November 1952, President Elect Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson “United in the Cause of Freedom” in Support of Radio Free Europe ©

On November 4, 1952, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected the 42nd President of the United States. While on a post-victory two-week vacation in Augusta, Georgia, he recorded a message in behalf of the opening of the third Crusade for Freedom campaign in support of Radio Free Europe that was broadcast in a 15-minute program on November 11, 1952, by the four major radio networks: CBS, ABC, NBC and MBS (Mutual Broadcast System).  The goal of the Crusade for Freedom fundraising was $4 million.

The next day, their messages were quoted in newspapers throughout the United States. Crusade chairman Henry Ford II was the moderator of the radio broadcast and began, in part, with these words: “The words you are about to hear cannot be muffled or distorted or hidden away by the Communist suppressors of truth. Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia will carry the story and no force can stop it.”

 

Eisenhower continued his Cold-War rhetoric of 1950 in his radio address, when he said that the purpose of Radio Free Europe’s broadcast “was actively to oppose communism—to fight the big lie with the big truth.” He added, 

 

Millions of people have listened to an infinite number of Communist lies designed to make them hate us. At the same time, their children have been told it is their duty spy on their parents…The Communists have isolated their people to keep them from ever hearing the truth—to create a vacuum in their minds which will absorb lies because there is nothing else for them to seize on.

 

In today’s world, freedom cannot live in any nation, no matter how powerful, unless it is preserved also in other significant parts of the globe.  The big enemy of freedom everywhere is the big lie. People believe lies only when they have no opportunity to hear the truth.

 

The only way to frustrate this evil manipulation of human minds and emotions is to supply the truth, which gives the oppressed people a measuring stick to lay against each lie that is told to them.

 

People believe lies only when they have no opportunity to hear the truth.  The Crusade for Freedom, through Radio Free Europe, is supplying the truth.

Men and women who might otherwise have succumbed to the philosophy that it is good to be slaves still keep alive the sparks of freedom in their hearts. 

 

The frenzied counterattacks on both sides of the world prove that these two radio networks are hurting the Reds and giving comfort and encouragement to the oppressed people.

Eisenhower’s opponent was Democrat Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, who recorded his remarks about Radio Free Europe and the Crusade for Freedom at this home in Springfield, Illinois. He pointed to the Crusade for Freedom as a “vital activator of American’s will to be free. In part, Stevenson said:

The programs have a spontaneity and freshness, which no official information agency can have. Freedom speaks most clearly between man and man, when its voice is neither muffled nor amplified by government intervention nor other official trappings.

 

There are mounting indications of the effectiveness of free radio broadcasts…One of the best tests is the shrill violence of the attacks upon them by Radio Moscow betraying the deep concern of the Communist rulers about these efforts.

 

Freedom is shielded by other things than steel and gunpowder. Vigilance in freedom’s defense is served by other than military means. The survival of freedom is best assured by the will to be free.

 

It is the work of the crusade tend the flame of the will to be free, to feed and fan it wherever possible, to keep it flickering in places where if may be burning low. The success of the crusade will mean firm friends and allies in places of critical need behind the enemy’s walls – walls erected to keep out the truth.

 

Henry Ford commented on Eisenhower and Stevenson’s speeches: “The joint statement of the two political rivals showed this nation is strongly united in the cause of freedom.” 

Marathon for Freedom, September 23, 1951 ©

Over ten million homes were with television sets in the United States in September 1951—about 24 percent of all American households. A 12-hour TV marathon, with viewers calling in contributions on behalf of the Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Europe, sponsored by the television network CBS and pooled with the other networks, took place on Sunday, September 23, 1951. 

The marathon featured top names in politics, business, theater, films, and broadcasting. This was the first "live" television fund appeal nationwide, with telephone contributions coming in those areas where the program was aired nationally for four-and-a-half hours and locally for 12 hours.

The live television transmission was over the American Telephone and Telegraph Co.'s recently finished $40,000,000 nationwide microwave relay system from New York to Oakland, California. This was the first time viewers on the West Coast saw New York and Washington live, and viewers on the East Coast could see Hollywood live. The NBC and ABC television networks also aired special Crusade for Freedom appeals on Sunday's network programs.

The purpose of the marathon was to gain moral and financial support from Americans for the Crusade's drive against communism. Viewers could pledge donations via telephone, telegram, or mail their contributions. In New York, $150,000 was raised through the marathon.

