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    "label": "Memorandum of Conversation [MemCon] Secretary Robert McNamara and Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroeder",
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    "title": "Memorandum of Conversation [MemCon] Secretary Robert McNamara and Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroeder",
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    "ocrText": "SECRET\nSecretary McNamara replied that this was mostly a political question. We\nhave the military capability to move the present volume of traffic by air.\nThis presents Soviets with an interesting problem. He said that he, personally,\nwould favor going to air movement at this stage.\nMinister Schroeder replied that then all traffic is by air. There are\nnow 120,000 people a month; this would call for 600, more.\nSecretary McNamara said that this could be managed.\nMinister Schroeder argued that goods supplies make air delivery more\ndifficult. And to some extent this step involves blocking oneself.\nSecretary McNamara said take it step by step. 600,000 people is 20,000\na day. 1000 people per hour and 150 people can be carried per plane. This\nmeans only 6 more planes an hour. This would be difficult to manage but we\ncould rearrange aircraft. From his point of view, this is not an insurmount-\nable problem. If we are willing to pay political price of this altemative\nwe have means. As to goods, these also can be handled.\nMinister Schroeder said that we would be blocking ourselves and economic\nmeasures may not bring about change.\nSecretary McNamara replied that he assumed that we would be in Phase I and\nhave a range of political and military measures to adopt at this stage.\nMr. Rowen said that the air movement possibility gives us the choice of\nimmediate or delayed action on other measures.\nMinister Schroeder said that this is a possibility for civilian traffic.\nBut it is not easy for normal goods, including raw materiel. The air\ntransport portion of goods traffic is now a small part of surface goods\ntraffic. Berlin could not have normal life in this circumstance.\nSecretary McNemara said he agreed. But how would visa requirements affect\ngoods traffic?\nAmbassador Knappstein - it affects mostly trucks and barges.\nMinister Schroeder replied that the GDR says that this is our sovereign\nterritory and it issues licenses on goods.\nSecretary McNamara said we could move to rail shipment. It was his under-\nstanding that the FRG already gets permission to move by rail.\nMinister Schroeder said this was quite true. But the number of good\ntrains is quite limited.\nSecretary McNemara said that at least we could keep goods moving by train.\nSEPRET"
}