decent meeting. it's going to be pleasant and it's going to be very, very important and also, it should be pretty good. they still had the old idea of him that he would be nice. and tommy thompson wrote -- want to pass over berlin, quote, in sweetness and light, unquote. this was about as bad a piece of advice as anybody could have been given as you probably well know. in any case the state department paper for the summitt is also embarrassingly optimistic and misleading. it did not anywhere near attempt to give kennedy the impression that this was going to be a rough and difficult meeting. the only person warning him that

kruzkhef would be tough on him was the russians. when the summit began kennedy expressed desire for good relations and said, essentially, let's divide the world. he said, we have our part of the world. you have your part of the world. let's just leave each other alone. you have yours. we have ours. let's not bother each other. he totally refused that and said -- no, we're the wave of history. we're not going to let you get away easy. you may think that we should divide the world but actually the world will soon be hours so kruzkhef wouldn't go for it and kennedy expressed a mutual responsibility to avoid war. they both had nuclear weapons and he said we have to avoid miscalculations. in the documents that you're looking at you may find that

word as well. miscalculations, he said, is not a word that i accept. he said that miscalculations was a device to get the soviet union to sit on its hands like children in school. and he absolutely refused to do it. he raved and ranted for about five minutes saying there could be no hesitation on either side, particularly not on the soviet side because of the danger of miscalculations. kennedy later said to folks, well, i guess i shouldn't use that word again. and that was perfectly right. kennedy backed off and he then talked about laos and arms' control and things like that and he got more and more impatient. he came to the summitt to talk about berlin. who wants to talk about laos, in his opinion that's important to the lay you slans hand he didn't

want to talk about arms control very much because it was an arcane subject no prime minister should be dealing with. at the end of the first day of the meeting, he said to kennedy, we have not talked about berlin. we have to talk about berlin. i'm going to sign a peace treaty and i'm going to tell you what i'm going to do. kennedy nodded and they had dinner together and the next day they met again and started talk about laos again. he got more and more impatient and they finally got to berlin only when there was an hour left and that was all, at the end of the second day and by then, he was beside himself and he threatened. he said, they were going to sign a peace treaty and he stayed allied rights would vanish and they would have to recognize that this would be the new world. kennedy reacted rather firmly. he said, look, you've got to recognize. we're not talking about laos.

this is berlin and this is a different kind of subject. we have to be very careful and manage our policies very carefully. belowed and that was the end of it. during linch kennedy said to his staff, i cannot let it go like. i've got to meet with him one more time. although the staff said you're going to be late for your trip to ireland which is a very important trip, of course, kennedy said, no. i want to meet with him one more time so they did meet one more time and again, he went through the whole thing on berlin quickly and brutally. and kennedy tried to resist and couldn't. at the end he said, it's going to be a cold winter. that was the mark of that summitt. after that, he met privately

with scotty who was a diplomatic correspondent for the "new york times." they met in a dark room so no one else would know they were meeting. and he said -- this has been the toughest thing in my life. i've never met a man like that. how can i deal with him? one reporter said that kennedy had turned green at the end of the meeting. he was obviously very, very badly beaten up. he had not been prepared for this kind of meeting. he went to ireland and he told macmillan to he told macmillan it had been a terrible experience and macmillan said, you'll have to yield, which was macmillan's view. but he felt wonderful. he said, i really laid the law down to this guy. and he said, kennedy is a boy in short pants. he could not get over the fact that kennedy was so young.