Ed Sullivan, who was once described as television's "best all-around product spokesman, ”was scheduled to emcee the live entertainment program. However, the last-minute television personality Steve Allen replaced him due to Sullivan's illness. From 4:30 p.m. to midnight, Steve Allen cut in on network programming, introducing national figures supporting the Crusade for Freedom.

Entertainers who were seen taking telephone calls and contributions from viewers included Ken Murray, Constance Moore, Jan Murray, Robert Merrill, Delores Gray, Mimi Benzcll, Earl Wrightson, Joe E. Lewis, the Copacabana girls, and the Latin Quarter show. Political personalities included U.S. Vice President and Mrs. Alben W. Barkley, former President Herbert Hoover, columnist Drew Pearson, and Ambassador Joseph Grew of the National Committee for Free Europe.

Art Linkletter "emceed" special half-hour segments from Hollywood relayed to the East Coast to wind up the vast outdoor rally in Los Angeles. In Holywood, during the evening show, entertainers who operated the telephones included Bob Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Wiliam Bendix, Jack Smith, Vincent Price, Marie Wilson, Ginny Simms, and J. Carroll Naish of the 1950 “Life with Luigi” radio program. One newspaper columnist wrote, “It was a successful day all around, and for West Coast television, it was the day we’ve been waiting three years for. West Coast television has taken on a new dress.”

 

Fighting the Big Lie with the Big Truth

On September 4, 1950, General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike) passionately called for an American Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Europe. In a nation-wide radio broadcast, covered by the four major radio networks, from Denver, Colorado, he said, in part: 

I speak tonight about the Crusade For Freedom. 

This Crusade is a campaign sponsored by private American citizens to fight the big lie with the big truth. It is a program that has been hailed by President Truman, and others, as an essential step in getting the case for freedom heard by the world's multitudes. 

Powerful Communist radio stations incessantly tell the world that we Americans are physically soft and morally corrupt; that we are disunited and confused; that we are selfish and cowardly; that we have nothing to offer the world but imperialism and exploitation. 

To combat these evil broadcasts the government has established a radio program called the Voice of America, which has brilliantly served the cause of freedom, but the Communist stations overpower it and outflank it with daily coverage that neglects no wavelength or dialect, no prejudice or local aspiration. Weaving a fantastic pattern of lies and twisted fact, they confound the listener into believing that we are warmongers, that America invaded North Korea, that Russia invented the airplane, that the Soviets, unaided won World War II; and that the secret police and slave camps of Communism offer humanity brighter hope than do self-government and free enterprise. 

We need powerful radio stations abroad, operated without government restrictions, to tell in a vivid and convincing form about the decency and essential fairness of democracy These stations must tell of our aspirations for peace, our hatred of war, our support of the United Nations and our constant readiness to cooperate with any and all who have these same desires 

One such private station Radio Free Europe —is now in operation in Western Germany. It daily brings a message of hope and encouragement to a small part of the European masses. 

The Crusade for Freedom will provide for the expansion of Radio Free Europe into a network of stations. They will be given the simplest, clearest charter in the world: “Tell the Truth.” For it is certain that all the specious promises of Communism to the needy, the unhappy, the frustrated, the down-trodden, cannot stand against the proven record of democracy and its day-by-day progress in the betterment of all mankind. The tones of the Freedom Bell, a symbol of the Crusade, will echo through vast areas now under blackout.

In this Battle for Truth, you and I have a definite part to play. During the Crusade, each of us will have the opportunity to sign the Freedom Scroll. It bears a declaration of our faith in freedom, and of our belief in the dignity of the individual, who derives the right of freedom from God. Each of us, by signing the Scroll, pledges to resist aggression and tyranny wherever they appear on Earth. Its words express what is in all our hearts. Your signature on it will be a blow for liberty.

In a newsreel covering the speech, he could be seen signing the Freedom Scroll, which read: 

I believe in the sacredness and dignity of the individual.

I believe that all men derive the right to freedom equally from God.

I pledge to resist aggression and tyranny wherever they appear on earth.

I am proud to enlist in the Crusade for Freedom.

I am proud to help make the freedom Bell possible, to be a signer of this
Declaration of Freedom, to have my name included as a permanent part of the Freedom Shrine in Berlin, and to join with the millions of men and women throughout the world who hold the cause of freedom sacred. 

The full speech can be found here: 

https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/file/pre_presidential_speeches.pdf

 

Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected as the 34th President of the United States in 1952.

