Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XIV, Berlin Crisis, 1961–1962

147. Memorandum From President Kennedy to Secretary of State Rusk¹

Washington, September 12, 1961.

SUBJECT

• Berlin Negotiations

A. As I see it, we reached the following agreements this morning:²

(1) The approach of calling a Peace Conference and working toward Parallel Peace Treaties is agreed between us, and you will proceed to have it developed in detail.

(2) We agree that Thompson should open negotiations on this basis with the Soviet Union, and he is to be called back for intensive discussion early next week.

(3) We shall want to plan a careful approach to the Chancellor as soon as is practicable. We did not talk about the man for the job. McCloy? Acheson? I do not think Dowling would do; he reflects Bonn opinion too much to be the man to bend it.

(4) My speech to the UN will contain a statement on Berlin, and Sorensen will attempt a draft that serves all our purposes without giving anything away prematurely.

B. We did not settle clearly some other points and I think we should talk about them with each other again before you get caught up in the Foreign Ministers Meeting. In particular:

(1) You and I may differ on the appropriate distance between an opening proposal and a serious negotiating posture. I really do not want to see us put forward anything like the Western Peace Plan as a basis for serious negotiation. It just does not make sense for us to propose for negotiation an early reunification of Germany or Berlin on the basis of free elections. These are not negotiable proposals; their emptiness in this sense is generally recognized; and we should have to fall back from them promptly. I believe instead that we should keep these ideas forward as those which we prefer, but without any pretense that we believe them acceptable to the Soviet Union at present. In that sense, I am prepared to accept a statement of principles, but I must say that the British document you showed me this morning³ seemed to me still much too much of a detailed discussion of impracticable machinery; it was not so much a statement of principles as an interesting design for the unattainable.

(2) For these reasons, I am strongly opposed to any revised version of the Western Peace Plan. It seems to me the wrong framework for negotiations, and in my own preference for a peace conference with parallel treaties I am talking about a real reconstruction of our negotiating proposals, and not about a modest add-on. I think there may be some diversities between us on this point also.

C. We agreed this morning that we would keep this whole question very close for the present. In the White House only Bundy and Sorensen know about it, and I hope that in the State Department you can keep it restricted to yourself, Kohler, Bohlen, Hillenbrand and Owen. The latter two, as I understand it, are the staff officers who are already familiar with this proposal as one of many, and I think they and all of us should talk about it, when we have to, without reference to the fact that it currently occupies a preferred position.⁴

JFK⁵

1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Departments and Agencies, Department of State, General. Top Secret. The source text bears no drafting information.
2. The meeting took place at the White House at 11 a.m. and concerned Berlin and nuclear testing. (Ibid., JFK Log)
3. Not further identified.
4. On September 12 Bundy also sent Kohler a memorandum on the President’s talks with Rusk about Berlin negotiations to which were attached four “pieces of paper.” The first was a copy of the President’s memorandum to Rusk, passed to Kohler “under the table.” For the second, entitled “How To Get From Foreign Ministers Meeting to a Peace Conference,” see Declassified Documents, 1980, 321A. The third was a memorandum from Bundy to Rusk, which he had drafted at Rusk’s request and which outlined a proposed Western opening position designed to meet some of the objections to the Western Peace Plan. Bundy had not sent the memorandum because it had been overtaken by Rusk’s conversation with the President on September 12. Attached to the memorandum were a draft opening proposal (see ibid., 1980, 320C) and “Some Notes on the Road to a Serious Negotiating Position.” The fourth was a paper by Sorensen on negotiations. (Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Departments and Agencies, Department of State, General)
5. Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.