( CNN ) -- Martin Luther King Jr. used his American Express card instead of a passport to get past the Berlin Wall . Now , 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall , this little known fact and thousands of previously classified documents have been released . After an executive order issued by President Barack Obama called for the processing of classified records that are 25 years old or more , the CIA , in conjunction with the National Archives ' National Declassification Center , announced it had made public more than 11,000 pages of documents detailing life and death in the shadow of the wall between 1962 and 1986 . To prevent East Germans from getting into West Berlin , the border between West and East Berlin was closed by the Soviets on August 12 , 1961 . Called the `` Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart '' by East Germans , 155 kilometers , or 96 miles , of wall encircled West Berlin , itself a West German island in the heart of East Germany . The central part of the wall that divided West Berlin and East Berlin was 43 km , or 27 miles long . Intelligence reports and maps included in the document release details on the construction of the wall . What began as guarded barbed wire strung along the border quickly became barbed wire with guard towers and two high concrete walls , one on the inside , one on the outside of a no man 's land . This `` death strip '' was littered with anti-tank barriers , signal wires , beds of spikes , sand -- to see footprints , and guard dogs , all under the constant surveillance of armed guards with orders to shoot on sight anyone trying to cross . `` Ich bin ein Berliner , '' said President John F. Kennedy when he visited the city on June 26 , 1963 . Many of the US government memos outline the technical aspects of a presidential trip to the city only 22 months after the Berlin Wall was erected . Dr. Hope Harrison , who helped with the project and spoke at a symposium at the National Archives on Tuesday highlighting the document release , said massive media coverage in the West highlighted every killing . `` Cross and flowers '' marked death sites . She compared that to the East German approach . Coverage of the killings of people trying to escape East Berlin was `` taboo , '' she said . But a border guard killed at the wall was `` turned into a hero of socialism defending the border , streets and schools were named after them . '' Hundreds of West Berliners standing on the Western banks of a narrow canal witnessed 24-year-old Gunter Litfin 's death when on August 24 , 1961 he become the first person killed at the Wall by guards with machine guns who shot him as he swam in the water . The killing of Peter Fechter , 18 , was filmed by Western media and broadcast live as he bled to death after being shot trying to cross the border zone near Checkpoint Charlie . That infamous checkpoint , also known as Checkpoint C , was the one Martin Luther King , Jr. managed to cross without a passport . Diplomatic cables reveal how on September 13 , 1964 , after speaking to large crowds in West Berlin , he used his American Express card to get past guards in order to enter East Berlin . He conducted a church service there honoring President John F. Kennedy , who had visited Berlin two years earlier . Two thousand people overflowed St. Mary 's Church , where he said `` There is no East , no West , no North , no South , but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole , wide world . '' The diplomatic cables also highlight President Ronald Reagan 's trip to Berlin , when he implored Mikhail Gorbachev , the head of the Soviet Union to `` tear down this wall . '' It fell two years later on November 9 , 1989 . The CIA has n't released classified Berlin Wall material from that year .
Thousands of previously classified documents about the wall are released . Martin Luther King Jr. went to East Berlin without a passport . Intelligence reports detail wall 's construction , protection .