 

Early Cold War Shortwave Radio Broadcasting to Byelorussia (Belarus) ©

 

This post will focus on exile broadcasts via Radio Nacional de España in Madrid to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) in the early Cold War. CIA not only unsupported these broadcasts, but also consistently rejected numerous requests for financial support for them, although CIA financially supported the exile group in its other activities. 

 

There is some confusion as to the correct English spelling of Belarus and its language: according to the Wikipedia entry:

 

·      Belarusian (also spelled Belarusan, Belarussian, Byelarussian) – derived from the name of the country Belarus, officially approved for use abroad by the Belarusian authorities and promoted since then.

·      Byelorussian (also spelled Belorussian, Bielorussian ) – derived from the Russian name of the country “Byelorussia” (Белоруссия), used officially (in the Russian language) in the times of the USSR and, later, in Russia.

·      White Ruthenian (and its equivalents in other languages) – literally, a word-by-word translation of the parts of the composite word Belarusian. The information below is based, in part,  on a chapter in my upcoming book Cold War Frequencies: CIA Clandestine Radio Broadcasting to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The book is available for pre-ordering now, with publication in Autumn 2020. 

 

The post-World-War-Two Byelorussian emigration in Western Europe was split into two organizations: 

BZR/BCR (Beloruska Zentralna Rada or Byelorussian Central Council) and BNR (Beloruska Nationalna Rada, Byelorussian National Council or Council of the Byelorussian Peoples Republic).

 

From 1951 to 1962, CIA financially supported and used the BNR émigré/exile group in the United States and Europe. CIA operations against the BSSR began in summer 1951, when CIA initiated a Foreign Intelligence project (CIA cryptonym AEQUOR) that included agent infiltration operations in BSSR to establish contact with partisan groups and set up support bases for future operations. 

 

CIA’s Munich Combined Soviet Operations Base (CSOB) was the responsible unit. CIA’s Office of Special Operations  and Office of Policy Coordination shared equally in all expenses related to the recruitment, training, compensation, equipment, dispatch, and exfiltration of agents into and out of Byelorussia. Foreign Intelligence operations ceased in 1953, and psychological warfare operations became the main CIA focus.

 

Nationalism became a serious topic of discussion within CIA:

 

Despite the fact that Byelorussia has been recognized as a separate national and nationalistic entity by the Soviet government and by the United Nations, there is still some unexamined doubt lingering … concerning the identity of the Byelorussians as an ethnic-national group. This doubt would not be significant if there were persons …  other than the case officers working on the AEQUOR project, at all familiar with historical developments in Byelorussia -- a subject which is not taught at any U. S. establishment. 

 

Even among case officers who are willing to admit that a modicum of nationalist feeling probably exists, doubt persists as to the significance of Byelorussian nationalism. The question of nationalism in Byelorussia is no less important, and possibly considerably more important because of the strategic location of the BSSR, than is the same question in each of the other nationality areas in the USSR, including, of course, the RSFSR (Russia today). Considering that 8 to 10 million inhabitants in a relatively rural area speak the same language and have had a long and close association with freedom-loving Poles and Lithuanians, it would be abnormal indeed if no nationalism existed in Byelorussia.

 

On March 3, 1953, CIA sponsored Radio Liberation from Bolshevism began short-wave broadcasting in Russian to the USSR. Initially, the Byelorussian section of Radio Liberation consisted of five persons, who would make only one 15-minute broadcast daily: one announcer, one secretary, and/or translator and three researchers.

 

Voice of America Byelorussian language shortwave broadcasts were transmitted only from 1956 to 1957.

 

BNR Byelorussian language shortwave broadcasts over Radio Nacional de España began on January 1, 1959, to the BSSR and Byelorussian minority living in Poland. The renewal request of CIA psychological warfare project AEQUOR, dated July 16, 1959, included the following comments: 

 

Byelorussian language broadcasts over Radio Madrid are directed to the BSSR and to the Byelorussian colonies in Poland. The technical reception of these broadcasts in Poland is known to be good. Various letters have been received from Poland proving that these Byelorussian broadcasts are listened to assiduously. 

 

The BNR has been able to continue these broadcasts to the present day only by levying a tax on each gainfully employed member of the BER in Europe with the hope that CIA would see fit to continue this going and effective PP effort. CIA funds requested by the BNR for this effort have been in the modest sum of $4000 per year in order to pay the salaries of two BNR employees who devote their full time on these broadcasts and to cover all other costs of broadcasting. 

 

It should be noted that there are no other Byelorussian nationalist broadcasts in the Byelorussian language in existence. (NOTE: The Byelorussian broadcasts over Radio Liberation are not nationalist in content and are strictly controlled to accord with a non-offensive policy toward the nationality issue.) The Spanish government is not currently censoring these broadcasts over Radio Madrid. 

