1954 Political Kidnapping of Štefan Kiripolský in Vienna, Part Two ©

Part Two

During his first captivity in Vienna, Soviet officers accused Kiripolský of carrying out espionage activities against the USSR. The Soviets interrogated him repeatedly regarding personnel of the CIC in Vienna. He was transferred to Prague, Czechoslovakia on September 11, 1954.

Kiripolský was in the Bubenec area of Prague for 16 or 18 months during which time the StB as well as the Soviet KGB interrogated him. Kiripolský was subjected to various methods of torture, including continuous nightlong interrogations.  He was placed in a small cell where he could not sit or lie down. From time to time his cell was filled with extremely hot air, which would suddenly be changed to extremely cold air.

On May 5, 1955 the Czechoslovak Attorney General accused Štefan Kiripolský of high treason and espionage. In the trial, which took place on July 27, 1955, at the Military Division of the Supreme Court, Štefan Kiripolský was condemned to the life sentence and his partner Helena Neumanova to five years prison. His prison sentence was later reduced to 25 years and then 15 years—presumably for providing the Czechoslovak intelligence service information about CIC and RFE. He was prepared for a show trial but was too mechanical in his answers and the idea was dropped.

A May 2, 1957, a small newspaper article appeared in a Swiss newspaper on the topic of prisoners of war in Czechoslovakia.  Included in the names of prisoners was one Štefan Kiripolský, “former co-worker of the Vienna office of the Munich radio station Radio Free Europe.”  This article caused a stir within RFE, and on June 12, 1957, the RFE security officer traveled to Vienna to meet Karl Reinoch, the article's source of information. 

Reinoch explained that he was a secretary in the Austrian Consulate General’s office in Bratislava.  On September 22, 1950 he was arrested on the street, taken to Prague, and placed in prison for investigative custody.  He was accused of espionage. The prison was in the Ruzyn section of Prague. He remained there for three months during which time eight different StB officers interrogated him.  He did not know their names and stated that until 1955, StB personnel were known only by a number.

Reinoch said he first met former RFE employee Štefan Kiripolský in May or June 1956 in Leopoldov prison. Kiripolský had been there since the spring of 1956. For three or four months they shared the same cell, and Kiripolský told him how he arrived there.  Kiripolský said that he had been employed by RFE in Vienna, and that he had an American chief in Vienna named Williams, who was not with RFE but with U.S. Intelligence. He mentioned that Williams spoke Slovak and had a cover name that Reinoch could not recall.

Kiripolský also said that he had been accused of’ sending two agents into Hungary, which he admitted to Reinoch as having done. One of them reportedly shot and killed a border guard while crossing the border and he, Kiripolský, also was charged with being involved with the murder.

Reinoch said that Kiripolský told him that while he was in jail in Prague, he was told he would probably be sentenced to death.  But that they would consider giving him a chance for a prison sentence if he agreed to make a statement against RFE and the CIC at a press conference.

Kiripolský agreed and was then taken to another area of Prague, where prisoners were wined, dined, and rested prior to making a public statement.  Those chosen to make statements were well briefed and rehearsed prior to appearing in public. Kiripolský said he learned his role so well that he became too mechanical in his speech, and the StB finally decided he would not make a very good impression. They sent him back to his prison in Prague. After this episode he was never again approached by the StB to make a press statement or to work for the StB in any capacity.

There was no further word on Kiripolský until Hungarian-born Tibor Karman visited the RFE Vienna office on April 13, 1965. Karman was the husband of journalist, Andrea Karman, the daughter of a former high-ranking Austrian civil servant. Mrs. Karman met Karman in Hungary, fell in love with him and tried to smuggle him out to the West via Czechoslovakia. 

All of the persons involved were caught, including Karman and an accomplice, believed to be Australian or British. They were sentenced to six months in jail.  Karman was returned to Hungary. As a result of direct intervention of then Austrian Foreign Minister Bruno Kreisky in Budapest, in October or November 1964, Karman was allowed to leave Czechoslovakia.

