CIA Cold War Project AEROOT Extracts ©

AEROOT was the cryptonym for an early CIA Cold War Foreign Intelligence (FI) project involving Estonia and Estonian nationals of the USSR.  Below is a look at the 1957 project renewal request:

28 June 1957

The attached project, originating in the Soviet/Russia Division, provided for the utilization of all practicable channels of communication with the Estonian SSR to develop, recruit, establish and direct legal resident agents to collect operational and positive intelligence information.

The original AEROOT Project was approved on 13 May 1953 under Basic Plan AEBASIN and continued using renewals and extensions until 31 October 1956. The renewal request for 1 November 1956 through 31 March 1958 included the following Summary of accomplishments from 5 April 1955 to 1 November 1956: 

·      Recruited two Soviet Estonian residents as informers. 

·      Detected and followed up three Russian Intelligence Service (RIS) agents from Estonian SSR in cooperation with Swedish and British intelligence services. 

·      Interrogated and caused confessions of two RIS agents from Estonian SSR. 

·      Spotted one Principal/Agent candidate for work in cooperation with Finnish Intelligence Service. 

·      Recruited one agent for a repatriation mission to Estonian SSR. 

·      Recruited a merchant seaman qualified to visit Soviet ports. 

·      Recruited two mail drops for Secret/Writing correspondence with the Estonian SSR. 

·      Detected RIS control of a Swedish IS agent in Estonian SSR, with whom we also were in 

unilateral communication. 

The objectives of the AEROOT project were:

1.     Establish several legal resident agents in Estonian SSR. 

2.     Utilize all practicable channels of communication between Estonian SSR and the Western World to develop, recruit and direct legal resident agents.

3.     Spot, recruit, brief, and, when practicable, train legal travelers between Estonian SSR and the West. 

4.     Extract operational and positive intelligence information from visitors to and from Estonian SSE, one-time Estonian-resident Volks-Deutsche Prisoners of War clean and unclean escapees from Estonian SSR. 

The following agent personnel, carried in Project AEROOT in the past, were terminated: 

a. Hanks Augusti Toomla, was dispatched to Estonia in the spring of 1954. He lost his life apparently while in Soviet hands. Payment of death benefits to his heirs, provided in his contract with the Agency, is pending settlement of his estate. 

b. Kalja Nikolai Kukk was dispatched into Estonia with Toomla. It was reported he was captured by HIS forces in the spring of 1954. According to a Soviet announcement, he was tried by a Soviet military tribunal in 1955. He is now presumed to be dead. His contract with the Agency provides for payment of death benefits to his designated heirs upon settlement of his estate

They Speak for Freedom: Closed-circuit Television Broadcast for Radio Free Europe ©

 

A closed-circuit half-hour television program "They Speak for Freedom" took place on Tuesday, March 29, 1960, in New York City to "commemorate the tenth anniversary of Radio Free Europe." It was intended for radio and television broadcasters around the United States. 

Those participating included 

• Donald H. McGannon, of Chairman of Broadcasters for Free Europe, president of Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, and host of the program; 
• W.B. Murphy, Crusade for Freedom chairman; 
• Joseph Koevago, former Mayor of Budapest; 
• Leonard Goldenson, chairman of ABC network; 
• Robert Sarnoff, chairman, NBC; 
• Frank Stanton, president, CBS; 
• Martin Block, ABC disk jockey; 
• Arlene Francis, radio and television actress; and 
• Howard K. Smith, CBS Washington news correspondent. 

            

After being introduced by McGannon, Crusade for Freedom chairman Murphy said, 

Last January, I was privileged to visit Radio Free Europe headquarters in Munich and Lisbon. After a day or two there, a kind of cold shiver goes down one's back. You know there's a vicious cold war going on. You come away with a tremendous feeling of respect for the job Radio Free Europe is doing.

A short but detailed film about Radio Free Europe was then shown. Murphy continued, "All of this costs money. It must be private money. Radio Free Europe is not a government operation. It's a private, non-profit organization supported by American citizens and corporations." 

 

Robert Sarnoff was introduced, and he said, "We broadcasters are called upon day-in-and-day-out to serve many good causes, and I think we do a pretty good job of it...Of all the public service efforts that claim our support, Radio Free Europe is the only one that itself is an arm of broadcasting. Now let's show what kind of a job broadcasting can do in this country to raise funds that make this extraordinary service possible."