 

In the request for CIA projects renewal for FY 1960, the “analysis of effectiveness” of these early broadcasts read, in part:

 

Fifteen-minute programs are transmitted twice daily. Two BNR adherents prepare the programs under extremely primitive conditions, but reports from legal travelers indicate that the programs are received at least as far as the Byelorussian colonies in eastern Poland. It is likely that they are also heard in Byelorussia. Soviet jamming is said to be erratic and only moderately effective. The cost of the broadcasts is borne entirely by BNR, although CIA support has been requested … Many members of the group are regular employees of such organizations as Radio Liberty

 

CIA never did financially support the Madrid broadcasts to Byelorussia and decided in August 1961 to terminate project AEQUOR effective December 30, 1961, for the following reason: 

 

The project is being terminated for lack of evidence that it is contributing significantly to the fulfillment of Agency objectives. The Field concurs in this judgment. That the project has had some effect in the Cold War is true, but it is not believed that its effectiveness merits continued investment of Agency funds.

 

Note: broadcasts to Belarus continues today from RFE/RL in Prague: “RFE/RL's Belarus Service is one of the leading providers of news and analysis to Belarusian audiences in their own language. It is a bulwark against pervasive Russian propaganda and defies the government’s virtual monopoly on domestic broadcast media.​“ 

For more information on clandestine radio broadcasting: Cold War Frequencies: CIA Clandestine Radio Broadcasting to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. 

   

 

 

Cold War Radio Television Series in Development ©

COLD WAR RADIO Television Series in Development: 

Summary

The story begins around 1949 as Russia sets up satellite states all across Eastern Europe and CIA sets up a radio station that allow refugees to broadcast propaganda and rallying cries for freedom to their countrymen on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

This is the time of the completion of Soviet domination of East Europe, the Berlin airlift, American Care packages to Germany, and the Marshall Plan to renew Germany’s destroyed economy. Central, and Western Europe are physically divided by barbed wire, armed patrols, land mines and guard towers. In Eastern Europe, the Communist monopoly and censorship of media is absolute behind the Iron Curtain. The free flow of information is cut off, not only from the outside, but also internally.

Americans are exhausted and apathetic after World War II so Washington decides to call in experts from advertising and public affairs firms in New York to convince Americans of the danger of Communism. The U.S. Government doesn’t want the station to be linked with CIA, so a domestic campaign, the Crusade for Freedom, is created to persuade ordinary Americans, to contribute “Truth Dollars” to give the appearance of a spontaneous, popular, grass-roots initiative against the Communist threat.

In New York, radio spots, films, and television shows, jingles, slogans and songs convince Americans that they personally can do something about the threat of Communism, and millions of dollars are raised. Such iconic slogans as, Freedom Bell, Freedom Train, Freedom Hat, and Freedom Girl are used in media and outdoor advertising campaigns. Famous entertainment and media stars are recruited for one-minute radio spots.

In Munich, emigrés from Eastern Europe face intimidation, blackmail, threats of kidnapping, bombings, murder attempts, vitriolic denunciations from state-controlled media behind the Iron Curtain, and spies. Actions, in this case hostile actions, speak louder in the battle of ideas fought by East and West. For many, it was “The Worst of Times”, for others “The Best of Times.”

Idea: Uwe Kersken
Coproduction: G5 fiction and Bavaria Fiction
Screenplay: Colin Teevan
Historical advisor: Richard Cummings (Radio Free Europe; "Crusade for Freedom") 

Producer: Uwe Kersken & Moritz Polter 

An Urgent Whisper from Barbara: Radio Free Europe Begins Broadcasting on July 4, 1950, Part Two ©

The first broadcast was via "Barbara," a small mobile short-wave transmitter complex on a former Luftwaffe Air Base in Lampertheim, West Germany. "Barbara" was not one vehicle, but a set of seven vehicles, which included a studio van,  transmitter van, generators, fuel supply truck, and a flatbed truck for the antenna towers.  

Beginning July 4, 1950, the first programs to Czechoslovakia only consisted of music and spot announcements advising the listener that full programming of news and commentary would begin on July 14, 1950.  “Barbara” sent its first broadcast to Romania also on July 14, 1950. In August 1950, shortwave broadcasts began to Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria. It is doubtful that many behind the Iron Curtain actually heard the first programs due to the relatively low power of the mobile transmitter.

