US Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) and Radio Free Europe in Occupied Austria ©

 

Austria after World War II was crowded with "displaced persons" (DPs) who had been liberated from concentration camps or were former forced laborers in German factories. In 1945, the US Army set up the 430 Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) Detachment in occupied Vienna, Salzburg, and Linz, Austria. CIC had the primary function of “denazification” and searching to arrest “Nazi war criminals” and put them on trial.CIC was then tasked with screening these displaced persons to return them to their respective homelands or  after 1948 to the USA. With the completion of the Iron Curtain, CIC Austrian operations evolved into intelligence gathering in Czechoslovakia and Hungary through the use of couriers to infiltrate into and exfiltrate from both. 

 

One CIC intelligence-gathering operation reportedly was Project WACO, which involved CIC using anti-Communist agents in Czechoslovakia 1948-1949 to gather intelligence and recruit new agents behind the Iron Curtain—"couriers."

 

In cooperation with and support of CIC, "White Legion Radio” went into operation in April 1950, broadcasting live from Ried /Innkreis in the American Zone in Upper Austria in a studio in the "Villa Mayer," in which CIC staff also lived. The range of the transmitter on shortwave was at least about 300 kilometers to reach a large part of Slovakia and Moravia. 

 

In 1951, the manager of The White Legion radio station Catholic Priest Kamil Sumichrast in the Benedictine Monastery in Salzburg sent to Slovakia with the aim of creating a reporting group of the White Legion: Ernest Strečanský, Alexander Tihlárik, and Jozef Krutý. 

 

In July 1952, a Slovak Catholic priest visited displaced-persons camp 1001 in Wels, Austria. He told a refugee about the arrest of five men, who reportedly had attempted to cross from Austria into Czechoslovakia. The refugee then told a CIC agent based in Salzburg, who in turn wrote a report on July 30, 1952, which read, in part:

 

During the period of late June and early July 1952, the following named Czechoslovak refugees who had previously fled the CSR to the comparative safety of the US Zone of Austria were apprehended and arrested by the StB… as they attempted to return to
the CSR for unknown reasons: 

·      Ernest Strečanský, 

·      Peter Pavlovič, 

·      Anton “Tono”  Časta, 

·      Alexander Tihlárik, and 

·      Jozef Krutý, 

 

The names were checked against CIC files in Austria, and a summary report was written by CIC Special Agent (S/A) Clyde E. Taylor on July 30, 1952. One CIC agent report received was dated November 6, 1951, and read, in part: "Strechansky, Ernest, Possible Czech Intelligence Personality, … as an employee of Radio Free Europe in Salzburg was asking suspicious questions ot CSR refugees concerning their anti-Communist acquaintances. He was known to have exhibited a considerable interest in the "White Legion," an anti-Communist organization comprised of Czechoslovak refugees, and the KOVANDA Group, which allegedly gathers intelligence information for a US agency in Germany.” 

 

Another CIC report, "Radio Free Europe – Theft of Documents," dated December 10, 1951, mentioned that "Strechansky, who had been employed at RFE as a secretary allegedly confiscated some confidential documents from the RFE office in Salzburg." The CIC report dated April 4, 1952, read, in part, "Slovaks Allegedly Operating on behalf of the Russian Intelligence Service in Austria, Oliver Stankovsky is allegedly in the employ of one Ernest Strechansky and is paid 2,000 Schillings as well as room and board.” 

 

CIC special agent Taylor concluded his report with: "The above information is submitted because the undersigned believes that if Czech authorities have actually intercepted the five named refugees, they will, after debriefing, attempt to trade them their freedom in exchange for their acceptance to work as Czech intelligence operatives in the US Zone of Austria. If any of the persons mentioned above appear in Salzburg, they will be subjected to a detailed interrogation to prove or disprove whether they are operating for the CIS." 

            

The five White Legion men were put on trial June 23-24,1953, pled guilty, and were sentenced to long prison terms;

 

·      Strečanský        16 years

·      Casta                 16 years

·      Tihlarik             15 years

·      Kruty                15 years

·      Pavlovič           25 years           

For more information, see Chapter  9 in