Karman said that while he was in jail at Ilava, Slovakia, Karman met another prisoner: Kiripolský. According to Karman, Kiripolský looked hale and hearty. Kiripolský was then working in the Ilava prison hospital to get better food. 

Štefan Kiripolský was released from prison in the Prague Spring in May 1968. He never contacted the radios after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Štefan Kiripolský died on July 6, 1992, exactly 42 years after he crossed the Danube River in search of freedom. Helena Neumanova died on February 19, 2001.

Photograph courtesy of RFE/RL.

1954 Political Kidnapping of Štefan Kiripolský In Vienna, Part One ©

After World War Two until 1955, Vienna, Austria, was divided into five occupation zones between the Soviet Union, USA, UK and France, and with the First District (Inner City) being patrolled by military units of all four allied powers. Graham Greene wrote in his novella The Third Man:

At night it is just as well to stick to the Inner City or the zones of three of the Powers, though even there the kidnappings occur – such senseless kidnappings they sometimes seemed to us – a Ukrainian girl without a passport, an old man beyond the age of usefulness, sometimes, of course, the technicians or the traitor.

The Third Man film based on the novella is shown three times each week in Vienna, at the English-language movie theater Burgkino, which has shown it continuously for over thirty years--https://www.burgkino.at/movie/third-man, [Accessed January 2020]

Below we will look at one political kidnapping in Vienna and its connection to Radio Free Europe.

Štefan Kiripolský Story

Part One

During the night July 6-7, 1952, Štefan Kiripolský (born December 24, 1914 Palárikovo , Austria-Hungary, now Slovakia) and Helena Neumanova left their village in Czechoslovakia, crossed the Danube River in a small boat to Austria and settled in Vienna as refugees.

On December 1, 1952, Kiripolský started working as an “interviewer” at Radio Free Europe’s News and Information Service Field Office in Vienna. More ominously, he also started working with the United States Military Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), helping debrief others, who had escaped from behind the Iron Curtain.

Unknown to Kiripolský, the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service (StB) had agents in place in Vienna, who were reporting on his activities, e.g., one agent code-named Cloves (Hribicek), started working for the StB at RFE’s office at the end of November 1952. The StB started an interest file on Kiripolsky in December 1952.

In January 1953, the chief of the First Department of the Intelligence Regional Administration in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, Lieutenant Colonel Stefan Pafco and his second-in-command Captain Vlastimil Kroupa wrote up a plan to kidnap Štefan Kiripolský. In order to accomplish this task, a three-member team was expected to travel to Vienna, and the operation was to be carried out through cooperation with the Soviet counterintelligence service. Then Deputy Minister of National Security, Prchal did not approve the plan and it was dropped at that time. Nevertheless, surveillance of Kiripolský’s activities continued.

On July 17, 1953, at 5 PM, Guenther Schuettler was kidnapped (apprehended?) in Vienna by two men, who drove him to the Bellaria section of Vienna, where he was held for four days and interrogated by Soviet officers.  Of primary concern of the Soviets was Štefan Kiripolský, who worked in the RFE Vienna office and also with the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corp (CIC) in Vienna.

After 4 days, he agreed to work for the Soviet Intelligence Service and arrange that Kiripolský would “fall into Soviet hands” for which Schuettler would receive a bonus of 10,000 Schillings.Schuettler was also a member of the Nationale Liga and the “Freikorps Donauland”, and agreed to inform the Soviets about both organizations.

Instead Schuettler reported to the Austrian State Police what happened to him. He did meet with a Soviet contact and was driven around the Soviet occupied district while giving some information. Another meeting was scheduled at the East Railway station in Vienna but Schuettler did not show up and there was no further contact with the Soviet intelligence service. 

The West German intelligence agency Gehlen Organization learned of this and reported to the CIA Chief of Base in Pullach (outside Munich). That office in turn notified the CIA Chief of Station in Vienna, with the request to confirm that Kiripolský worked for RFE and the CIC and that perhaps Kiripolský should be warned that he was a target of a possible kidnapping.

