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. 

 

When the Boston Symphony Orchestra Won a Cold-War Cultural Battle ©

When the Boston Symphony Orchestra Won a Cold-War Cultural Battle

 

The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), one of America’s prestigious orchestras, was scheduled, for the first time in its history outside the United States, to tour Europe April-May 1952, including performing at the Paris cultural festival “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century.” 

 

The Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor was Charles Munch born in France (September 26, 1891 – November 6, 1968). Concerts were scheduled for Paris, The Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, Berlin, Strasbourg, Metz, Lyon, Bordeaux, and London.  

 

The National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) board of directors held a meeting on October 2, 1951. The directors were told that the costs of the BSO tour were expensive and full financial support was not readily forthcoming for the planned budget of $200,000. The NCFE directors were told that the Congress for Cultural Freedom (a CIA covert project) pledged $30,000 of support, $40,000 was expected from the European Tour, and $100,000 would come from the United States tour before traveling to Europe. Thus, $30,000 was lacking.

 

C. D. Jackson, Fortune magazine publisher and NCFE president, was also on the board of directors of the BSO. He told the other NCFE directors that he “was very enthusiastic” about the participation of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Paris festival and “felt that the NCFE through Radio Free Europe could make a major contribution to its success,” if “NCFE would give the necessary pledge of approximately $30,000, for which in turn, Radio Free Europe would receive the rights for broadcasting the entire festival program and the recording rights of the orchestra’s European concert tour.”

 

The NCFE board of directors unanimously endorsed the support of the BSO project but would not approve the financial support without more information about the exact amount required, and if NCFE had the funds to do so.

 

At a special meeting held on January 16, 1952, the NCFE board of directors passed a resolution “that the sum of $30,000 is appropriated as a donation to the American Committee of Cultural Freedom, Inc, in return for which NCFE is secured the rights to broadcast and record the ‘Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century Exposition’ program in Europe, including all the performances of the BSO during its tour of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, Inc.

 

The Boston Symphony Orchestra left its mark in Paris when it performed in May 1952, under Charles Munch and associate conductor Pierre Monteux, also born in France (April 4, 1875 – July 1, 1964. Life magazine, for example, wrote in its May 19, 1952, issue,

 

Since 1493 Europeans have had few kind words for American ventures into the arts, and since 1945 few kind words on any score. Last week, however, they had a great many. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, in Paris for an arts festival, gave two performances, which left listeners dazed with awe. Critics unanimously used the word “extraordinary,” and phrases like, “Is there another orchestra which could interpret modern music with such brilliance?” “Performance unparalleled in finesse and dynamism.”

 

Time magazine wrote on May 19, 1952,

 

In their first appearance at Paris' international Festival of the Arts ... they left the audience (including President Auriol) shouting itself hoarse. In courtly appreciation, the orchestra and Conductor Munch broke a long-standing symphonic rule and played an encore. Two nights later came the success of Monteux, Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring.

 

Paris' critics came out gasping superlatives. Said Le Figaro: "An extraordinary ensemble, playing with an assurance and ardor that bordered on fanaticism." L'Aurore's critic said, "Never before have we heard anything comparable to the sumptuous sonority of the strings and mordant quality of the trumpets." Said one Boston musician: "We did our best because we realized what it meant to Munch and Monteux to play in Paris."

 

John Roderick of the Associated Press (AP) wrote in his article on June 1, 1952, “America has Achieved Cultural Maturity...By the time the 110-piece orchestra had finished playing Ravel’s ‘Daphnis and Chloe, the diamond-studded audience was on its feet, shouting, yelling and applauding as never before.” The Los Angeles Times proclaimed “Free World Shows Europe She Has Come of Age, Culturally Speaking.”

 

(In 1956, the Boston Symphony Orchestra was the first American orchestra to perform in the Soviet Union.)

 

For more information on the Congress of Cultural Freedom, see

 

Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cutural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New York: The New Press, 1999.

 

Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America. London, England: Harvard University Press, 2008.

 

John Steinbeck and Radio Free Europe ©

 

 

The September 2016 National Steinbeck Center newsletter contained a short article about famed writer John Steinbeck and Radio Free Europe.

