One area that led to the allegations that Radio Free Europe (RFE) was inciting Hungarian freedom fighters was the re-transmitting of information and appeals, sometimes without comments, from the various independent radio stations broadcasting in the medium and short waves that sprang up in Hungary after October 23, 1956, and lasted to November 9, 1956.
RFE had one of the world’s largest radio monitoring stations in Schleissheim, outside Munich. It was here that the freedom fighters’ radio stations were heard, recorded, and sent to the headquarters building in Munch. However, the freedom fighter’s radio stations in Hungary did not have a fixed time or frequency on which to broadcast. RFE sent engineers to the Austrian-Hungarian border to search for transmissions and sent their results to Munich and Vienna.
There were at least 14 and possibly as many as 50 local freedom stations on the air. The chief ones were Free Radio Gyor, Miskolc, Pees, Debrecen, Dunapentele, Free Radio Rakoczi (Kaposvar), Szombathely, Nyiregyhaza, Radio Damjanich (Szolnok), Free Radio Eger, Free Radio Szechenyi (Szeged), Radio Vorosmarty (Szekesfehervar) and the Radio of the Workers' Council of the County of Szabolcs-Szatmar. RFE set up a special radio monitoring unit in Vienna to augment the monitoring in Schleissheim. In this way many, if not most, of the small radio station appeals were recorded and re-broadcast by RFE, not in the original voices, mostly due to poor quality, but with RFE staffers.
Every evening at 5 p.m., the directional antenna at Holzkirchen (outside Munich,) used to broadcast to Czechoslovakia on the medium wave was turned to broadcast to Hungary.
Cord Meyer, former CIA staffer responsible for Radio Free Europe and other projects, wrote:
In the period immediately following the outbreak of fighting in Budapest, RFE became the best source of information available to the United States on what was actually happening throughout Hungary.
As local revolutionary councils to announce their demands seized the low-powered provincial radio stations, the sensitive monitoring equipment of RFE in West Germany was able to pick up these weak signals and get translations promptly back to the Washington analysts and policymakers.
From these broadcasts, it became quickly apparent that the revolution was on a national scale and not simply confined to street fighting in Budapest.
Since these local radio stations, fourteen in all, could be heard only in their immediate provincial areas, they soon began making direct requests to RFE to replay their revolutionary demands on its powerful transmitters so that the whole country could be informed of the speed and depth of the revolt.
The American management of RFE recognized immediately that the decision to rebroadcast back into Hungary such far-reaching demands involved policy considerations beyond their competence and they asked me for guidance on how to react. I took the problem up with Allen Dulles. He asked me to discuss it with Robert Murphy, then the number three men in the State Department. By the end of the day, we had our policy guidance from the top level of the Eisenhower administration.
RFE was given authority to rebroadcast local programs when specifically requested as a communication service, but with attribution to the local station making the request and with identification of the program as a verbatim repeat of the original broadcast. To the extent that RFE then served as a transmission belt for communications between provincial revolutionary councils it played a significant role in spreading throughout Hungary the news of what was happening not only in Budapest but also in the outlying towns. In so doing, the radio did not act irresponsibly but as the disciplined instrument of a conscious policy decision by the Eisenhower administration.
This rebroadcasting by RFE did serve to identify the radio with the fundamental goals of the revolution, and in the wisdom of hindsight RFE was later blamed for what was in fact a high-level policy decision of the administration.
Interestingly, some radio stations also broadcast in Morse code. Here is one example, on November 4, 1956, this message was sent from an unidentified radio station:
Special appeal to Radio Free Europe. Early this morning Soviet troops launched a general attack on Hungary. We are requesting you to send immediate military aid in the form of parachute troops over the Trans-Danubian provinces. S.O.S. Save our Souls.
Reportedly, the last heard broadcast was on November 9, 10:15 p.m., from an unidentified station: "Send news. in general and in detail. We look forward to news. Say something."
Famed author James Michener included a quotation from a 1956 refugee in his book The Bridge at Andau, that I believe, succinctly captures the reaction of those who listen to the live broadcasts of Radio Free Europe:
No Hungarian is angry at Radio Free Europe. We wanted to keep our hopes alive. Probably we believed too deeply what was not intended by the broadcasters to be taken seriously. The wrong was not with Radio Free Europe. It was partly our fault for trusting in the words. It was partly America’s fault for thinking that words can be used loosely. Words like ‘freedom,’ ‘struggle for national honor,’ ‘rollback,’ and ‘liberation’ have meanings. They stand for something. Believe me when I say that you cannot tell Hungarians or Bulgarians or Poles every day for six years to love liberty and then sit back philosophically and say, ‘But the Hungarians and Bulgarians and Poles mustn’t do anything about liberty. They must remember that we’re only using words.’ Such words, to a man in chains, are not merely words. They are weapons whereby he can break his chains.
For more information about the role of Radio Free Europe and examples of what the freedom stations were transmitting, see Allan A. Michie, Voices through the Iron Curtain: The Radio Free Europe Story.
