69. Thompson, who knew nothing of the discussions going through Robert Kennedy, had been ill prepared by the president for this meeting. He should have been warned that Khrushchev was stonewalling on the test ban and trying to force a dialogue on Berlin. Kennedy did use the Bolshakov channel to find out what Khrushchev had meant by the comment about U.S. forces tightening their belts, but Bolshakov could add nothing to that phrase, and the Kremlin gave him nothing else to work with. See Fursenko and Naftali, op. cit., pp. 123–24.
70. Thompson to SecState, May 27, 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 14, pp. 77–78.
71. He had not invited a stenographer to the November 7, 1958, meeting at which he unsuccessfully tried to unilaterally end the Potsdam Agreement. But at the height of the Iraqi crisis and during the discussions over the Twenty-first Party Congress, there was a stenographer at hand. The fact that this was a surprise to the Soviet Foreign Ministry is suggested by the materials which the ministry had prepared for the May 26 meeting. Deputy Foreign Minister V. V. Kuznetsov wrote a memorandum that suggested possible areas for discussion without saying anything about the delivery of an ultimatum on Berlin. Kuznetsov, May 26, 1961, 3/66/311, pp. 58–61, APRF. There is also no indication in the Presidential Archive file on the Vienna meeting that the aide-mémoire on Berlin suggesting a six-month ultimatum, which Khrushchev handed Kennedy on June 4, was prepared in advance of the May 26 meeting.
72. The stenographer did not note Mikoyan’s rebuttal. From Malin’s notes of the meeting and Khrushchev’s response to Mikoyan, which was transcribed, Mikoyan’s argument can be inferred. See Steno, May 26, 1961, and Protocol 331, May 26, 1961, AOK.
73. Protocol 331, May 26, 1961, AOK.
74. Anatoly Dobrynin attended this meeting as head of the American Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry. His brief memoir account of this meeting supplements the Malin note and the stenographic account. Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (1962–1986) (New York: Times Books, 1995), pp. 44–45.
75. Khrushchev added that he was prepared to spend money on conventional forces in Germany to signal his resolve: “[M]aybe we have to add armaments if reinforcements are needed there. It needs to be thought through in order to do it with no hurry. First, we have to deliver artillery weapons and basic weapons, and afterward to bring in troops so that we will have strong positions there in the event of provocation. You have a deadline of half a year to do it. So there is no hurry, think about it now and report your conclusions afterward, in about two weeks’ time. If additional mobilization is necessary, it can be carried out without declaring it. It requires reinforcement here because one has to match one’s words with reality.”
76. The Central Committee officially approved the list of gifts on May 27. “List, commemorative gifts and souvenirs for possible delivery at the time of N. S. Khrushchev’s stay in Austria,” May 27, 1961, APRF.
77. Memcon, May 31, 1961, 12:30 P.M., FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 14, p. 81.
78. Ibid., p. 82.
79. Memcon, 2:50 P.M., ibid., p. 86.
80. Memcon, June 3, 1961, 12:45 P.M., FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 5, pp. 172–78.
81. Moscow to SecState, May 24, 1961, 8:33 A.M., State Department Central Decimal File, 1960–1963, 611.61, NARA-II.
82. Memcon, June 3, 1961, 3:00 P.M., FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 5, pp. 182–97.
83. Memcon, June 4, 1961, 10:15 A.M., ibid., pp. 206–25.
84. Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman, eds., Robert Kennedy in His Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years (New York: Bantam, 1988), p. 258.
85. Evidence of the content of Bolshakov’s statements comes from two different archives. Khrushchev’s reaction to Kennedy’s test ban proposals can be found in a third. See Steno, May 26, 1961, AOK.
86. This aide-mémoire is an unusual document. It bears the signs either of haste or of a minor rebellion against Khrushchev’s risk taking in the Soviet Foreign Ministry. The six-month ultimatum is buried in a discussion of the odds of the two Germanys’ ever reaching an agreement. See U.S. Department of State, Documents on Germany, 1944–1985 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, 1985), pp. 729–32. Despite the woolly language of the document, in his comments to Kennedy and later in public speeches from East Berlin to Moscow Khrushchev left no doubt he was talking about a December 1961 deadline.