            

Frank Stanton then added, "The strength of Radio Free Europe derives from its expression of a free people's concern for entrapped fellow human beings across the seas...Nothing is more important about Radio Free Europe than that it reflects the convictions of as many American people as they hear about it...I hope that all of us will take the opportunity seriously to do all that we can to inform our listeners and viewers about Radio Free Europe."

            

McGannon then explained the upcoming Crusade campaign, including the Radio Free Europe kits, a "do it yourself campaign kit specially prepared for broadcasters. You'll find spot announcements, live tapes, films, telops, scripts, discs, the whole works in it." 

 

McGannon then introduced famed news commentator Howard K. Smith, who said: 

 

I've been privileged to be able to report on that story over the years and I hope I will be able to continue to report it in the future. Every mention of RFE's activities is a contribution to the world we want and the kind of world I am persuaded most other people want. As newscasters, we want to do all we can to support Radio Free Europe.

 

McGannon concluded the show with, 

 

Well, that is the story. We've talked about Radio Free Europe and what it does, how it does it, and what we can do to help it. Now it is time for everyone here, every broadcaster in the business, to speak up...We want you to use the radio and television material on your stations, which will be sent to you very shortly. We want you to put on a saturation campaign during the period of our special drive – April 24 through May 8. Speak up, America! Let's show the people behind the Iron Curtain how we feel about freedom of speech, free journalism, free radio, and free television.

 

At a meeting of the directors of the Crusade for Freedom in May 1960, the Broadcasters for Radio Free Europe campaign was declared a disappointment because of the low financial returns but "it was the consensus that the educational value had been stupendous and the fringe benefits probably far larger than can be counted in terms of money received."

For more information, see 

 

Did Communist China broadcast anti-Soviet Propaganda to Ukraine in the Cold War? ©

One of the intriguing twists in Cold War propaganda history is the possibility that Communist China broadcast anti-Soviet radio programs to Ukraine in the 1960s. The sources of the information were Ukrainian anti-Soviet but were consistent from 1963 to 1965. The following is taken from a declassified  CIA document dated December 17, 1965, “CHICOM Overtures to Ukrainian Nationalists”:

In the late summer of 1963, Peking began ordering English language publications on Ukrainian affairs through a London-based British agency. Shortly after that, it was learned that similar orders were being received from the Red Chinese in Bern, Switzerland. There was a short news item in the October 6, 1963, SHLIAKH PEREMOHY  that Mao had purchased books about Khrushchev's crimes in Ukraine. The article was signed with the initials I.K. (probably Ivan KRUSHELNYTSKYY, a BBC monitor in Reading, Berkshire, and a one-time leading member of the Zch/OUN in England). The article confirmed that the Red Chinese in Peking had ordered books published by the Ukrainian Publishing Union in London. Among the books ordered were the following: 

·      KHRUSHCHEV'S CRIMES IN THE UKRAINE; 

·      PETLIURA (Simon) 

·      KONOVALETS (Yevhen),

·      BARDERA MURDERED BY MOSCOW; 

·      CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN THE USSR; 

·      THE SHAME OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY; 

·      RUSSIAN OPPRESSION IN THE UKRAINE. 

The October 25, 1964 issue of SHLIAKH PEREMOHY carried an article entitled RED CHINA HITS MOSCOW WITH NATIONALITIES QUESTION, relating information taken from DIE POMMERISCHE ZEITUNG about letters sent (latter part of September 1964) by Red Chinese to individual Ukrainians living in Poland. According to the report, most of the Ukrainians who sent the letters were members of the USKT (Ukrainian Social-Cultural Society) in Poland. The letters signed by "The Communist League for Human and National Rights" condemned deportations of Ukrainians and promised China's support in Ukrainian anti-Russification measures. Similar letters were received in Pinsk (source assumes recipients were Byelorussians). According to the same article, letters also were received from the Chinese Communists by Polish citizens living in Western Ukraine stating that all the people should have the right to determine whether they want their land returned to Poland or to remain a territory of the Soviet Union. 

