Le Duc Tho Demands Power as Soviets Threaten West Berlin Access
By Vera Kessler ·
Hanoi threatened military force to secure political power in the South while Soviet agents weighed harassing West Berlin access routes before a March 5 deadline.
Twenty-one January 1969. Richard Nixon had been in the Oval Office for twelve days. The afternoon edition of the President's Daily Brief, as recorded in the CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room, presents a world in a state of fragile, high-stakes transition. It is a global triage: a checklist of failing rockets, diplomatic skirmishes in embassies, and a North Vietnamese negotiator who was tired of talking in circles.
"Reality is in the Eye of the Beholder"
In Vietnam, the "substantive phase" of the Paris talks was beginning. The record notes that the Communists had made a "unique effort" to lay out their position to the new administration through two secret meetings on 14 and 17 January. The interlocutors were Ambassadors Averell Harriman and W. Scott Vance; the counterparts were Le Duc Tho and Xuan Thuy.
Tho was not interested in the usual diplomatic ambiguities. He demanded that the United States accept the "reality" of the situation in South Vietnam. According to the brief, this "reality" meant a solution guaranteeing the Communists a share of political power in the South and a "clear shot at eventual reunification."
When Harriman countered that reality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, Tho remained unmoved. The record indicates he made it clear that Hanoi would not accept a gradual US withdrawal tied to the consolidation of the South Vietnamese government. Instead, Tho suggested the Communists might use military force to prevent such a disengagement unless they obtained "tangible political rewards."
March 5 in West Berlin
Across the globe, the focus shifted to a specific date: 5 March 1969. This was the day the Bundesversammlung (Federal Assembly) was scheduled to convene in West Berlin to elect a new West German president. To the Soviet Union and East Germany, the meeting was a provocation. Moscow had already protested the session on 23 December 1968, arguing that West Berlin was a "separate political entity" and not part of the Federal Republic.
The CIA analyst warns that the USSR and East Germany might decide to "harass the city or the access routes to it." The document outlines a spectrum of risks. While a full blockade like that of 1948 was deemed unlikely, the Soviets could employ "limited and well-controlled measures," such as closing the autobahn or buzzing the city with low-flying jets.
More likely, the brief suggests, was that Moscow would allow the "always-ready" East Germans in Pankow to complicate traffic for West German travelers. The record notes that such measures are particularly difficult to counter because the US, UK, and France often argued "inconclusively" over who should lead sanctions against East Germany.
There was also a deeper legal tension. The West German government, under Kurt Georg Kiesinger, was delaying a decision on the Nonproliferation Treaty. The hold-up was not about the nuclear physics, but about a claim from Moscow: the Soviets asserted they had the right under the UN charter to intervene in West Germany to "prevent a resurgence of Nazism." Bonn wanted an assurance that the Soviets would renounce this interpretation before signing the treaty.
The SL-12 and Baghdad's Militancy
While the diplomats haggled, the Soviet space program was struggling. The SL-12, a large operational space launch vehicle with a three-million-pound thrust, was intended as the "workhorse" for deep space operations to Mars and Venus through the 1970s. The brief compares it to the US Saturn 1B but notes a critical gap in reliability. Since its first flight test in March 1967, the booster had been fired nine times, but "only four without mishap."
In the Middle East, the tone was one of sociological observation. The record states that the Iraqis were becoming "the most militant of all the Arabs states" regarding the problem of Israel. The analysis suggests this posturing was not necessarily driven by strategic capability, but by "serious internal difficulties," forcing Baghdad to appear as the most authentic champion of the Arab cause.
Elsewhere, a curious detail emerges regarding Egypt. The ranking Egyptian representative in Washington, a Dr. Ghorbal, was operating out of the Indian Embassy. Ghorbal expressed surprise at the American reaction to the newspaper Al Ahram's "vilification" of US policy, arguing that such publishing practices were common even in the United States. He claimed Egypt had acted to "end this chapter" before the Nixon administration took over.
The brief concludes its look at Berlin by noting that the USSR, West Germany, and other US allies would be watching the American response to any Communist threats as a "key indicator" of how foreign policy would be conducted by the new administration.