On August 21, 1954, Kiripolský wanted to go on vacation with Neumanova in the southern part of Austria, which meant he would have to travel through the Soviet occupied zone of Austria via Wiener Neustadt. He mentioned it to his supervisor, who advised him not to go.  In spite of the advice, they left for vacation. In Wiener Neustadt, A Russian military officer stopped Kiripolský and Neumanova at a railway checkpoint and took them from the train. The Russian officer was apparently expecting him to come through that point at about that particular tine.  Several other Russian soldiers were present. They put Kiripolský into a Russian-made car and took him to Baden, Austria -- still within the Soviet Zone. Neumanova was transported in a different vehicle.

There was widespread newspaper coverage in the United States that included statements from the RFE manager in Vienna, Russel Hill, who was quoted as saying "There was little doubt that one of RFE's top Czechoslovak employees had been kidnapped by the Russians." Another article reported, "The kidnapping was the first case of direct action against the anti-Communist broadcasting organisation." Radio Free Europe terminated Kiripolsky’s employment on August 31, 1954, because: “He did not return to work after vacation, actually defected or kidnapped to CSSR.” 

A Christmas Gift from "Carlos the Jackal" ©

On December 19, 1980 in Budapest, Hungary, the infamous terrorist “Carlos the Jackal” (Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez from Venezuela) and his right-hand man, German terrorist Johannes Weinrich, had a heated discussion about the bombing of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Carlos said he wanted to do it Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day because no one would expect a bomb attack on those days. Weinrich agreed in principle, but said that they were not ready, as they did not have the cars they required, and suggested New Year’s Eve.

Weinrich then told Carlos that when he and the Swiss terrorist Bruno Breguet were doing surveillance of RFE/RL earlier that month, he had stopped to urinate against one of the trees on the RFE/RL grounds. Two guards were walking in his direction and saw him, but they did not say anything and kept going around the building. He noticed that one guard had a bunch of keys in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Because he had been seen, Weinrich told Carlos that he needed a new coat or the same guard might recognize him when they returned to bomb the building. 

Weinrich said he would not shoot the guard first. Carlos asked, “Why not?” Weinrich answered that the shooting would draw unnecessary attention to them, and that a lighted Christmas tree blocked the view of guard anyway. Weinrich told Carlos that even if the bomb were discovered before it exploded, if anyone tried to move it, it would explode anyway, and the CIA would know just how professional their work was.

The original time for the bombing was scheduled to be 10:15 p.m. Weinrich told Carlos that he had plotted out that he and Bruno Breguet would need twelve minutes to get to the train station and head off from Munich in different directions. If they were discovered on the trains, they would have alibis. Breguet would take the train to Nuremberg, where he would change to a train that would arrive from Switzerland on the way to Berlin. He would exchange tickets with a helper, who was on that train, and Breguet would than continue to Berlin as if he had been on that train the whole time. Carlos told him that this was a great idea.

The bombing took place Saturday night, February 21, 1981. Weinrich and Breguet followed the script and left Munich on the selected trains as planned.

1979, American Embassy Hostages in Iran, Disinformation and Radio Free Europe ©

On November 4, 1979, Jimmy Carter was President and the United States Embassy in Tehran, Iran, was taken over by “students.” 52 diplomats and staff were taken captive and held as hostages for 444 days--to be released in the first days of the Ronald Reagan presidency on January 21, 1981.

There was an interesting disinformation action against Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, which affected one American Embassy hostage: John W. Limbert, a career State Department Foreign Service Officer, who was held in solitary confinement for about nine months. At one point, Limbert’s captors confronted him with a letter purportedly written by a manager of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, on December 18, 1979, which was critical of the Carter administration’s reaction to the embassy takeover, among other themes.

The letter, which was fraudulent, was written on paper similar to Radio Free Europe stationary from the 1950s and contained a forged signature of the manger. The letterhead of the fraudulent letter was

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were consolidated into RFE/RL in 1976 and that was the official name of the new organization.