nobody in the soviet hierarchy got to any position of responsibility until they were senile and here was an american president who was young. and who obviously in his mind, didn't know what was going on. so he decide that he could continue to beat on kennedy. and we at the u.s. mission in berlin, i was in berlin at the time, by that time, heard about the summitt from journalist who is told us the truth and not what they were writing in the papers to be nice to kennedy and they said, nz going to be bad. this is going to be really bad. and the cia, if i may recall, also said, this is going to be really bad. he's very determined. we worried that something was going to happen. we didn't know what. and the other people who were worried were the east germans and the east berliners because they knew what else this meant. they knew it could mean that the

cutoff of their abilities to get to the west and to them, particularly to the men who had good jobs and knew they could get good jobs in the west was incredibly important. so they started coming out at a faster pace than ever. a thousand a day, on weekends, 2500 a day. this were coming out at a pace of half a million a year if it had continued at that level. half a million people for a country of 17 million is a lot, especially when they're the best and the brightest. so, all this obviously they had to do something and he said, we've got to do something. and he felt elated by the summitt because he said, kennedy is weak and he said, this man can be beaten. we should close the border to west berlin and we should stop ally air traffic from going in

that area and they should be forced to come here. we want all people to stop going to west berlin. let it dry out. he said he couldn't do that without getting the approval of the warsaw pac of nations. so on august 3rd and 4th, 1961, in a meeting which, at least in berlin we didn't know about, the warsaw pac countries met. they met in moscow. he made his pitch. that we've got to do these things. the warsaw pac countries objected and objected for the very reason that troubled him terribly. they said the you do that, we'll stop our trade with west germany and we desperately need the trade with west germany because that produces our best technical goods. he was aghast. he did not know yet how

dependent eastern europe was on western trade. but he recognized it could be approved and, indeed, the warsaw-packed nations universally disapproved it. but they did say one thing. they said, okay. we understand you have to cut what he called "the flight from the fatherland" so please -- "the flight from the republic" so you can do that but you cannot do anything else. and he pointed his finger and he said not one millimeter more. and he was to hold his fire on anything beyond the cutting the refugee out. in berlin, we met all the time. i was working in the eastern affairs section of the -- we were trying to figure out what

the gdr was going to do. we met with cia and with army intelligence and we tried very hard to figure out. we knew they had to do something. it was obvious they had to do something. and the question whether they would divide berlin or build a circle around berlin and prevent people from coming into the eastern germany or into berlin, period. none of us were absolutely certain of the answer. i would be very curious in the documents you're releasing today you have a document which actions shows that we thought there was going to be a war. i certainly did not attend any meeting in which they told us there would be anything like that, even though we all speculated there would be some kind of cutoff in the middle of the city. on august 13, 1961, at 2:30 in the morning i got a phone call. from the duty officer saying, there's something going on in

east berlin. you should go over there and take a look. in those days i was a bachelor. i had a 190 sl which is the way to travel in east berlin because you could lower the top and see much better than you could in a duty car which was a sedan. so i got together with a friend of mine and we drove there. and when we got there, there were a lot of police, east german police, not soviet, dragging barbed wire across the square. i stopped them and i said -- you have to let me through. i'm a member of the allied forces. we are in control here. you must let me pass. and the guy checked with his officer and said, okay. and pulled back the barbed wire and i drove into east berlin, a sign that they were not yet ready to confront the allies at that particular point. i drove through east berlin for

about an hour. it was obviously what was going on. along the border people were putting up barbed wire and there were all kinds of policemen and all the different poles that they have in germany. there were no soviets. they were well back. i could see them at a distance. they were obviously observing things. it was well known that he would keep control and prevent any kind of uprising so the soviets were watching very carefully to make sure there was no uprising and make sure everything went well but they were not themselves at the border. in any case i then drove north, to a nice, pleasant, relatively modern railway station. and it was a scene of utter

devastation. the east german police were stopping people from going up to the tracks, to the train tracks. and they published a decree saying from now on you can't get out and all this sort of stuff and they were -- i just saw dozens of people sitting on bags, sitting on various kinds of bundles, weeping saying to themselves, god, if we had only done this idea. because they couldn't get out anymore. so at that point i said, well, i've seen what i needed to see and i drove back to the mission. and i was stopped again at the gate and i went out through the great and told i couldn't get out and i said, i'm a member of the allied forces and the guy went into that little house which you all know, next to the gate. and he came out a few minutes later and he said, okay, you can