SHLIAKH PEREMOHY of January 24, 1965, in an article UKRAINIAN BROADCASTS FROM RED CHINA, enumerated the previous efforts by the Red Chinese to take advantage of the nationalities question in its anti-Moscow propaganda. It stated that Peking is using yet another method: Ukrainian language broadcasts to Ukrainians, who were sent by Moscow to the Far East, to Kazakhstan, and other Asian areas. The newspaper KHLIBOROB carried confirmation of this from one of its readers who personally had heard several such broadcasts. China reminds our brothers in Asia that Moscow sent them there by force. Ukraine is a rich country, Peking states in its radio commentary, a beautiful country, and Ukrainians do not need to leave it and go to distant, poor lands. Of those Ukrainians serving in the army in Asia, the Chinese ask: 

Why are you standing on the Amur, on the banks of the Pacific? What could interest you there? Why aren't you on the banks of the Dnieper, on the Black Sea? Why do Russian guards stand in those areas? Moscow does all this to destroy everything Ukrainian, to Russify all that which never was Russian . . .'." 

The Chinese Communists are smuggling anti-Russian propaganda into the Soviet Union aimed at inflaming internal discontent against the Moscow regime, according to a July 5 United Press International dispatch from Washington. It also mentioned that "according to UPI, large Ukrainian and Byelorussian settlements in the Amur River region in southeastern Siberia - another touchy area in the Red Chinese-Soviet border dispute - have also been targets of Peiping's propaganda." 

And this document from April 1966:

Evidence has been received that within the past year or so Red China has been carrying on propaganda and perhaps political action operations aimed at creating dissension between the Moscow regime and the Soviet Ukraine. Emigre contacts by the Red Chinese have allegedly been attempted in London and Vienna. There have also been reports of Ukrainian language broadcasts and literature distribution by the Chinese to Soviet Ukrainians. 

Simon Petlura (Symon Petruila) was a Ukrainian politician and journalist. He became the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Army and the President of the Ukrainian People's Republic during Ukraine's short-lived sovereignty in 1918–1921. Yevhen Konvolets was the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) from 1929-to 1938. Shliakh Poremohy (Path to Victory) was a weekly newspaper founded in 1954 and printed in Munich by the anti-Soviet exile group OUN/B.

The Not-So-Neutral Sweden in the Early Cold War ©

The end of the 1940s witnessed the completion of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, Berlin airlift, Marshall Plan, and the Iron Curtain. Eastern, Central, and Western Europe were physically divided by barbed wire, armed patrols, land mines, and guard towers. The Communist Party monopoly and censorship of the domestic media effectively cut off and prevented the free flow of information to the peoples of Eastern Europe and the USSR. There was also a widespread fear of war between the two blocs. America’s CIA was charged with intelligence gathering to learn when the Soviet Union was about the attack the West. There was a major problem: CIA had no intelligence agents behind the Iron Curtain in a position to fulfill CIA’s tasks. 

But there were thousands of men (for they were mostly men), who had escaped from the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, at the end of World War Two to Sweden, Some were willing to work for CIA and the British intelligence services. The British Intelligence Service (SIS) started Operation “JUNGLE” and CIA began Operation “TILESTONE” using recruited agents in Sweden.

CIA and SIS found an unlikely ally in this quest for intelligence: historically neutral Sweden (CIA cryptonyms CF-Land and HBCHEST). For example, the Swedish Defense Staff (CIA cryptonym TIEBARS) allowed the boat traffic between Sweden and the Baltics from Löfthammar and Bornholm island. Sweden also maintained a radio listening post in Gotland to send and receive wireless traffic between agents in the Baltics and Sweden. Additionally, prospective agents were trained for the infiltration operations in Sweden.

In the early Cold War, British, the US, and Swedish agencies infiltrated at least forty-two Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians to their homelands. Most of them died in Soviet captivity and only a few survived and exfiltrated.

 

The Swedish intelligence service priority targets in the Baltics were: 

 

1) Information on the military aviation development and installations in the Baltics, 

2) Results of Russian Atomic research and guided missiles, 

3) Complete information re the underground organization and strength in the Baltics. 

From CIA Director's Log September 6, 1951:

Swedish Intelligence successfully dispatched three agents by sea to Estonia on 2 September 1951. The dispatch boat successfully evaded a Soviet patrol craft which followed it on the return trip. OSO has supported this operation and will receive the intelligence it produces. 

 

The major intelligence personalities included:

 

USA

 

William (Bill) Colby; WWII veteran in Norway, CIA Office of Special Operations (OSO) officer in Stockholm, and future CIA Director.

 

United Kingdom

 

Alexander ‘Sandy” McKibbin: British intelligence (SIS) officer in charge of Baltic operations.