In January 1982, Limbert wrote an article in the Washington Quarterly under the rubric: “Nest of Spies: Pack of Lies,” in which he described the letter:

I first saw the Revelations in February 1980 while captive in the chancellery basement. Several of the students had already shown me a copy of a letter allegedly from the director of Radio Free Europe to National Security Affairs Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, in which the writer advocated harsh measures against Iran, including clandestine support of Ayatollah Shari'at-Madari's partisans in Tabriz, provocative Persian-language broadcasts on the Voice of America, and assassination of members of the ruling Iranian Revolutionary Council. I pointed out to the students that both the format and the language revealed the letter to be an obvious forgery.

In 1994, as director of security at RFE/RL, I published a short piece in the Internet on this apparent disinformation campaign against Radio Free Europe. John Limbert saw my posting and wrote to me:

As I recall the letter you mentioned was never published in the many volumes of Embassy documents. There was enough genuine stuff to keep the students busy for years!  Plus the target of all the publications was Iranian, so there was little point in publishing such a document that was dubious to begin with.

It certainly had all the classic signs of Soviet "active measures, including English that was correct but not quite idiomatic or appropriate to the bureaucratic context.

Radio Free Europe Broadcasts as Gray-Black Propaganda ©

On 23 October 1950, CIA Deputy Director (DDCI) William H. Jackson, National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE) President DeWitt C. Poole, and NCFE Chairman Joseph Grew met at Grew’s house in Washington for two hours, where they had a “very constructive session” to discuss the National Committee for Free Europe (NCE) and Radio Free Europe. 

The next day, DeWitt Poole reported the results of the meeting to the NCFE Directors, telling them that the NCFE was “[E]ntering a new chapter. Someone corrected me to say that he thought we were entering a new volume. [...] How can consultation and coordination be more closely organized than they have been in the past?” 

Assistant Director Policy Coordination (ADPC) Frank Wisner and DDCI William H. Jackson then traveled to New York and met with the RFE Directors at the Union Club in New York, Thursday evening, November 2, 1950. They asked RFE’s Directors to “re-examine its radio activities and prepare a statement of the aims and objectives of Radio Free Europe for study by the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.”

In response to the request, on November 6, 1950, Frank Altschul, NCFE Treasurer and Chairman of the NCFE Radio Committee, wrote a memorandum entitled: The Present Orientation of Radio Free Europe. Under the section “Programs”, he wrote:

For the time being the programs of Radio Free Europe are designed to keep hope alive among our friends, and to confuse, divide and undermine our enemies with the satellite states.

To keep hope alive, we seen to convey to our audience our firm and continuing belief in their ultimate liberation. 

To confuse, divide and undermine our enemies, we attack every aspect of the Communist regime, both directly and by satire and ridicule. When we have evidence that certain native Communists are abusing or betraying their compatriots, we reveal the names and the circumstances in our broadcasts. We play upon the fear of inevitable retribution. 

NCFE President DeWitt C. Poole also wrote a document, which in part read: 

The ultimate objective of United States policy toward the satellite states of Eastern Europe is to weaken the grip of the Soviet Union upon them with the eventual aim of eliminating preponderant Soviet power there and enabling these nations to exist as free members of the European community. For the immediate future, as the sovietization of the satellites continues apace, we wish to preserve what we can of Western influence there and to maintain our concern for the rights and welfare of these peoples. 

The Exile Voices strategy was a “constructive” one, aiming “to comfort and encourage those now in bondage: to reassure them constantly of the West’s steadfast concern for their plight: to keep alive and fortify among them the Western tradition of freedom and democracy: to hold up the prospect of a better future.” Its overall objective was “to keep burning the thought of an alternative to the Bolshevik designs for Eastern Europe.” Exile leaders were expected to convey a “tone of statesmanship.” 

The second, “destructive” strategy was that of “Gray-Black Propaganda,” intended “to discredit among the masses the illegitimates who are now over them. . . . [M]aking direct targets of the new rulers, it seeks by all the tricks of psychological warfare to sow in their minds and hearts dismay, doubt and defeatism and to foment among them mutual suspicion and distrust.” 

