Project "Troy: A Cold War Government-Academic Partnership ©

 Project Troy

 

            Project “Troy” began in October 1950 as a government-academic partnership in the early days of the Cold War.  As in most partnerships, there was disagreement as to how the partners perceived their roles:

 

The Government View was that:

 

Under this project, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology assembled 30 of the nation’s top scientists and other experts to explore all means—conventional and unconventional—for penetrating the Iron Curtain. The report endorses the large-scale expansion of radio facilities, already initiated, and calls for even further expansion along lines, which should facilitate further piercing the curtain by means, which will not interfere with other telecommunications channels (military).   

            

The Academic View was in contrast:

 

In 1950, as war raged in Korea and the U.S.S.R. tested its atomic bomb, the Soviets were jamming Voice of America (VOA) radio propaganda broadcasts. Undersecretary of State James Webb asked MIT President James Killian to assemble a team to solve the jamming problem.

 

Killian and Humanities and Social Studies Dean John Burchard assembled a diverse group (including professors from Harvard and other universities) to address not only the technical issues but also matters of political warfare: what the VOA should broadcast, to whom, and to what effect, once the jamming was circumvented … [P]roject Troy resulted in the establishment of a research center at MIT funded by the CIA … [P]roject Troy had not only led to a solution of the jamming problem, but also to the creation of an inter-disciplinary center where scholarly expertise would be applied to foreign policy issues.  

 

            A committee report entitled “Project Troy, Perforating the Iron Curtain,” dated February 1, 1951, was submitted to the US Secretary of State.  Chapter 1, Part II of that report, Communication into Shielded Areas, dealt with:

 

Means of communication for piercing the Iron Curtain, mentioning, besides radio and balloons, and other existing ways, the use of direct mail to send professional journals and industrial and commercial publications and questions “Impulsive emotional blockades of this kind of communication, such as the recent ban on shipments of The Iron Age”. It also mentions sending of objects, typical of American life, drugs, flashlights, fountain pens, small radio receivers, etc.  

 

Chapter III of the Troy Report dealt with the “urgent” use of balloons to send information over the iron curtain:

 

                        An area of a million square miles could be saturated with a billion 

propaganda sheets in a single balloon operation costing a few million dollars.... If the area of dispersal in such an operation were restricted to 30,000 square miles, which may be practicable, there would be a leaflet laid down, on the average, for each area of 30 by 30 feet. The dispersion of balloons in flight and the dispersion of leaflets in falling from altitude both lend themselves to saturation operations. 

 

The operational testing and production program should be undertaken now. It may cost about one million dollars.... In order to coordinate balloon use with other political warfare operations, organizational planning for the final operations should start now.... A stockpile sufficient for an actual operation should be created now, and the questions of size and type of stock should be reviewed periodically as the program develops.