On December 18, 1992, the CIA “celebrated” the demolition of the Berlin Wall by installing a piece of that structure as a monument in their Langley office compound. It was a symbolic gesture to convey that the Wall, which was erected on August 13, 1961, by the Soviets, was brought down on November 9, 1989, through US intelligence operations. Vernon Walters, former deputy CIA chief and later ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany during the reunification period, dedicated the monument in the presence of CIA chief Robert Gates. Walters extolled the services of the CIA: “What chance do you think human freedom would have had to survive if there had been no United States in 1945? Or if there had been a United States without the CIA in 1947?”
But historians do not fully support this view. Gates’ own memoirs are vague. Historians say that Stalin would have erected the Wall much earlier to bottle up West Berlin just as he did in 1948-49 by closing all land routes. But he died in 1953. During 1945-1961, East Germany lost 2.5 million residents, most of them educated, who chose to flee. Only US felt offended by this Wall. Other allied powers did not. It is said that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who was holidaying in Yorkshire during the grouse-shooting season, did not think it necessary to return to London after hearing the news about the Wall. President Charles de Gaulle, who was resting in his country home at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises returned to Paris only on August 17.
The CIA’s claim is not supported even by David Murphy, then in-charge of the Berlin station. An informative book, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs KGB in the Cold War, jointly written during the post-Cold War bonhomie by David Murphy, KGB general Sergei Kondrashev and journalist George Bailey (1997), admits that the Wall was a tactical victory for the KGB to keep the CIA’s Berlin station deprived of contacts. But they say that the East German economic system was disintegrating along with the Soviet Union’s deep economic crisis. Had Yuri Andropov been longer in power, he would have succeeded in keeping the Communist system floating. But he died in 1984.
Instead, Mikhail Gorba-chev unleashed an uncontrollable genie by way of glasnost and perestroika which started eating into the Communist system. By 1989 summer, the Polish Communists had joined a non-Communist government, Hungarians had opened their border to the West and East Germans were fleeing in thousands.
Gorbachev told East Berlin during his visit in October that Soviet troops would not help the German Democratic Republic (GDR) suppress its growing internal opposition.
The book quotes an important incident in 1989. That summer Kon-drashev, who was special consultant to KGB chief Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, was holidaying in the GDR. He was the guest of minister of state security Erich Mielke. When he was about to return to Moscow, Mielke asked him to convey a message to Kryuchkov for “immediate relay” to Gorbachev. The message was to stop the processes initiated in Poland and Hungary — “Otherwise GDR will be crushed”. Later Kryuchkov conveyed to Mielke through Kondrashev that he had conveyed it to Gorbachev “but there was no reaction”.
Gates also confirms these developments. East German leader Erich Honecker tried to close the border on October 3 and faced huge demonstrations. The CIA learnt from sources that Gorbachev had asked other East German Communists to oust Honecker, who was opposing perestroika. Honecker, in turn, tried to use force to disperse a big demonstration in Leipzig but the local leaders refused. Egon Krenz, an important GDR leader, resigned and forced Honecker to quit. Krenz became his successor. A week later, Gorbachev announced in Helsinki that the Soviet Union had no right to interfere in Eastern Europe. Gates says: “Of all the ‘green lights’ Gorbachev flashed to the East Europeans, this was the most explicit”.
On October 31, Gorbachev asked Krenz to open the East German border to West Germany. This was implemented on November 9. The surging crowds brought the Wall down. US President George H.W. Bush gives only a low-key account of the Berlin Wall destruction in his memoir, A World Transformed, which he wrote along with his national security adviser Brent Scowcroft in 1998. When he heard about the Wall breach, he was under pressure to celebrate the collapse. Senator George Mitchell and Congressman Dick Gephardt suggested that he should go to Berlin and “dance” on the Wall. Under Scowcroft’s advice he did not. Around this time, he received a message from Gorbachev cautioning him and West German leader Helmut Kohl not to overreact as the Soviet military might be forced to act if the demonstrations went out of control. “As I read that cable I again thought of the posturing by many members of Congress”.
So, who set off this chain of events leading to the Wall destruction? Was it Gorbachev through his glasnost and perestroika or the CIA or the American politicians? Possibly all, with only a minor role by the CIA. George H.W. Bush says that Gorbachev, after the Berlin Wall collapse seemed to be very anxious about events in eastern Europe whereas “heretofore he had seemed relaxed, even blasé, about the accelerating movement in the region away from Communism and Soviet control”.
Gates says that the process had started from 1973 with the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which had begun as a Soviet initiative. Ironically, the Soviet Union wanted these talks to be used confirm their grip over East Europe. To get the Western agreement to participate in the CSCE, Moscow agreed to include human rights. President Gerald Ford attended the 1975 Helsinki Conference despite much home opposition. The British cleverly suggested “Free Movement of people and ideas”. Later, William Hyland, security adviser to Ford, told Gates: “If it can be said that there was one point when the Soviet Union began to crack, it was at Helsinki”. Poland and Lech Walesa were the first to rebel. The rest is history.
The writer is a former special secretary,
Cabinet Secretariat and member of the two-man 26/11 enquiry committee