The first Radio Free Europe broadcasts were at first prepared in RFE’s New York studios in the Empire State Building and relayed to West Germany via a high-powered transoceanic transmitter and later program tape recordings were air transported. The administrative and editorial offices were located at Sieberstrasse 4, in Munich, where there were two studios, two newsrooms, a tape library, a recorded music library, a control room installed in the kitchen, offices for the staff, and the workers found space in the passageways of the building. 

Time magazine reported on July 17, 1950, under the rubric “Urgent Whisper”:

This week Czech and Rumanian radio listeners could hear music, plays and satires forbidden by their Communist masters—as well as the voices of men long exiled. These forbidden broadcasts came from a Radio Free Europe transmitter deep in Western Germany.

RFE's lone 7½-kilowatt transmitter is only a whisper compared to the worldwide 58-station network of Voice of America. But RFE, a branch of the National Committee for a Free Europe founded last year by a group of private U.S. citizens, expects to make up in pungency for its lack of volume. Explains Banker Frank Altschul, chairman of RFE: "Unhampered by diplomatic restrictions, we can slant our programs in a more definitely anti-Soviet way than the Voice."

Welcomed by the State Department as a freewheeling, free-speaking ally in the propaganda war, RFE plans to boost its power with five transmitters now on order. It intends, eventually, to speak strongly to every Communist satellite from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

The New York Times reported, “New ‘Voice’ Talks to Europe Like Member of the Family.” Some grass-root newspapers in the United States printed this editorial about Radio Free Europe and its “secret-location” transmitter:

Many wise statesmen have been appealing insistently to the free world to exert greater effort to the grimy "struggle for men's mind." They have pounded repeatedly on the idea that it isn't enough to combat Russian Communism with economic and military measures: that freedom must be shown to be the great cause it really a way of life eminently superior to the slavery imposed by Moscow.

The first Imaginative stride in this direction has now been taken. From a secret radio transmitter in Europe, a new series of programs is being beamed to the countries behind the Iron Curtain…Radio Free Europe, as the new transmitter is called, is the product of the National Committee for Free Europe, which was organized about a year ago by outstanding American citizens.

We must make plain to decent people everywhere that the language of Communism is the language of falsehood, that Russia's words can never be believed because words to the Soviet Union are simply weapons in the psychological theater of war.

Cord Meyer, the CIA official, who later was directly responsible for Radio Free Europe policy and programming for most of his intelligence career in the International Organizations Division of the CIA, wrote in his autobiography Facing Reality:

At the start, the somewhat naïve notion existed that all that was necessary was to build some radio transmitters and to hand the microphones to exiles to say what they wished…. It quickly became evident that the exile leaders were so divided among themselves on ideological lines and the different political groups were so prone to infighting, that a tower of Babel would be erected if they were left to their own devices.

Paul B. Henze was one of the early American managers of Radio Free Europe in Munich.  He would later join the US State Department and National Security Council.  At a conference at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California in 2004 examining the role of international broadcasting, Henze succinctly summed up the radio station’s genesis:

Radio Free Europe was an experiment. It was jerrybuilt. Its success was far from foreordained. The early years of its operation were never trouble-free. It faced many difficulties, some inherent in the operation itself, some the result of bureaucratic factors, many caused by doubts about--even strong opposition to--the notion of radio broadcasts as a means of communicating with peoples who had been forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Empire and isolated from the outer world with no immediate prospect of improvement of their situation.

Almost all the planning that went into the creation of Radio Free Europe was an improvised response to the sense of urgency that prevailed in the early 1950s about the threat, which Stalinist aggressive expansionism represented for the United States and the Free World. The notion that Radio Free Europe resulted from a coherent concept of what needed to be done has become widespread in recent years, but it remains an illusion.

Frank Altschul wrote a long status report to Allen Dulles in August 1950, part of which included:

If Radio Free Europe is to be effective, its sincerity must be above suspicion. It would be self-defeating to attempt to expound the gospel of twentieth-century liberalism through the recognized voice of nineteenth-century reaction. This raises a question that goes directly to the very heart of our activity in the field of propaganda. The way in which it is answered may have an important bearing on the success or failure of our effort.

Whether ...  the experiment will seem to continue to justify the very considerable capital and current expenditure involved is primarily a question for those to decide who have assumed the responsibility of defraying up to now our budgetary requirements.