87. Memcon, June 4, 1961, 3:15 P.M., FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 5, pp. 229–30.
88. Strobe Talbott, ed., Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), p. 499.
89. Ibid., p. 501.
90. Khrushchev’s appearances are described in Robert M. Slusser, The Berlin Crisis of 1961: Soviet-American Relations and the Struggle for Power in the Kremlin, June–November 1961 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 5–15, and William Taubman, Khrushchev (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 590.
91. The CIA obtained a copy of this resolution, dated June 17, 1961, RG 59, Lot 74D379, Bohlen Papers, Box 26, NARA-II.
92. Steno, June 17, 1961. All quotations regarding Khrushchev’s decision to reinstate capital punishment for additional crimes come from this source.
93. Maria Los, Communist Ideology, Law and Crime (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), pp. 93–94; Peter H. Solomon, Jr., Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy: Specialists in Policy-Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), pp. 68–69.
94. The July 8 speech is cited in Slusser, op. cit., pp. 51–57.
95. He had done so most recently on May 26, when he told the Presidium that the Soviets should wait to let the Americans break the moratorium. Steno, May 26, 1961, AOK. In an interview with Vladislav Zubok, Yuri Smirnov, a member of Andrei Sakharov’s research team, recalled Khrushchev’s alerting the nuclear community on July 10, 1961, that he intended to end the test moratorium. See Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 253 and 333, 64.
CHAPTER 15: IRON RING
1. The New York Times’ James “Scottie” Reston was allowed to see Kennedy in the U.S. Embassy as he relaxed after the last session with Khrushchev. Kennedy opened up to him about why everything seemed to have gone so wrong. James Reston, Deadline: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 299. The quotation comes from Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life (Boston: Little Brown, 2003), p. 413.
2. Summary, May 9, 1961, Bolshakov-RFK general meeting summaries (May 9, 1961–December 14, 1962), GRU.
3. Dallek, op. cit., pp. 413–14.
4. Charles Bohlen, Witness to History (New York: Norton, 1973), p. 483.
5. Kennedy suffered from Addison’s disease, which produced a chronic adrenaline deficiency. On the president’s many ailments, see Dallek, op. cit.
6. Veteran White House correspondent Hugh Sidey was part of the group. See Sidey, John F. Kennedy, President (New York: Atheneum, 1964), pp. 173–74.
7. Dallek, op. cit., p. 418.
8. Hanson W. Baldwin, “Soviet Air Power Rouses Congress,” New York Times, July 23, 1961.
9. Seymour Topping, “Soviet Says Navy Has Atomic Edge,” New York Times, July 22, 1961.
10. James Chace, Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), pp. 381–94, passim; Douglas Brinkley, Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953–71 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 108–53, passim.
11. Cited in Herbert Parmet, Jack: The Struggles of Jack Kennedy (New York: Dial Press, 1980), p. 208.
12. Theodore White, “JFK-2,” Notebook, Box 80, Theodore White Papers, Harvard University.
13. Dean Acheson to Harry S. Truman, August 4, 1961, Truman Post-Presidential Papers: Name File: Acheson, Dean – Correspondence, 1960–1963, HST Library.
14. See memcon, ICC Group on Germany and Berlin, July 12, 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS], 1961–1963 (Washington, D.
C.: Government Printing Office, 1992), vol. 14, pp. 187–91. Memcon [Bundy], NSC meeting, July 13, 1961, ibid., pp. 192–94. Notes on NSC meeting [Lemnitzer], July 13, 1961, ibid., pp. 194–96.
15. For the president’s mindset on the eve of seeing this intelligence, see memcon (Bundy), NSC meeting, July 13, 1961, ibid., p. 194. For the timing of his decisions on Berlin, see Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 587–91.
16. Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War (New York: C. Scribners’ Sons, 1992), pp. 188–89.
17. Ibid., p. 186.
18. The memcon of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s meeting with Dwight Eisenhower confirms that this information reached the White House before Kennedy’s July 17 Berlin decision. See memcon, July 15, 1961, memorandum of conference, 1961–1963, Post-Presidential, Augusta—Walter Reed Series, Box 2, DDE Library. The effect of this Corona satellite program intelligence does not show up in formal national intelligence estimates, however, until September 1961. See National Intelligence Estimate, 11-8-61, September 21, 1961, Kevin C. Ruffner, ed., Corona: America’s First Satellite Program (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 1995), pp. 127–56. This version of NIE 11-8-61 reflects the additional releases possible after the declassification of the Corona program in 1995.
