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)
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