Sweden

Kommendör Kaptain Ken Lilianberg: Deputy Director Swedish Intelligence (G-2 section) officer in charge of Baltic operations, CIA cryptonym A-356.

Lithuania (CIA cryptonym DF-LAND)

 

Jonas DEKSNYS, CIA Cryptonyms A-374, TILESTONE, Lithuanian Intelligence Sevice alias PETRAUSKAS.

 

One example of his activities in connection with Sweden

 

19 January 1948 

DEKSNYS will leave Stockholm on 19 or 20 January for the south of Sweden. He will be accompanied by (redacted) or one of his assistants. He has been furnished the papers of a 'Swedish seaman and will board a Swedish vessel at some southern port. He will b taken to Gdynia where he expects to be able to land without difficulty. He plans to travel to Warsaw and from there to the neighborhood of the Lithuanian frontier, he expects to meet several members of the Lithuanian resistance who have been awaiting his arrival on the Polish side of the frontier for some two weeks. He hopes to be able to return to Sweden within a month coming back on another Swedish vessel. 

The primary purpose of DEKSNYS's trip is to set up radio communication with the Lithuanian underground. He is carrying with him 16 American radio crystals and an elaborate cipher code furnished him by the Swedes. The code is a numerical cipher similar to that used by the Russians in broadcasts from Lithuania to Moscow. It is based on a Lithuanian book, a copy of which DEKSNYS had in Stockholm. Transmissions will be made from Sweden once a week and it is expected that answers will be received twice a month from Lithuania. DEKSNYS has spent the last two weeks working with Swedish cryptographic experts setting up the code and arranging a series of questions in which his group and the Swedes are interested. 

Sweden and SIGINT

Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication (electronic intelligence—abbreviated to ELINT)

The Swedish signals intelligence program was in fact secret cooperation with Washington and London, which severely infringed on Sweden’s neutrality policy, and based on the exchange of technical equipment and data on the situation along the Soviet Baltic coastlines 

The Swedish intelligence and signal intelligence (SIGINT) services proved to be vitally important sources for hard-to-come-by information on Soviet military activities in the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) and on Soviet naval activities in the Baltic Sea. A tacit arrangement was arrived at in 1946 whereby the Swedes passed to the U.S. intelligence community any data they developed on Soviet military activities in the Baltic region, including from SIGINT monitoring of Soviet fleet activities in the Baltic and human intelligence received from the agents the Swedish intelligence service was then infiltrating into the Baltic States. 

 

In November 1947, the U.S. Air Force signed a secret agreement to give the Swedish air force K-22 aerial cameras with 24- and 40-inch lenses, film, paper, and other equipment. In return, the Swedes gave the USAF military attaché in Stockholm two prints and one contact film copy of every photograph taken on the covert overflight missions of the USSR, Poland, and Finland conducted by the Swedish air force over the next three years. (Source: The Declassified History of American Intelligence Operations in Europe: 1945-2001 Matthew M. Aid, October 2014)

From a compilation by David Lednicer of aircraft shot down in the Cold War:

13 June 1952 Soviet MiG-15 Fagot pilot Captain Boris Osinsky, of the 483rd Fighter Aviation Regiment, shot down a Swedish SIGINT C-47 (Tp79 79001 Hugin) piloted by Alvar Almeberg, over the Baltic, near Ventspils Latvia. Everybody on board the C-47 was killed - the only wreckage found at the time was a life raft. The C- 47 was one of two, (the other being 79002 Munin, both named after Odin's ravens), together with a Ju 86 called Blondie, which supposedly belonged to the so-called 6 Transportflyggruppen at F 8, which at that time had a staff of twelve. In reality, they were used for SIGINT duties, the C-47s fitted out with five operator stations, the operators belonging to FRA (Försvarets Radioanstalt = the Radio Establishment of the Defense). In June 2003, Swedish searchers found the wreckage of the C-47 on the bottom of the Baltic in international waters near Gotska Sandoen island, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of the Swedish coastline. The wreckage was raised during the night of March 19/20 2004 and returned to Sweden. 

US Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) and Radio Free Europe in Occupied Austria ©

 

Austria after World War II was crowded with "displaced persons" (DPs) who had been liberated from concentration camps or were former forced laborers in German factories. In 1945, the US Army set up the 430 Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) Detachment in occupied Vienna, Salzburg, and Linz, Austria. CIC had the primary function of “denazification” and searching to arrest “Nazi war criminals” and put them on trial.CIC was then tasked with screening these displaced persons to return them to their respective homelands or  after 1948 to the USA. With the completion of the Iron Curtain, CIC Austrian operations evolved into intelligence gathering in Czechoslovakia and Hungary through the use of couriers to infiltrate into and exfiltrate from both. 

 

One CIC intelligence-gathering operation reportedly was Project WACO, which involved CIC using anti-Communist agents in Czechoslovakia 1948-1949 to gather intelligence and recruit new agents behind the Iron Curtain—"couriers."

 

In cooperation with and support of CIC, "White Legion Radio” went into operation in April 1950, broadcasting live from Ried /Innkreis in the American Zone in Upper Austria in a studio in the "Villa Mayer," in which CIC staff also lived. The range of the transmitter on shortwave was at least about 300 kilometers to reach a large part of Slovakia and Moravia. 

 

In 1951, the manager of The White Legion radio station Catholic Priest Kamil Sumichrast in the Benedictine Monastery in Salzburg sent to Slovakia with the aim of creating a reporting group of the White Legion: Ernest Strečanský, Alexander Tihlárik, and Jozef Krutý. 

 

In July 1952, a Slovak Catholic priest visited displaced-persons camp 1001 in Wels, Austria. He told a refugee about the arrest of five men, who reportedly had attempted to cross from Austria into Czechoslovakia. The refugee then told a CIC agent based in Salzburg, who in turn wrote a report on July 30, 1952, which read, in part:

 

During the period of late June and early July 1952, the following named Czechoslovak refugees who had previously fled the CSR to the comparative safety of the US Zone of Austria were apprehended and arrested by the StB… as they attempted to return to
the CSR for unknown reasons: 

·      Ernest Strečanský, 

·      Peter Pavlovič, 

·      Anton “Tono”  Časta, 

·      Alexander Tihlárik, and 

·      Jozef Krutý, 

 

The names were checked against CIC files in Austria, and a summary report was written by CIC Special Agent (S/A) Clyde E. Taylor on July 30, 1952. One CIC agent report received was dated November 6, 1951, and read, in part: "Strechansky, Ernest, Possible Czech Intelligence Personality, … as an employee of Radio Free Europe in Salzburg was asking suspicious questions ot CSR refugees concerning their anti-Communist acquaintances. He was known to have exhibited a considerable interest in the "White Legion," an anti-Communist organization comprised of Czechoslovak refugees, and the KOVANDA Group, which allegedly gathers intelligence information for a US agency in Germany.” 

 

Another CIC report, "Radio Free Europe – Theft of Documents," dated December 10, 1951, mentioned that "Strechansky, who had been employed at RFE as a secretary allegedly confiscated some confidential documents from the RFE office in Salzburg." The CIC report dated April 4, 1952, read, in part, "Slovaks Allegedly Operating on behalf of the Russian Intelligence Service in Austria, Oliver Stankovsky is allegedly in the employ of one Ernest Strechansky and is paid 2,000 Schillings as well as room and board.” 

 

CIC special agent Taylor concluded his report with: "The above information is submitted because the undersigned believes that if Czech authorities have actually intercepted the five named refugees, they will, after debriefing, attempt to trade them their freedom in exchange for their acceptance to work as Czech intelligence operatives in the US Zone of Austria. If any of the persons mentioned above appear in Salzburg, they will be subjected to a detailed interrogation to prove or disprove whether they are operating for the CIS." 

            

The five White Legion men were put on trial June 23-24,1953, pled guilty, and were sentenced to long prison terms;

 

·      Strečanský        16 years

·      Casta                 16 years

·      Tihlarik             15 years

·      Kruty                15 years

·      Pavlovič           25 years           

For more information, see Chapter  9 in 

 

The Origins of CIA’s Clandestine Radio Station Novaya Ukraina ©

In 1948, the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) selected the émigré organization Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (ZP/UHVR) as the "most reliable, best organized, and operationally most experienced group for use in exploiting anti-Communist activity of the Ukrainian resistance group then active in Ukraine." For the next five years, CIA and ZP/UHVR conducted extensive joint foreign intelligence operations using the cryptonyms AEACRE and CARTEL and the political and psychological warfare operation AERODYNAMIC, which included propaganda leaflets and materials smuggled into Ukraine or dropped by balloons. CIA also infiltrated intelligence agents into Ukraine, but most were killed or captured by the Soviet forces.