19. See memcon, July 15, 1961, memorandum of conference, 1961–1963, Post-Presidential, Augusta—Walter Reed Series, Box 2, DDE Library.
20. Kennedy later mused about his mistaken belief in the missile gap in a wide-ranging defense budget conversation that he taped on December 5, 1962. The authors are grateful to David G. Coleman of the Miller Center’s Presidential Recordings Program for sharing the draft transcript of this conversation.
21. For information on McNamara and the missile gap, see Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (Boston: Little Brown, 1992), pp. 97–99.
22. NIE, 11-8-61, June 7, 1961, Donald P. Steury, ed., Estimates of Soviet Military Power 1954 to 1984 (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 1994), 1994.
23. Peter J. Roman, Eisenhower and the Missile Gap (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 184.
24. Memcon, July 15, 1961, memorandum of conference, 1961–1963, Post-Presidential, Augusta—Walter Reed Series, Box 2, DDE Library.
25. McGeorge Bundy explains how he and Theodore Sorensen, at least, understood this to be the thinking behind Kennedy’s July decisions. McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), pp. 374–75.
26. Memo, Bundy, June 10, 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 14, pp. 107–9.
27. Memcon, July 17, 1961, FRUS, ibid., pp. 209–12. Kennedy also made sure that neither Acheson nor LBJ sat on the steering group that he formed that day to supervise the day-to-day management of the crisis.
28. Dallek, op. cit., p. 417.
29. NSK to JFK, September 29, 1961, FRUS, 1961 vol. 6, p. 25.
30. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: Norton, 1997), p. 208.
31. Khrushchev describes the drain as a “major threat” to the GDR in Strobe Talbott, ed., Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little Brown, 1970), p. 456.
32. Honore M. Catudal, Kennedy and the Berlin Wall Crisis: A Case Study in U.S. Decisionmaking (Berlin: Berlin-Verlag, 1980), p. 164.
33. Memcon, NSK to Ulbricht, November 30, 1960, APRF.
34. Steno, May 26, 1961, AOK. Strobe Talbott, ed., Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 57.
35. Jerold L. Schecter, ed., Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes (Boston: Little Brown, 1990), p. 168.
36. Statement by the president concerning the U.S. reply to the Soviet government’s aide-mémoire on Germany and Berlin, July 19, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, January 20–December 31, 1961 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962), Document 292, pp. 521–23.
37. At a later meeting with Ulbricht, Khrushchev hinted at the importance that this information had in his thinking in late July 1961. Memcon, NSK and Ulbricht, August 3, 1961, APRF.
38. Shelepin to NSK, July 20, 1961, APRF. Khrushchev did not need the KGB for this. The July 3 issue of Newsweek, which appeared on newsstands in late June, outlined much the same steps that the Pentagon had suggested to Kennedy.
39. See steno, May 26, 1961, AOK, for a discussion of this intelligence.
40. Ibid.
41. Pervukhin to Gromyko, May 19, 1961, in Hope M. Harrison, Driving the Soviets up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953–1961 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 170–71.
42. “Measures to effect the strengthening of control and the protection of the outer ring and sectoral borders of Greater Berlin,” signed July 21, 1961, by the GDR’s deputy minister of internal affairs, Major General Seifert; the chief of staff of the MVD Colonel Zide; and the chief of staff of the German border police, Major General Boruvko, and approved by the chief of staff of the Soviet Forces in Germany, Lieutenant General Ariko, 3-64-744, pp. 53–56, APRF.
43. Gromyko to CC, July 22–23, 1961, 3-64-744, p. 21, APRF.
44. Soviet Ambassador Patsuro (Warsaw) to Moscow, July 27, 1961, 3-64-744, pp. 121–22, APRF. Patsuro described his meeting with Gomulka on July 26, as instructed by the Central Committee.
45. James Reston, “Kennedy to Speak on Berlin Tonight,” New York Times, July 25, 1961.
46. Sorensen, op. cit., pp. 591–92.
47. “Kennedy: ‘A Wider Choice,’” Newsweek (August 7, 1961).
