A US soldier is stopped at Checkpoint Charlie with two East Germans

Specialist Fourth Class William S. Medley, a 24-year-old member of the US forces in Berlin, drove his private car into East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie at 1.30 p.m. on 10 September 1974. When he tried to return at about 10 p.m., the barrier was lowered for all traffic; when it was raised again at 10.15 p.m., his car was held just short of the first barrier on the East Berlin side and US personnel at the checkpoint were kept away from it.

At 11.15 p.m. the Americans watched East Berlin police (Volkspolizei) remove a woman from the vicinity of the detained car. An American officer who finally reached the car on foot was told that the soldier was suspected of attempting an 'exfiltration'. At about 1 a.m. Soviet military personnel took Medley away in a black sedan and his car was pushed into a parking area; the checkpoint had been closed for part of the night.

The US Mission protested that Medley, like all Allied personnel, had the right of free circulation throughout Berlin. The Soviet protocol officer replied that he had committed 'serious crimes' against the GDR and was being held by officers of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany pending trial.

On 17 September Soviet officers handed Medley, his car and his belongings back at the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing. Their protocol stated that he had been detained while attempting to take two GDR citizens illegally into West Berlin. ADN and Neues Deutschland reported that he had confessed, had worked with others who smuggled people for large sums of money, and had been released in the interest of détente on the assumption that the Americans would punish him.

US questioning concluded that he had been engaged in an exfiltration 'essentially as charged', apparently for the first time; whether he had walked into a carefully laid trap remained open. He was reduced to private, fined 300 dollars under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and transferred to the United States on 22 September 1974. The fate of the two East Germans is not recorded in the telegrams.