The Tail Wagging the Dog ©

 The Tail Wagging the Dog

 

The success of the Crusade for Freedom upset the foreign policy bureaucracy in

Washington, which saw the Crusade as a threat to the funding of the official government

international broadcasting service, the Voice of America. An extraordinary meeting of CIA and

the U.S. State Department leadership took place in the private residence of State Department

official Edward W. Barrett, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, on the evening of

November 21, 1951. Representing the CIA were Messrs. Dulles, Wisner, Lloyd (deputy chief,

Psychological Staff Division), and Braden (chief, International Branch, Psychological Division,

OPC). 

 

During the meeting, Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, asked questions about the

future of the Crusade for Freedom. Edward Barrett gave the State Department position; saying

that the present type of campaign was harming the total United States effort and making people ask the question whether the Voice of America is really needed. He did not say that to his surprise no serious questions came up in the last Congress concerning the apparent duplication between Radio Free Europe and VOA. 

 

Mr. Barrett suggested that instead of the present type of Crusade for Freedom, a low-pressure program should be conducted. He said that something along the line of the tuberculosis seal campaign in magazines, with coupons, and so on, ought to be tried out.48

 

The assembled group agreed on Barrett’s proposal. On January 17, 1952, there was another

top-level meeting with the CIA, the State Department, NCFE’s C. D. Jackson, and Abbot

Washburn executive vice chairman of the Crusade for Freedom, to discuss of the Crusade’s

future.

 

Mr. Barrett reminded the group that NCFE had started as an organization to look after and make

use of the various Eastern European refugee groups. He recalled that giving these groups a radio

voice was something of a later development. He also recalled that the Crusade was established

primarily as a cover for the governmental support of the enterprise. Mr. Barrett raised the question of whether or not the Crusade had grown to such proportions that it was now a case of the tail wagging the dog. He also raised the question of whether the two or three million dollars that might be raised in the Crusade might be endangering the $85,000,000 involved in the appropriations for the USIE [United States Information and Educational Exchange] operations. 

 

He thought it was important to get back to the idea of just enough of a Crusade to give the minimum necessary cover to NCFE.

 

The Crusade for Freedom continued until 1960, when its functions were taken over by the

Radio Free Europe Fund. Eastern European Fund and Radio Free Europe Fund

George Kennan’s 1948 vision of “liberation committees” reached fruition when, in March

1951, the Eastern European Fund (EEF) was established by the Ford Foundation, with Kennan

selected as the first president and Frank Altschul, director of the NCFE, on the board of

directors. The purpose of this organization was to “increase the usefulness to free society of

exiles from Soviet Power by improving their morale, their mutual welfare, the suitability of their

occupation, and their facilities for association and mutual aid, and by helping them to contribute

to the general fund of knowledge in this country about Russia and the Union of the Soviet

Socialist Republics.”

 

One of the major achievements of the EEF was in 1951 with the creation of the Russian-

language Chekhov Publishing House, which published over sixty books in the first year,

including novels, short stories, plays and poetry, memoirs, and studies in history and criticism.

Publishing continued until 1956. By then over 150 books had been published.

The Eastern European Fund’s name was later changed to Radio Free Europe Fund. In 1960

it took over the functions of Crusade for Freedom. The combined organization accepted private

contributions and also engaged in public fundraising in the United States. 

 

By 1975, the Radio Free Europe Fund had raised a total of fifty million dollars, only a fraction of the true operating costs borne by the CIA in over twenty years of secret funding.