48. Ibid.
49. Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Berlin Crisis, July 25, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, loc. cit., pp. 533–40. Sorensen, who wrote most of the speech, credited Maxwell Taylor with the lines comparing the defense of West Berlin with that of Bastogne, which he knew from personal experience, and Stalingrad, which Khrushchev knew from personal experience. See Sorensen, op. cit., p. 591.
50. Cable, McCloy to Rusk, July 29, 1961, FRUS, 1960–1963, vol. 14, p. 235.
51. No record was found of Khrushchev’s communication to Pervukhin in the Presidium materials for the crisis. The authors assume that Khrushchev used his special telephone to convey the information to Ulbricht. Pervukhin’s cabled response is in the files. That cable and Khrushchev’s retelling of this story to Ulbricht in August are the basis for this reconstruction. Cable, Pervukhin NSK, July 27, 1961, 3-64-744, APRF; memcon, NSK and Ulbricht, August 3, 1961, APRF.
52. On July 24, the East German Politburo had approved a draft of Ulbricht’s speech that mentioned only increasing control of the Berlin border, not closing it. It appears that the East Germans had not yet decided that the border sector should be closed before the signing of a peace treaty. They were awaiting a green light from Moscow. See Harrison, op. cit., pp. 189–90, for information on the July 24 East German Politburo discussion and the language in Ulbricht’s draft speech.
53. Schecter, ed., op. cit., 169; Soviet Foreign Ministry veteran Yuli Kvitsinsky recalled that Khrushchev informed Ulbricht in the first week of July that he was prepared to allow the East Germans to build the wall. The tone of Pervukhin’s July 27 report, however, suggests that the final approval from Khrushchev came later, on July 26. On Kvitsinsky, see Harrison, op. cit., pp. 186–87.
54. Pervukhin to NSK, July 27, 1961, 3-64-744, APRF.
55. The Malin collection is no help on the choreography of Presidium activities around the building of the Berlin Wall because there are no notes for any meetings between Protocol 334 of June 17, 1961, and Protocol 349 of October 7, 1961, AOK. By using Pravda, Robert Slusser determined that Khrushchev did not return to Moscow until July 31 [see Robert Slusser, The Berlin Crisis of 1961: Soviet-American Relations and the Struggle for Power in the Kr
emlin, June–November 1961 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 95–96]. A formal Presidium meeting at Pitsunda can also be ruled out. Had Khrushchev been able to gather the leadership at Pitsunda before making the call to Pervukhin in East Berlin on July 27, McCloy would have noticed this activity.
56. Mikoyan and Gromyko to CC, July 29, 1961, 3/14/947, pp. 26–42, RGANI, cited in David Murphy, Sergei Kondrashev, and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: The CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 499.
58. Vladislav Zubok, and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 253–54.
59. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York: Basic Books, 2005), pp. 40–43.
60. Ibid.
60. Memcon, NSK and Ulbricht, August 3, 1961, APRF.
61. Ibid.
62. Strobe Talbott, ed., (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), p. 506.
63. Gomulka to CC, July 30, 1961, APRF.
64. Murphy et al., op. cit., pp. 373, 499, n. 32.
65. Ulbricht to the CC, CPSU, July 29, 1961, 3-64-744, p. 130, APRF.
66. For a superb description of this Warsaw Pact meeting see pp. 194–205 of Harrison, op. cit.
67. Khrushchev quoted ibid., p. 201.
68. Ibid.
69. On the “hand wringing” by the socialist allies on the issue of economic assistance to East Germany, see ibid., pp. 199–202. For evidence that they passed a resolution in support of closing the sectoral boundaries, see Pervukhin to Khrushchev, August 10, 1961, 3-64-745, p. 125, APRF.
70. Harrison, op. cit., p. 205.
71. Pervukhin to Khrushchev, August 10, 1961, 3-64-745, p. 125, APRF.
72. Ibid. The information about the distribution of barbed wire comes from Peter Wyden’s Wall, cited in Murphy et al., op. cit., p. 377.
73. Talbott, ed., Khrushchev Remembers, loc. cit., p. 457; also Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, loc. cit., p. 505.
74. Curtis Cate, The Ides of August: The Berlin Wall Crisis, 1961 (New York: M. Evans, 1978), pp. 178–81.
Khrushchev's Cold War Page 83