spent time here. so it's interesting enough that the place that he chose we often forget it pip think it's probably because his presidential career was so shoft lived. but the time of his election and the time that he served as president and truly at the time of his death, baton rouge was very close to taylor and he lobbied hard to -- this is where he loved most of all and he would have loved to have been buried here. you'll find a zachery taylor park way in the state, zachery taylor streets and avenues. but we often forget his birthday of november 24th. and i think we've probably should remember him. >> a look at a recent stop in baton rouge.

> william smyser is the author of "the kennedy and the berlin wall." a hell of a lot better than the berlin war. next, he talks about the berlin crisis of 1961 and the event hosted by the national archives in october of 2011. the berlin crisis is a milestone of the cold war. built in august of 1961, the wall separated the city in two parts -- east and west. two months later, in october of 1961, soviet and u.s. tanks faced off at the border. >> i want to express my appreciation to the gentleman who introduced me because i have never before been called competent and dedicated. but i did do some work on the declassification process. 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. there was stuff in the archives that is just incredible. i really advise any of you who have any serious historical research to do, to 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 pale white. east berlin, i guess, is matching the contours of east germany. i'll talk about checkpoint charlie and the other checkpoint, bravo, which we used one time in this particular exercise. the berlin crisis began in 1958

when khrushchev issued a challenge to the west. he said, i want you to sign a peace treaty for berlin and for germany and when that peace treaty is signed all of the rights that the allies enjoyed will pass to the gdr, the german democratic republic, because they are the ones who are sovereign in berlin and in what he called the gdr. if they do not agree -- if the allies do not agree to sign that, i will sign the treaty with the gdr. the gdr will impose its 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 with eisenhower and khrushchev when khrushchev visited the united states. he did not get to disneyland much to his sorrow. but he got to a lot of other

places. between eisenhower and others, they held khrushchev back for a while. nothing very much had happened except that there was a lot of talk. in 1961, john f. kennedy became president. essentially, the others had left the problem 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. i'm going to talk, however, only about four particular instances. this thing goes on forever, which you can read in the document. i'll talk about the vienna summit between khrushchev and kennedy about the beginning of the wall august 13, when i was in berlin, about the checkpoint charlie crisis and the confrontation where i was also in berlin. finally, about the cuban missile crisis which had a connection to berlin that most people don't

know about. i'm not sure it is in the documents. when kennedy became president in january 20, 1961, he started with two types of staffers. one who were called the best and the brightest. sometimes by themselves. were many people who came from his harvard background. they included experts on the soviet union like george cannon chip bolin, tommy thompson and others. they included some people who were generalists in foreign affairs. they did not include a single person who was a scholar or expert in germany. the senior staff, kennedy had a focus on moscow. he did not have a focus on germany. germany was his principle problem. he had only one european hand. a person who was in an obscure

harvard professor whose name was henry kissinger. henry kissinger joined the white house on a part-time basis, because he was still busy at harvard, and he was the only real european hand. 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 principal ally. he met with kennedy. he liked kennedy. he's told me that. he liked kennedy. they had good conversations. somehow or other, they were not on the same page. kissinger was discouraged because he out that kennedy would yield too much to the soviets. so he resigned before the end of 1961, with a note to walt rustar, who was also working at the white house. note said the following, "i'm in position of a man sitting next

to a driver, kennedy, who i heading for a precipice. i'm being asked to make sure the tires are properly inflated and the oil pressure is adequate. as far as kissinger was concerned, it was not the role he envisioned for himself. it was certainly not the kind of role that he had later. even before kennedy's inauguration, khrushchev made nice.

he sent a memo to kennedy saying he wanted to good relations. he didn't really like eisenhower. he didn't say that to kennedy burke that was true. he said he wanted good relations and he hoped that they would be able to get together and work things out on their problems. kennedy wrote back and said, yes, i want good relations also. he proposed a meeting. khrushchev sat on the invitation. soviet intelligence was pretty good in those days. he had known that the americans were going to attack cuba. he alerted castro. told them that there was an attack coming, he might be prepared for it which castro did, as we know. he also decided to wait to see what the results were of the cuban exercise. we know what happened at the bay of pigs. i don't need to describe it here. what is interesting is khrushchev's reaction. it was documented by his son. he has written a very warm and loving but detailed biography of his father. khrushchev could not understand kennedy. he said, to his son, perhaps he lacks determination. he thought there was something wrong with a person who would launch an attack and not carry it through. it was obvious the americans were running this thing. why didn't the americans send marines? why didn't they carry it out? he at that point changed his mind about kennedy. he said to himself, this is not

a man whom i should treat nicely. he is not worth it. this is a man whom i should push and push hard because he will yield. he is weak. and then khrushchev really wanted a meeting. he sent a letter to kennedy saying let's meet quickly. let's meet early. they proposed vienna and vienna is where they met. the summit on june 3rd and 4th in vienna was a disaster for kennedy. reading the documents preparing kennedy for the summit, some of which i'm ashamed to say were prepared in the state department by tommy thompson himself. at the kennedy library, i was absolutely shocked at what 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. it will be important, but also it should be pretty good.

they had the old idea of khruschev that he would be nice. tommy thompson wrote that khrushchev would want to pass over berlin, quote in sweetness and light, unquote. this was about as bad a piece of advice anybody could have been given, as you well know. the state department's paper for the summit is embarrassing and misleading. it did not anywhere near attempt to give kennedy the impression this would be a rough and difficult meeting. the only person who warned him that khrushchev would be tough on berlin was a soviet spy who was meeting regularly with bobby kennedy. when the summit began, kennedy expressed desire for good relations. he 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 leave each other alone.

you have yours. we have ours. let's not bother each other. khrushchev refused that. he said no. we are the wave of history. we are not going to let you get away easy. you may think that we should divide the world, but the world will soon be ours. khrushchev rejected that proposal. then kennedy stressed the mutual responsibility to avoid war. they both had nuclear weapons. he said, we have to avoid miscalculation. in the documents that you are looking at, you may find that word as well. miscalculation, khrushchev bellowed, is not a word i accept. he said that miscalculation 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 five minutes saying there could be no

hesitation on either side, particularly on the soviet side, because of the danger of miscalculation. kennedy later said to folks, i guess i shouldn't use that word again. kennedy backed off. they talked about laos and arms control and other things like that. khrushchev got impatient. he had come to the summit to talk about berlin. who wants to talk about laos? in his opinion. laos is important to oceans and to a lot of other people. it became important to us at one point. it was not important to khrushchev. he did not want to talk about arms control very much because it was an arcane subject that 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. i want to tell you what i'm going to do. kennedy nodded. they had dinner together.

the next day they met again and started talking about laos again. khrushchev got impatient and they finally got to berlin when there was an hour left that was all, at the end of the second day. then, khrushchev was beside himself. he threatened, they said they were going to sign a peace treaty, he said allied rights would vanish. you have to deal with the gdr. they'd have to recognize this was going to be the new world. kennedy reacted rather firmly. he said, look, you have to recognize we are not talking about laos. this is berlin. this is a different kind of subject. we have to be very careful and we have to manage our policies very carefully. khrushchev bellowed and that was the end of the second day of meeting. they then had lunch. during lunch, kennedy said to his staff, i cannot let this go like this. i've got to meet with him one more time.

and so, although his staff said you will be late for your trip to ireland, which is an important trip, kennedy said, no, i want to meet with him one more time. so they did meet one more time. khrushchev went through the spiel on berlin. very quickly, very brutally. kennedy tried to resist. he couldn't. at the end he said, it's going to be a cold winter. that was the mark of that summit. afterwards, he met privately with scotty rustin, who was a diplomatic correspondent for "the new york times." they met in a dark room so nobody else knew they were meeting. 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 after 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. he told -- england first and then he went to ireland. he told mcmillan that it had been a terrible experience. mcmillan said you have to yield. which was mcmillan's view. khrushchev was just the opposite. he felt wonderful about the meeting. he said, i really laid the law down to this guy. 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. here was an american president who was young and who obviously, in khrushchev's mind, didn't know what was going on. so, he decided he could continue to beat on kennedy.

we, at the u.s. mission in berlin, i was in berlin by that time, heard about the summit from journalists who told us the truth. not what they were writing in the papers to be nice to kennedy. they said this is going to be bad. this is going to be really bad. the cia, if i may recall, said this is going to be really bad. khrushchev is very determined. we worried something would happen. we didn't know what. the other people who were worried, of course, were the east germans and east berliners. because they knew what all of this meant. they knew that it could mean that the cut off of their ability to get to the west, which, to them, particularly to the young men who had good jobs and knew they could get good jobs in the west, was incredibly important. they started coming out at a faster pace than ever. a thousand a day. on the weekends and 2,500 on days.

they were coming out a 500,000 per year, it continues at that level. 500,000 people a year for a country of 17 million is a lot, especially when they are the best and brightest. so they had to do something. he went to khrushchev and said we have to do something. he felt elated by the summit because he said kennedy is weak. he said to khrushchev, this man can be beaten. we should close the border to west berlin. we should stop allied air traffic from going, they should be forced to come to schonenfeld. we want all people to stop going to west berlin. let it dry out.

khrushchev said he could not do that without getting the approval of the warsaw pact nations. on august 3rd and 4th, 1961, in a meeting which, at least in berlin we didn't know about, the warsaw pact countries met. they met in moscow, of course. the pitch was made. that we've got to do these things. the warsaw pact countries objected. they objected for a very reason that troubled khrushchev terribly. they said, if you do that, it will stop our trade with west germany. and we desperately need that trade with west germany because west germany produces our best technical goods. khrushchev was aghast.

he did not know how dependent eastern europe was on west german trade. he recognized that it couldn't be approved. indeed, the warsaw pact nations universally disapproved it. but they did say one thing to him. they said, okay, we understand you have to cut what he called the flight from the fatherland. so, please -- excuse me. the flight from the republic. so you can do that, but you cannot do anything else. khrushchev pointed his finger and said, not one millimeter more. he was to hold his fire on anything beyond the cutting the refugee. in berlin we met all the time. i was working in the eastern section. we were trying to figure out what the gdr was going to do. we met with cia. we met with army intelligence. we tried very hard to figure out. we knew they had to do something. it was obvious they had to do something. the question was whether they would divide berlin or build a circle around berlin and prevent people from coming in to east germany and west berlin, or into

berlin, period. none of us were absolutely certain of the answer. i'd be very curious, in the documents you are releasing today, you have a document which actually shows that we thought that there was going to be a wall. i certainly did not attend any meeting at which they told us there would be anything like that. even though we all speculated there would be some kind of cut off 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 is something going on in east berlin. you should go over there and take a look. in those days, a was a bachelor. i had a 190 sl. which of course is the way to travel into east berlin because you could lower the top and you could 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 to potsdamer platz. there were a lot of police east german police, not soviet, dragging a lot of barbed wire across the square. i stopped them. i said you have to let me through. i'm a member of the allied forces. we are in control. you must let me pass. the guy checked with his officer. and said, okay, and pulled back the barbed wire, and i drove into east berlin. a sign they were not ready to confront the allies at that particular point. i drove through east berlin for an hour. it was obvious what was going on. along the sector border there were all kinds of people putting barbed wire down. there were all kinds of police officers around. all the other kinds of posts in east germany. there are no soviets. they were well back. i could see them at a distance. they were observing things.

marshall had been sent by khrushchev. to berlin. he was known to hate all germans. so it was well known that he would keep control of east germany and he would prevent any kind of uprising. so the soviets were watching very carefully to make sure there was no uprising, to make sure everything went well. they were not themselves at the border. any case, i drove to bahnhof. many of you know right now is a very nice, pleasant, relatively modern railway station. it was a scene of utter desolation. east german police were stopping people from going up to the tracks. to the train tracks. they published a decree saying from now on you couldn't get out and all of that sort of stuff. there were -- i just saw dozens of people sitting on bags and sitting on various kinds of bundles.

weeping and saying if we had only done this yesterday. because they could not get out anymore. so at that point, i said, well, i have seen what i needed to see. i drove back to the mission. i was stopped again at brandenburg gate. i went out through brandonburg gate. told i couldn't get out. i said i'm a member of the allied forces. the same rigmarole. the guy went into the little house which you all know next to brandenburg gate. he came out a few minutes later and said, okay, you could go. i went back to the mission and reported to the mission officers. we reported to washington. we prepared a protest. a protest which said this is something that should not be done. we were going to tell the soviets. we did not do anything else because we had no authority to do anything. but there was great disturbance in our mission.

in washington, in contrast, everything was calm. kennedy was not in washington. he was in hyannisport. he is known to have said that a wall is not very nice, but it's better than a war. and he went out sailing. his aide, ted clifton, wonderful man, briefed him on what was going on. kennedy said that is all right. he didn't do anything about it. but he got word from a couple of people that he better do something about it. one was margarite higgins. probably most of you don't know, she was a great reporter for the old herald tribune, international reporter. a wonderful woman. the other person, of course, was the man whom we all know who was then 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 saying what is dying here is that precious quality called hope. this made kennedy come up alert because these were the kind of people he respected. he respected them much more than the state department people. if they were getting nervous and saying he had to do something, then maybe he did. then he also found out that the white house press room and the white house mail room was receiving lots of black umbrellas. reminiscent of chamberlain's yielding at munich, saying kennedy was like timber. he couldn't take that so he decided he had to do something. the president of the usia was edward r. murrow. whose name you all know. a great man. he happened to be in berlin at the time and he went into east berlin, looked around, and that's why he sent the cable to kennedy.

the american people were very upset. kennedy had to do something. he called a man whose name he knew called lucius clay. general lucius clay. he had run the berlin air lift in 1948 and 1949. he was a prominent republican. more responsible than anybody else for the nomination for general president eisenhower. he wanted somebody from the other party to be with him. and he asked clay what he should do. clay said, this is a very serious moment. you have to do something. you have to react. if you don't react, they will just keep piling in. what should i do, kennedy said? what you should do, clay said, is send extra brigade to west berlin to show that we take this seriously. every one of kennedy's soviet advisors from borland on down said, don't do this, it's very dangerous.

it is a provocation. khrushchev will react. the brigade will not get through. kennedy overruled them. sent the brigade. you know what happened. it got through. cheers on the berliners. kennedy sent clay and johnson to meet them and it was a triumph which helped to start turn around the situation in berlin. khrushchev watched that process very nervously. every 20 minutes he made a call saying, how are things going? he said, they are fine, relax. we're letting them through. we are not letting the east germans. they would not let the east germans get near the convoy. the soviets wouldn't. the convoy went in. i might add that kennedy also had ted clifton check every ten 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 of the city. but the american military, general clark and the american ambassador objected. they said, no, we have our channels. you cannot put clay in. kennedy said to clay, look, i cannot give you command, but you can call me anytime. i want you to be there as my adviser. i don't trust anybody else. he didn't say that, but that is what he meant. clay said okay. so long as i can phone you anytime. i will go. he went. i was appointed as his special assistant, which is a very interesting to job, to say mildly. clay immediately started doing things.

when the east germans were stopping -- excuse me. when american cars going up and down the autobahn to stop and check their documents, which they did not have the authority to do, but trying to do anyway. clay said, okay, and he starts sending courtesy patrols and jeeps up and down the autobahn. which they couldn't stop. the courtesy patrols would stop whenever there was an american in trouble and say, what's going on? within a few days, the whole thing was over. the soviets told the germans to lay low. then the east germans tried other blockades on the autobahn. clay sent all kinds of patrols of not just patrols but convoys up and down the autobahn. the east germans could not stop. to keep showing the american flag and keep showing there was something that we were going to do. he also flew a helicopter to a little place called