Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 12. August 2011 / Timeline August 12, 2011
Version 3.511. August 2011, 13. August 2011
08/12/2011
National Security Archive Update, August 12, 2011
THE BERLIN WALL, 50 YEARS AGO
While Condemning Wall in Public, U.S. Officials Saw "Long Term Advantage"
if Potential Refugees Stayed in East Germany
Three Days Before Wall Went Up, CIA Expected East Germany Would Take "Harsher Measures" to Solve Refugee Crisis
Disturbed By Lack of Warning, JFK Asked Intelligence Advisers to Review CIA Performance
Washington, D.C., August 12, 2011 - Fifty years ago, when leaders of the former East Germany implemented their dramatic decision to seal off East Berlin from the western part of the city, senior Kennedy administration officials publicly condemned them. Nevertheless, those same officials, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, secretly saw the Wall as potentially contributing to the stability of East Germany and thereby easing the festering crisis over West Berlin. Indeed, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn Thompson had written that "both we and West Germans consider it to our long-range advantage that potential refugees remain [in] East Germany."
This surprising viewpoint from Thompson and Rusk, among others, is one of a number of points of interest in declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive.
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