go. i went back to the mission and reported to the mission officer who reported to washington. and we prepared a protest. a protest, which said this is something that shouldn't be done. we're going to prove it. we didn't do anything else because we had no authority to do anything. >> but there was great disturbance in our mission. >> in washington, everything was calm. kennedy was not even in washington. he was at hyannis port and he was known to said the wall is not very nice but it's better than the war. and he went would not. his aid, ted clifton, a wonderful man, briefed him on what was going on and he said, we didn't do anything about it. he got word from a couple of people that he better do something about it and one was

margarite higgins. and the other person was the man we all know who was in the director of usia whose name i can't think of right now. i think it was -- i'll come back to it in a minute. they said to kennedy, this is something we cannot tolerate. this is something we have to do something about. he sent a message to kennedy what is dying here is that precious quality called "hope." this made kennedy come up alert. these were the kinds of people he respected. much more than the state department people. and if they were getting nervous and said she had to do something, then maybe he did. then he found out the white house press room and the white house mail room was receiving

lots of black on brothers, saying that kennedy was like that. he couldn't take it. so he decided to do something. incidentally, the person who was the head of us i6789 a at the time was edward armareaux, he happened to be in berlin at the time and he came up. the american people were very upset. kennedy had to do something. so he called a man whose name he knew call lucias clay who ran the berlin airlift in 1948 and 1949, a prominent republican, more responsible than anybody else for the nomination of general and president eisenhower. and he wanted somebody from the other party to be with him and he asked clay what he should do. this is a very serious moment.

if you don't react they'll just keep piling in. what should i do, kennedy. what you should do, send an extra brigade. to show that i take this seriously and every one of kennedy's soviet advisers from him down said -- don't do this. it's very dangerous. it's approve occasion. he'll be forced to react and the brigade will not get through. kennedy overruled them and sent the brigade and we all know what happened. it got through. and kennedy sent clay and johnson to meet them and it was a triumph which helped to turn around the situation in berlin. he watched that process very nervously. every 20 minutes he made a call

and he said, fine. relax. we're letting them through. we're not letting the east ger maps come through. they wouldn't let the east dwer germans come through, soviets wouldn't. and the convoy went. i might add, kennedy also had ted cliffman check every 20 minutes. everybody was nervous. a stray shot. and there was a risk of war. kennedy also sent general clay to berlin. he wanted to put clay in charge of the city of the american administration in the city. but the american military, general clark and the american ambassador, objected. they said, no, we have our channels. you can't put clay in so kennedy said to clay, i can't you command but you can call me any time. i want you to be there add your

adviser -- as my advisers. he didn't say that, but that's what he meant. so long as i can phone you any time, i will. i was appointed as a special assistant which is a very interesting job to say it mildly. clay immediately started doing things. when the east germans were stopping -- excuse me. american cars going up and down the audubon, not stopping them and holding them but stopping them for about half an hour to check their documents which they didn't have the authority to do but which they tried to do anyway, clay said, okay, and he started sending courtesy patrols and jooeeps up and down, audubo and the courtesy patrol would stop if there was an american who was in trouble and say -- what's going on. within the a few days everything was o'over. they told the east germans to

lay low. then they tried other blockades so they sent all kinds of not just patrols, but convoys up and down the audubon which the east germans couldn't stop. so to keep showing the american flag and there was something we were going to do, he also flew a helicopter to a little place her here. >> he heard there was a refugee who had landed there and couldn't get out. >> he was separate from the rest of the building. he and i flew there together and picked up the refugee and flew him back to west berlin. on the way out the east german guards pointed hair guns at us but we knew they wouldn't shoot. clay found kennedy supported him, much of the time, not

always. but there was a lot of opposition towards what clay was tried to do. he was trying to do things that would demonstrate the american presence in berlin was something we took seriously. that we wouldn't let bours harassed out of it. but he had a lot of opposition in washington. one, of course, was mac bundy himself. one was dean rusk. secretary of state. who said to clay, that you shouldn't react to everything the soviets and the east germans do. you should only react when they affect our vital interest and nobody knew exactly what that meant but clay didn't listen to it. the british prime minister, harold macmillan, who wanted us out of berlin and told kennedy that, called clay a