Gray-Black Propaganda could employ “disguised voices or pretended personalities: in an effort “to take up the individual Bolshevik rulers and the quislings and tear them apart, exposing their motivations, laying bare their private lives, pointing out their meannesses, pillor[y]ing their evil deeds…” 

The NCFE directors approved the Altschul and Poole memoranda and sent them to CIA as requested.      

On November 16, 1959, Frank Altschul wrote another memorandum: Observations on Memorandum by D.C.P. Entitled “Radio Free Europe”, wherein he included:

With much of what Mr. Poole has to say I am in accord. In large measure, particularly in the section dealing with the Gray-Black Propaganda, it reflects to a great extent exactly what Radio Free Europe is now doing…Similarly, we continue “work to discredit among the masses the illegitimates who are now over them, namely (1) the native quislings, and (2) all Russian personnel, military and civil.” At the same time, we seek to “sow in their minds and hearts dismay, doubt and defeatism and to foment among them mutual suspicion and distrust.”…Our methods of doing all this are regularly growing in ingenuity and variety.

After their return to Washington, D.C., and after the receipt of the two documents from NCFE, ADPC Frank Wisner wrote a summary memorandum to DDCI William H. Jackson on November 22, 1950, which in part read:

Essentially an instrument of psychological warfare, Radio Free Europe’s purpose is to prevent, or at least to hinder, the cultural, political and economic integration of the satellite states with the Soviet Union…[a]nd Radio Free Europe can move into the area of gray of even black propaganda should the situation warrant it. To accomplish its purpose of bringing hope to our friends and confusion to our enemies, Radio Free Europe has been developing programs aimed at:

• Keeping alive the hope of liberation in the satellite states and telling the various peoples that they are not forgotten by the free world;

§  Creating doubt and fears among the quislings of the satellites by character assassination and talk of ultimate retribution, and at the same time drawing a distinction between Communist puppets and those who follow the party line to survive, thereby encouraging high level defection among the latter;

§  Developing at atmosphere favorable to the growth of resistance movements, for ultimate exploitation in war, or at a propitious moment, in peace time. 

Also, we understand that Radio Leipzig has announced that any West German who works for Radio Free Europe will be hanged after the “liberation” of Germany.

            

Radio Free Europe broadcasts soon moved away from Gray-Black propaganda operation to become a respected news organization.

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New Book of Interest: Cold War Exiles and the CIA ©

A recently published book of interest:

Cold War Exiles and the CIA: Plotting to Free Russia byBenjamin Tromly, which

·      Examines the US strategy to utilize emigres from the USSR as a weapon in the Cold War

·      Explores the psychological warfare and espionage operations that emerged from this strategy

·      Adopts a transnational approach by linking Russian emigres to the wider Cold War contexts of U S policy and divided Germany

·      Draws extensively on recently declassified CIA documents and emigre sources that are not in wide scholarly use

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: The Many Faces of Russian Anti-Communism 
1. A Fissile National Community: The Political World of Russian Emigres
2. 'A Political Maze based on the Shifting Sand': the Vlasov Movement and the Gehlen Organization in postwar Germany
3. Socialists and Vlasovites: War Memories and a Troubled Cross-Continental Encounter

Part II: The Transnational Quest for Russian Liberation 
4. American Visions and Emigre Realities: The American Project to Unify the Russian Exiles
5. Builders and Dissectors: Emigre Unification and the Russian Question
6. Reluctant Chieftains: The Ascendance of the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism

Part III: The CIA Operational Front 
7. From Revolution to Provocation: The NTS and CIA Covert Operations
8. Spies, Sex, and Balloons: Emigre Activities in Divided Berlin
9. The Real Anti-Soviet Russians? Soviet Defectors and the Cold War

Part IV: The End of the Affair: The Decline of Emigre Anti-Communism 
10. 'All will be Forgiven': The Soviet Campaign for Return to the Homeland
11. Unreliable Allies: The German Crucible and Russian Anti-Communism

Conclusion

Author Information

Benjamin Tromly is Professor of History at University of Puget Sound, where he teaches Russian and European History. He is the author of Making the Soviet Intelligentsia: Universities and Intellectual Life under Stalin and Khrushchev.