 

Below we will look at the time that literary giant John Ernst Steinbeck (1902 - 1968), who won both the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize for his works, visited Radio Free Europe in the first week of July 1954. Steinbeck had received a request from RFE in June to visit the radio station. He and his wife then visited Munich for a week, during which time Steinbeck read this stirring, personal letter to RFE's listeners:

 

To my friends,

 

There was a time when I could visit you and you were free to visit me. My books were in your stores and you were free to write to me on any subject. Now your borders are closed with barbed wire and guarded by armed men and fierce dogs, not to keep me out but to keep you in. And now your minds are also imprisoned. You are told that I am a bad writer but you are not permitted to judge for yourselves. You are told we are bad people but you are forbidden to see and to compare. You are treated like untrustworthy animals, subjected to conditioning as cold and ruthless as though you were rats in a laboratory. You cannot travel, you cannot read freely and you cannot work at the profession of your choice. Your writers are the conditioned servants of a regime. All of this is designed to destroy your ability to think.

 

I beg you to keep alive the integrity of the individual in his ability to judge and compare and create. May your writers write secretly and hold their writing for the time when this grey anesthetic has passed as pass it must. The free world outside your prison still lives. You will join it again and it will welcome you. Everything around you is cynically designed to destroy you as individuals. You must remember and teach your children that they are precious, not as dull cogs in the wheel of party existence, but as units complete and shining in themselves.

 

Steinbeck had hoped to read his message on the air to RFE’s listeners in their own languages. He diligently practiced from phonetically written texts of his message and tapes prepared for him by RFE's broadcasters. Steinbeck eventually gave up on Hungarian, Romanian, and Polish, and decided to concentrate on Czech. His wife Elaine finally convinced him to read his statement in English, telling him "Your English is so beautiful."  

 

Newspapers in the USA covered his visit to RFE. The Pittsburgh Press article published on September 4, 1954, began with: “Novelist Predicts Collapse of Soviet: Radio Free Europe airs Steinbeck.” He was quoted as saying; The Soviet Union is the most reactionary country in the world. Hindering creative work, the Soviet will eventually destroy their own system…By destroying criticism the Communists have made any culture impossible.”

 

In November 1958, John Steinbeck send a letter concerning the Nobel Prize award to Boris Pasternak to Radio Free Europe in which he wrote:

 

The Award of the Nobel Prize to Paskernak and the Soviet outcry against it makes me sad but not for Pasternak. He has fulfilled his obligation as a writer, has seen his world, described and made his comment…[M]y sadness is for the poor official writers sitting in judgment on a book on a book they are not allowed to read. They are the ground vultures of art who having helped to clip their own wings are righteously outraged at Flight and contemptuous of Eagles.

 

 

For more information about the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, visit http://www.steinbeck.org

 

The Fighting Group against Inhumanity (Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit; KgU) ©

The Fighting Group against Inhumanity (KgU)

The Fighting Group against Inhumanity (Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit; KgU) began in Berlin in 1948 and was at first a U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) operation. It was initially conceived to expose to the residents of both East and West Germany the conditions existent in prisoner-of-war and concentration camps in the Soviet Zone. A secondary purpose was to provide a source of helpful information concerning the psychological situation within East Germany.

The covert section (for which support the majority of the CIA subsidy was used) had a staff of 15, five in the central office in Berlin and two in each of the five field divisions. To these field divisions (one for each of the East German States), a total of 125 East German co-workers regularly reported giving positive intelligence and receiving administrative harassment and propaganda material for infiltration and distribution. 

The 1954 objectives were: “Harras and weaken the Soviet administration of East Germany ( including East Berlin) and itsGerman collaborators, to help retard East German economic

development, to help promote and sustain popular anti-Communist resistance within East Germany, and too help exposeconditions within the Soviet Zone to the Western world. This project supports an effective CIA-guide d administrativeharassment and propaganda organization engaged in helping further rthese objectives 1n East Germany.”

During an average month in 1954, in addition to twenty administrative harassment operations, the KgU distributed 700,000 propaganda items in the Soviet Zone, mainly by balloon launchings. The KgU, under CIA guidance, distributedRussian-language propaganda material aimed at inducing defection among Soviet military personnel. KgU distribution costs due to this activity were reimbursed by the CIA project CATIDAL. 

In January 1955, for example, the Frankfurt Chief of Mission reported to CIA headquarters, “Over the past 12 months, the KgU carried out 157 major administrative harassment operations, including: 

·      False instructions and invitations (70)

·      Countermanding of East German governmental and party instructions (16)

·      False information (41)

·      Warnings to governmental and party functionaries (6)

·      True anti-communist information under false letterheads (16)

·      Demands for payment of notional accounts (6)

·      Falsified orders for materials (8)

·      Forged postage stamps and documents (4)”

Time, The New Yorker, The New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and other leading American and European newspapers and periodicals carried positive articles on the KgU. 

The KgU activites ceaaed in 1959.

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