     
     
     
     
                                         
     PRESS RELEASE FOR 
     JOHN C. AUSLAND 
     KENNEDY, KHRUSHCHEV, AND 
     THE BERLIN-CUBA CRISIS 
     (1961-1964)
     
     
     Book release date:  APRIL 18, 1996
     
     "With this volume, John Ausland brings the perspective of
     a participant - and keen observer - to our understanding of
     the Berlin crisis. Highly recommended." 
       John Lewis Gaddis, Ohio University
     
     In a book to be released April 18 by Scandinavian University
     Press, one of the key players in the Berlin crisis provides an
     unusually well documented insider's view of this drama. As
     Paul Nitze notes in his foreword, "Anyone interested in the
     Berlin-Cuba crisis and how business was then conducted will
     profit from reading this book."
     
     Henry Kissinger, with whom the author worked on
     contingency planning regarding Berlin in 1961, comments, "As
     a member of the Berlin Task Force team, John Ausland had a
     front-row seat during what may have been the most fragile
     and dangerous period of the Cold War. In Kennedy,
     Khrushchev, and the Berlin-Cuba Crisis he writes with insight
     and candor of a building confrontation that still has
     reverberations in Europe today."
     
     There have been a number of books published about the
     Berlin wall and the Cuban missile crisis. Why another book at
     this time? In brief, it is because it contains a lot of information
     about these historic events that has not previously been
     published.
     
     Most discussions of the wall end shortly after the division of
     Berlin on August 13, 1961. This book goes beyond that to
     include:
     
       * Soviet efforts to interfere with air and ground access to
     Berlin 
     
       * Soviet use of armored personnel carriers in West Berlin
     following the killing of Peter Fechter at the wall
      
       * How the Cuban missile crisis was related to Berlin
     
       * President Kennedy's abortive efforts to negotiate his way
     out of the Berlin problem
     
     The book is the first comprehensive account of the Berlin-Cuba 
     crisis written by someone involved in its management.
     John Ausland, Deputy Director of the interagency Berlin Task
     Force in the State Department, traveled frequently from
     Washington to Berlin, Bonn, and Paris during the crisis.
     William Burr, who headed an extensive study of the Berlin
     crisis for The National Security Archive, notes that Ausland's
     experience "allows him to provide information about the
     Kennedy administration's policy-making process that may
     never turn up in the documents. Adding to this book's value is
     the documentary annex that illuminates the Wall crisis and the
     most sensitive aspects of the Berlin contingency planning."
     
     Martin J. Hillenbrand comments that the "Berlin Task Force
     set an innovative organizational pattern for the handling of
     subsequent crises within the U.S. government." (Hillenbrand
     was director of the task force during the crisis.)
     
     Although this book is essentially history, those looking for
     news should note several items. In his 1996 Why Now?
     preface the author addresses a mystery other writers have
     only touched upon in the past 35 years: when did President
     Kennedy learn what was going on in Berlin?
     
     The author also draws attention to an astonishing instruction
     Secretary of State Dean Rusk sent to Ambassador George
     Kennan in Belgrade on August 14, 1961, the day after Berlin
     was divided (Appendix E).
     
     The briefing the author gave President Kennedy on Berlin
     contingency planning, which is appearing here in print for the
     first time, is noteworthy. (Appendix L). Related to this is the
     discussion of nuclear weapons during the briefing between
     Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara (Appendix M).
     
     The book also includes a transcript of Ausland's 1992
     discussion with a group of historians in which he addresses
     aspects of the crisis and nuclear weapons that remained
     secret until the end of the Cold War (Appendix S).
     
     As Christoph Bertram, diplomatic correspondent of Die Zeit,
     says, this book is "A ring-side view of the most serious and
     formative crisis of the Cold War - enriching the knowledge of
     those who lived through it and instructing those for whom it is
     mere history."
     
     ---------------------------------------------------------------
     
     About the author:
     
     John C. Ausland was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on July
     14, 1920. After serving as an officer in World War II and
     graduating from Princeton University, he joined the U.S.
     Foreign Service in 1949. During the period covered by this
     book, he was a member and later deputy director of the Berlin
     Task Force, the interagency organization that coordinated
     U.S. policy regarding Berlin. Since retiring in 1974 to live in
     Norway with his Norwegian wife, Else, he has written several
     books and been a contributor to the International Herald
     Tribune.
     