On September 25, 2019,  Benjamin Tromley will be speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C.

"During the early Cold War, the United States government backed exiles from the Soviet bloc as part of an effort to subvert communist power from abroad. In his new book, Cold War Exiles and the CIA, Professor Benjamin Tromly tells the story of the involvement of Russian exiles in US political warfare and espionage programs in the 1950s. He will explain how officials and spies on both sides of the Iron Curtain became entangled with the internal struggles of the Russian diaspora in Europe. He will also analyze exile politics as a sub-front of the Cold War in Europe that involved the marshaling of proxies and non-state actors."

Moderator 

Eric Lohr

For more information, visit https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/book-talk-cold-war-exiles-and-the-cia

Voices from the East: CIA sponsored Russian Language Broadcasting from Taiwan, Part Two, NTS and TsOPE ©

In part one, we looked at Radio Liberation / Radio Liberty broadcasts from Taiwan. Below is a look at two emigre organizations that also broadcsast via short-wave from Taiwan in Russian to the USSR

NTS and Radio Free Russia

The initials NTS stand Narodno Trudovoi Soyuz -- National Alliance of Russian Solidarists or National Labor Alliance” (In Russian: Национально Трудовой Союз, Народно-Трудовой Союз российских солидаристов—Narodno-Trudovoy Soyuz Rossiyskikh Solidaristov). The initials NTS were also used for two patrioticslogans “Nesem tiranam smert” (We are bringing death to tyrants) and “Nesem trudiashimsia svobodu” (We are bringing liberty to the workers). 

NTS was founded in Belgrade, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in 1928 (sometimes given at 1930) by a group of Russian exiles opposed to Soviet Communism. NTS settled in Germany after World War Two

In December 1950, NTS began broadcasting Radio Free Russia that was beamed at the Red Army in Eastern Germany from a station it owned and operated in the British Zone—the broadcast operation eventually moved into the U.S. Zone. The first transmitting station placed on a small truck was a small battery operated one of only 38 watts of power. There were no poles for the antennas, trees were used instead to string the wires.

At a radio conference in Europe in 1953, representatives of Nationalist China and NTS met for the first time. Reportedly, the Chinese Nationalists were, “Favorably impressed with the work of NTS” and even supplied and planned to continue to supply NTS with materials for broadcasting and publications.” 

Dr. Roman Redlich of NTS reportedly flew to Taiwan in late 1955 to establish his residence and work with the Chinese Nationalists in a “joint effort against Communism.” In 1957, NTS received permission from BCC to broadcast out of Taiwan to the Eastern USSR via the powerful short-wave transmitter. Eventually, it broadcast an average of ten hours daily.

Redlich was succeeded by veteran NTS member Gleb Rahr, who arrived in 1957 or 1958 and remained there until 1960, when he moved to Japan to teach Russian at the University of Tokyo. In 1963, he returned to NTS in Germany, where he worked until 1974 (possibly the date that Radio Free Russia ceased broadcasting) before working for Radio Liberty in Munich. Rahr then wrote and recorded religious programs for RFE/RL’s Russian Service until it moved to Prague in 1995. 

NTS stopped broadcasting from Taiwan in 1974.

TsOPE 

CIA’s created and controlled the Russian émigré organization “Central Association of Post-War Émigrés” (TsOPE – transliteration of ЦОПЭ - Центральное Объединение Послевоенных Эмигрантов)in November 1952. It was based in Munich, Germany.

TsOPE did not have its own radio station: it wrote scripts and  that were broadcast over other radio stations. At one point in the early Cold War, for example, TsOPE members wrote and produced a weekly half-hour show over Voice of America studios in Munich entitled "Life in the Free West through Our Eyes."  

Probably beginning in 1959, TsOPE also provided tapes and scripts for Russian-language broadcasts over BCC radio on Taiwan. As an example of the scope of the TsOPE broadcasts, during Fiscal Year 1961, TsOPE Munich radio section produced approximately 1,000 scripts and 48 15-minute taped programs, which were broadcast by the BCC. 

TsOPE broadcasts ceased in 1962.