 

Project PBCRUET, submitted on June 17, 1950, included this objective: “The exploitation and expansion of the Ukrainian resistance movement. To establish a "black" radio transmitter outside (and possibly eventually inside) the USSR for broadcasts to Ukraine." The immediate objective of PBCRUET was: “To provide the ZPUHVR with sufficient funds, printing presses, and printing paper to assist this organization in carrying on psychological warfare activities directed against the Soviet regime and the Soviet forces of occupation. 

 

CIA approval request, dated April 30, 1953, "Justification for S.R. (Soviet Russia) Division of Athens Radio Facilities for Clandestine Broadcasting to the USSR," listed the following as reasons for creating a new radio station: 


 

There are no clandestine psychological warfare assets presently available through which we can reach the audience in these strategic areas. The people in these areas will be receptive targets for black broadcasts. Anti-Soviet nationalism is a potent force in both regions and can be exploited. It was precisely in theme areas that anti-Soviet resistance forces arose during World War II. The population has suffered since the end of the war from the MGB-MVD campaign to eradicate the remnants of these farces. Mass deportations have occurred in these areas since the war and have added to the hatred of the Soviet regime. 

 

The same memorandum listed the aim of the “black” radio broadcasts: 

 

[S]timulate and intensify discontent and disaffection to the Soviet regime and provide the target audiences with hope of ultimate liberation. This will be accomplished through broadcasts in the native language of the target audience, based on factual events and national and cultural history. These broadcasts will stimulate national consciousness among the minority groups addressed and will urge them to maintain pride in the individuality of their various national cultures. Concurrently the proposed broadcasts will encourage passive resistance, earning against premature uprisings but urging organized passive resistance, which can develop into something more active when conditions permit. 

 

The objectives of the clandestine radio project now with the cryptonym RANTER were listed in a July 21, 1953 project outline: 

 

The objective of this project is to utilize the broadcast time available on the KUBARK (CIA)  radio installation PYREX at Athens, Greece, for the broadcast of a series of programs to be directed to: 

 

·      Soviet officialdom, 

·      Soviet military forces stationed in the Ukraine, 


·      The Indigenous civilian population of the Ukraine, 


·      Underground movement, 


·      Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). 




The tasks of the project were to: 


 

·      Furnish evidence of outside sympathy and understanding for the Ukrainian peoples. 


·      Intensify anti-regime disaffection by encouraging resentment, bitterness, and distrust of the Soviet regime and its personalities. 


·      Maintain national consciousness among the Ukrainians and urge them to maintain pride in the individuality and heritage of their culture. 


·      Create dissatisfaction among Ukrainian military personnel within the Soviet armed forces stationed in Ukraine. 


·      Create and intensify dissatisfaction among the Ukrainian civil authorities to the Soviet regime. The submitting division gave the following why the black broadcasts were necessary: This project is based on the need to make a more significant propaganda impact on this strategic target audience. Currently, the only PBPRIME (the United States, i.e., Voice of America) and KUBARK (CIA) propaganda efforts directed to the target area consist of Voice of America broadcasts and the Radio Liberation effort to the Kyiv area in the Russian language. 


 

The presentation of clandestine broadcasts, specifically tailored to the target audience's needs delivered on a close and friendly basis, will augment the existing inadequate PBPRIME and KUBARK efforts.

 

The July 1953 project outline also listed the method of preparing the broadcasts: 

 

·      It is proposed that the S.R. Division be authorized to plan a psychological warfare campaign to be implemented initially over the PYREX radio station located in Athens, Greece.

 

·      It is proposed that programs in the Ukrainian language be produced and recorded on magnetic tape in New York and flown to Athens for broadcast by personnel attached to PYREX. It is realized that programming from this distance is not as efficient and timely as it would be if located nearer the transmitter. However, this is the only means where immediate advantage can be taken of the PYREX facility. This project's program activities will be transferred accordingly when future operation conditions permit the programming to be prepared closer to the transmitter site. At first three tapes a week for fifteen minutes each broadcast time will be prepared. With the increase in script output and availability of air time, the broadcasts can be expanded. 

 

(Extracted from Cold War Frequencies: CIA Clandestine Radio Broadcasting to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe)