This is the original text of an article which appeared in the International Herald Tribune on June 19, 1991 under the headline A NUCLEAR WAR TO KEEP BERLIN OPEN? (Some editorial changes were made in Paris.) BRIEFING FOR KENNEDY ON BERLIN PLANNING by John C. Ausland Oslo. The quarrel over whether Berlin should be the capital of a united Germany is not the only sign the Cold War is over. A lesser noted event is that the State Department has recently released to me a top secret briefing which I gave President Kennedy in 1962. Previous efforts to get this under the Freedom of Information Act had failed on the grounds it still represented planning regarding Berlin. I found this incongruous, since it was well known that George Pacques, an agent working in NATO, had systematically passed our contingency plans to the KGB. Khruschev once remarked to Averell Harriman that he had seen these and was not impressed. Encouraged by the disappearance of the wall, I tried again recently to get the briefing and was rewarded with a copy, with a few excisions concerning covert operations and nuclear weapons. Thirty years later, you may wonder why I wanted this briefing. It was not only because it represented an important event in my life. I was also curious to see what we were saying at that time about the defense of allied rights in Berlin. Unfortunately, the text does not reflect the most important thing that happened during the briefing. This was a statement made by Kennedy about nuclear weapons. Given the apparent ease with which the wall came down, it is not easy to recreate today the tension which existed in 1962. For reasons which have never been clear to me, Khruschev had suddenly reignited the struggle over Berlin. After Kennedy's ill-fated meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in the spring of 1961, it was difficult for those of us working on Berlin to see how we could extricate ourselves from the crisis without a war. The erection of the wall reinforced our anxiety and led to an intensification of contingency planning regarding Berlin. Planning documents multiplied until they filled two file drawers. No imagined contingency was left unexamined. Officials flew to Camp David to play Berlin games, the best device yet found to examine difficult policy problems. The planning, however, also assumed another dimension. Under the guidance of Paul Nitze, who was then an advisor to both Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President Kennedy, planning became the crucible for selling flexible response to the allies. In the middle of 1962, General Maxwell Taylor, military advisor to President Kennedy, commented that it would be useful to brief the president on Berlin planning. Having recently given such a briefing to the Berlin Task Force in the State Department, I was nominated. While little attention had been paid to my briefing earlier, it is remarkable how interesting something becomes when officials find it is going to the president. Having survived the resulting onslaught of suggestions, sometime in August, 1962 I presented the briefing to President Kennedy in the Cabinet Room. As usual, a number of senior officials were also present, including Secretary of State Rusk and Secretary of Defense McNamara. The briefing used as its framework National Security Action Memorandum 109, commonly known as the Poodle Blanket, which President Kennedy had approved in October, 1961. This used a four phase scenario, which ran as follows: Phase 1. Soviet or east German interference with access to Berlin. For this phase, the allies had prepared a number of military plans regarding access. On the ground, these provided for token allied military probes, under the rubric Free Style. Plans regarding air access called for putting military pilots on commercial aircraft if the civilian pilots refused to fly. Under some circumstances, fighter aircraft would provide protection under the rubric Jack Pine. Phase 2. Significant blockage of access to Berlin. This phase would be characterized by intense diplomatic activity, a NATO military buildup, and an airlift as needed. There could also be naval countermeasures, economic countermeasures, and covert action designed to encourage passive resistance. Phase 3. If measures taken in Phase 2 did not end the blockage, the allies would undertake offensive non-nuclear operations. The names assigned to these plans were Trade Wind and June Ball. Phase 4. If the conventional military action were "unsuccessful in inducing the Soviets to restore Allied right in Berlin," there could be a resort to nuclear weapons. Although this scenario may sound bold, the briefing conveyed considerable caution. At one point, I noted that this was a conceptual framework and not an attempt to predict how history will unroll. Furthermore, I added that "we have no idea of rushing from one phase to another." This reflected President Kennedy's outlook. As Secretary Rusk commented to several of us once, "You must remember, in dealing with the Russians, he always has in the back of his mind nuclear weapons." Later, when I became involved in nuclear planning, I understood better what he had in mind. Nevertheless, at the time it was difficult to reconcile the president's concern with a remark he made during the briefing. When I was discussing Phase 4 and the possible use of nuclear weapons, he interrupted to say, "I suppose if we get involved in a war in Europe we will have no choice but to use nuclear weapons." Silence fell upon the room for a moment, and then I resumed the briefing. Robert McNamara has recently revealed that he subsequently cautioned Kennedy against every authorizing the use of nuclear weapons. The irony was that shortly after this briefing Khruschev threw Kennedy a curve ball by deploying nuclear missiles to Cuba. This was a terrible mistake on his part, for it moved the action from Khruschev's front yard to Kennedy's. As a result, it was - happily - never necessary to determine if the US and their allies were as bold as their planning. Although we continued to have difficulty regarding ground access to Berlin after the Cuban missile crisis, we ceased to worry about Soviet harassment leading to war. John C. Ausland CIS: 73240,2704 Internet: d_ausland_j@kari.uio.no