According to an August 1954 State Department Top Secret report,

The Free Europe Committee (FEC) and Radio Free Europe (RFE) are powerful propaganda and psychological political instruments, which are controlled by the Agency and are supposed to operate under policy guidance from the Department. The FEC was created in 1949 as a private organization, financed partly by private donations and partly by funds from the Agency, the latter accounting for about two-thirds to three-fourths of the money.

#

An Urgent Whisper from Barbara: Radio Free Europe Begins Broadcasting on July 4, 1950, Part One ©

Radio affects most people intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener...That is the immediate aspect of radio: a private experience. 

Marshall McLuhan

On July 4, 1950, Radio Free Europe transmitted its first program, as the “Voice of Free Czechoslovakia,” only 30 minutes in length, as an “audience building broadcast.”  The press notice released in the United States the day before outlined not only the ideological basis for the programming but also the “cover” of Central Intelligence Agency’s true sponsorship of Radio Free Europe:

Owned and operated by the National Committee for a Free Europe, Inc., a group of private American citizens, Radio Free Europe will broadcast the true story of freedom and democracy to the eighty million people living in Communist slavery between Germany and Russia. Freed of diplomatic limitations, the broadcasts will be hard-hitting.

Below, we will briefly look back at the major personalities and circumstances that led to this significant development in the American state-private network for the struggle for men’s minds in the early years of the Cold War.

Frank Wisner, a World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) veteran, was the main actor responsible for the development of the American radio stations Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in Munich in the Cold War. In September 1944, he had been sent to Bucharest. Romania, where he controlled an OSS operation that evacuated Allied airmen downed behind enemy lines. Wisner remained in Bucharest until March 1945, when he witnessed the arrival of Soviet troops and the tragic aftermath of the occupation. 

After WWII, Frank Wisner returned to private practice in the US and joined the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1947 Wisner left private practice and joined the State Department as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Occupied Countries. He became involved with the refugees from the USSR and Soviet-dominated countries in Eastern Europe and traveled to Germany to visit the Displaced Persons (DP) camps, overflowing with over 700,00 refugees.  He initiated a study on the “Utilization of Refugees from the U.S.S.R. in U.S. National Interests”, which to led to the idea of a secret destabilizing émigré force under Operation Bloodstone.

In June 1948, famed career diplomat George Kennan, now with the Department of State Policy Planning Staff, placed Wisner at the head of the list for a new CIA position of Director of the Office of Special Projects, based on the "recommendations of people who know him. I personally have no knowledge of his ability, but his qualifications seem reasonably good.”

By August 1948 in Europe, the CIA had acquired a radio transmitter, a printing plant, and began assembling a fleet of weather balloons intended to carry and drop off propaganda leaflets, and other materials, over the Iron Curtain. Frank Wisner, still with the Department of State, called Director of Central Intelligence Hillenkoetter on August 4, 1948, and told him that “project for the clandestine radio transmitter “ had been approved in principle. A definite approval would only follow after the details of who was to operate the transmitter and “to whom the transmissions would be directed and who would set up the raw material to be transmitted.”

On September 1, 1948, Wisner became Assistant Director for Policy Coordination, in charge of CIA covert operations, of which Radio Free Europe would become a major component.

The Certificate of Incorporation of a nonprofit company called Committee for Free Europe, Inc. was submitted to the State of New York for approval on April 29, 1949. The New York City law firm for which Allen Dulles worked, Sullivan and Cromwell, filed the papers required for incorporation. The Committee for Free Europe was founded, in part, to

Help the non-Fascist and non-Communist leaders who have fled to the United States from the countries of Eastern Europe to maintain themselves in useful occupations during their enforced stay in the United States.

Assist these leaders in maintaining contact with their fellow citizens in other lands and in keeping alive among them the ideals of individual and national freedom.

One of the most critical incorporation document articles was: “No part of the activities of the corporation shall be the carrying on of propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation.”

Directors and officers included future Central Intelligence Director Allen Dulles and future US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Chairman Joseph C. Grew, former US Ambassador to Japan, announced at a press conference on June 1, 1949, that one purpose of the corporation was "to put the voices of these exiled leaders on the air, addressed to their own peoples back in Europe, in their own language, in the familiar tones.”

On June 2, 1949, the corporate name was changed to the National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE)--it would change again in April 1950 to National Committee for a Free Europe.

The financial books of the NCFE were set up for five Operating Committees:

•    General Administrative

•    Committee on Intellectual Activities

•    Committee on Radio and Press

•    Committee on American Contacts

•    National Committee (Bulgarian, Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Romanian).

The term "Radio Free Europe evolved" from the Operating Committee Radio and Press. 

(Continued in Part Two)