70 Years Ago: Radio Liberty began broadcasting on March 1, 1953 ©

“Radio Liberation” (Radiostantsiya Osvobozhdeniye) was first broadcast from transmitters in Lampertheim, Germany, on March 1, 1953, with a 20-minute program that was rebroadcast 12 hours. It opened with Soviet émigré Sergey Dubrovsky giving the station’s broadcast times and frequencies. This was followed by a political and moral proclamation read by Boris Vinogradov that began: 

"Listen! Listen! Today, a new radio station, Liberation, begins broadcasting. (Слушайте! Слушайте! Сегодня начинает свои передачи новая Радиостанция Освобождени)

 

The program continued with, “The radio would advocate “complete freedom of conscience and the right to religious preaching,” as well as “the elimination of exploitation of man by a party or the state. Listen to the first program here: 

World news followed and was read by Ekaterina Goby and Sergei Dubrovsky. The program ended with a historical program read by Sergi Dubrovsky that focused on the anniversary of the 1921 Kronstadt Rebellion when disillusioned revolutionary sailors, soldiers, and workers rose against Bolshevik power.

RL in 1953

Because of the two low-powered 10 KW transmitters purchased from Radio Free Europe, only the Soviet armed forces in Germany and Austria were targeted. There was no record that the first broadcast was actually heard in the target area. Yet, within ten minutes, the Soviet Union started jamming the broadcasts, and the jamming of Radio Liberty’s broadcasts continued uninterrupted until 1988. It has been estimated that the Soviet Union and other communist countries spent four US dollars for each dollar RL expended on broadcasting.

The American Committee for Freedom for the Peoples of the USSR was founded in the United States on January 18,1951, in the state of Delaware. Newspaper columnist Eugene Lyons was the first president. Unlike the National Committee for a Free Europe, the American Committee for the Freedom of the Peoples of the USSR decided not to raise public funds in the United States, which would have “aided in providing plausible cover for its true sponsorship”—the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination directed by Frank Wisner. Eventual funding from the U.S. Government for Radio Liberty was almost $160 million.

The Committee would undergo names changes to American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of the USSR, American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism in March 1953, and, finally, in 1964, Radio Liberty Committee. The American Committee’s position was that the most effective psychological war against the Soviet regime would be conducted by former Soviet exiles united in speaking out against Communism. However, there were difficulties in the way of accomplishing this aim: one was the extreme hostility between Great Russian groups and non-Russian nationalities of the USSR. The other difficulty was the basic political differences between Marxist and non-Marxist exiles, regardless of their nationality.

After long and arduous negotiations among the émigré groups at meetings held throughout Germany, an agreement was finally reached in October 1952, forming a Coordinating Center composed of four Great Russian and five nationality groups. This was not a unified émigré agreement:  certain Great Russian émigrés (NTS, for example) and representatives of important minority groups in the USSR, including Ukrainians and Byelorussians, did not join the Coordinating Center.

On June 30, 1953, a Presidential Commission issued a Top Secret report to President Eisenhower on International Information activities ("Jackson Commission”). The Commission's recommendations are very revealing:

In a situation short of war, the project can probably make its greatest contribution by de-emphasizing its political activities and devoting its major effort to improving broadcasts from Radio Liberation.

This station should use Soviet émigrés in an effort to weaken the Soviet regime and should concentrate on the Soviet military, government officials, and other groups in the population which harbor major grievances against the regime.

The American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, Inc., should concentrate on improving Radio Liberation and reduce expenditures on the émigré coordinating center.

By the summer of 1953, the Coordinating Center was dissolved, and any idea that the émigré groups would run their own radio station faded into history.

Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, Uzbek, Tatar-Bashkir, Armenian, Azeri, Georgian, Chechen, and Ingush language broadcasts were added to RL’s programming. From 1955 to 1973, Radio Liberty broadcasted from Pa Li, Taiwan, to eastern parts of Siberia and the Maritime Provinces of the Soviet Union. RL’s signal was capable of geographically covering, at various times, 90 percent of the USSR.

One of the first, if not the first, newspaper accounts of Radio Liberation appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on February 2, 1955.  The article, written by George W. Neill, began by quoting from a RL program:

Attention!

This is Radio Liberation.

Listen to the free voice of your brother fighters from abroad.

Listen to our true information, which the Kremlin tyrants and their lackeys conceal from you.

Pass along what you hear on Radio Liberation to your relatives, friends and acquaintances.

This is Radio Liberation.

The radio station’s name was changed to Radio Liberty in 1959.  Former US Presidents Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower were “honorary chairmen” of Radio Liberty at that time. The Committee press release gave the ideological justification for the existence of Radio Liberty:

Radio Liberty’s broadcasts analyze events and developments in the Soviet Union and the acts and policies of the Soviet government from the point of view of the best interests of the peoples of the Soviet Union. Radio Liberty’s writers and speakers seek to give expression to the innermost feelings, thoughts, and repressed aspirations of their fellow countrymen.

In January 1964, Howland Sargeant, former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and now president of the Radio Liberty Committee, issued a prepared statement giving the main task of the committee:

To sponsor efforts to communicate with the people of the Soviet Union in order to achieve the long-range goal of a fundamental change in Soviet policies and practices, which will reflect the will of the Soviet people for genuine peace and freedom.

On March 23, 1959, Radio Liberty transmitted its first broadcast from the beautiful beach Playa de Pals, on the Mediterranean coast, north of Barcelona, Spain. Shortwave broadcasting from this site would continue until May 25, 2001. Exactly 27 years after the first broadcast, on March 23, 2006, the huge transmitter towers, some of which reached a height of over 500 feet, were demolished in a live Spanish television broadcast.

The collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union was hastened in August 1991 when government officials illegally attempted to oust Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.  President Gorbachev publicly recognized the role played by Radio Liberty in informing the Soviet people.  Gorbachev said he relied on its broadcasts for news while held under house arrest in his Black Sea vacation home during the attempted coup.

Shortly afterward, Russia's first President Boris Yeltsin enthusiastically, if not fully accurately, said, “During the 3-4 days of this takeover, Radio Liberty was one of the very few channels through which it was possible to send information to the whole world and, most important, to the whole of Russia, because now almost every family in Russia listens to Radio Liberty -- and that was very important.”

A few weeks later, he signed a Presidential Decree giving RFE/RL special status, which allowed it for the first time in its history, to officially operate a news bureau in Moscow. Ten years later, Russian President Putin repealed this decree in October 2002. 

On March 20, 1993, Mikhail S. Gorbachev was an invited guest at RFR/RL’s 40th-anniversary celebration in Moscow of the first Radio Liberty broadcast; Gorbachev told the assembled audience of diplomats and journalists, "In the dark years of Communist rule before my own perestroika (reconstruction) reform program began, Radio Liberty told the truth.”  

"American Friends for Russian Freedom" in the early Cold War ©

In 1948, an association of American intellectuals and literary personalities was formed New York under the name Friends of Russian Freedom (FRF) as an organization "entirely independent of the United States government and policy." However, beyond some organizational meetings and public statements, the group otherwise was not actively engaged. 

 

Another group consisting of prominent Americans was formed in New York on February 18, 1951, under the name Friends of Fighters for Russian Freedom (FFRF), with Mrs. Henry Hadley as Chairwoman of the Organizing Committee and Mrs. Ivan Tolstoy as Secretary and Treasurer. 

The New York Times reported on forming the FFRF with this headline, "To Aid 'Russian Freedom’; New Anti-Red Unit to Stress Amity for the People.” Local newspapers in the U.S. also covered the formation of FFRF by quoting from the press announcement: "There can be no lasting peace and no source of freedom for any people until the Russian people have regained their freedom and returned as free and equal partners to the community of nations. It revealed that it already had begun to send financial aid and guidance to runaway Soviet citizens now in central Europe.” 

 

A Washington Post newspaper editorial of April 5, 1951, “Friendship for Russians”, listed two objectives of FFRF: “To mobilize American support for anti-Communist elements inside Russia and to provide material aid for refugees from that land and for Red Army deserters.”

 

The group's name was changed or superseded by the American Friends of Russian Freedom (AFRF) in late 1951. The president was retired Foreign Service Officer Felix Cole, the American Consul in Archangel, Russia, during the Russian Revolution. Other members included Mrs. Ivan Tolstoy, Eugene Lyons, Albert (Bert) Jolis, and William (Bill Casey). 

Eugene Lyons was editor of Reader’s Digest magazine and the first president of the American Committee for the Liberation from Bolshevism, responsible for Radio Liberty. Bill Casey was a former member of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and a future CIA Director in President Ronald Reagan’s administration. 

 

According to a biography of Bill Casey, he recruited Frank R. Barnett as director of the New York AFRF office in 1951. Barnett had been a Russian interpreter for the U.S. Army in World War II. He later described AFRF: “The idea was to get Red Army personnel in Berlin and Vienna to desert, to get them papers, find them jobs, resettle them in the West and make propaganda hay out of their defections.” 

 

Barnett later wrote about the opening of a new AFRF “Friendship House” in Munich in November 1951 as: “[T] he first reception center in West Germany exclusively for the use of escapees from the Soviet Union. Activities in a new and larger hostel include: language classes in German, English, and Portuguese; chess, ping pong, motion pictures, and a library of Russian, English, and German books; legal counseling and, of course, hot meals, not only for residents but transients en route to some technical training center or to the AFRF center at Kaiserlautern for job placement with U. S. Army installations in that area.” 

 

Mckinney Russel was the first director for the AFRF center in Kaiserslautern from 1953-1955. He later described his experiences in an oral interview:

 

[A]t that time, there was a significant NATO build-up, and consequently, there were lots of jobs for drivers, plumbers, electricians, security guards, and so on. As Center Director, I was in charge of finding jobs for the escapees and running the Center, a rather challenging job because I was still younger than most of the people I was responsible for. They would arrive speaking barely any German, and it was my job, through the German Labor Office, to persuade the Germans to give them a reference to the American office that was hiring for the U.S. Forces build-up. It turned out to be a very tough job. There were some rowdies and drunks among the Russians who were very hard to manage. 

 

McKinney Russell left AFRF after two years and first took a job as a manager at Radio Liberation in Munich in 1962 and then became a career State Department Foreign Service Officer. 

 

For more information, see Chapter 3 in 

 

 

When CIA launched manned-balloons on espionage missions into the Soviet Union in the early Cold War ©

A Chinese balloon, believed to be on an espionage mission, was recently discovered over the United States and eventually destroyed.  Below is a copy of a declassified CIA document showing how CIA and the Danish Intelligence Service (DIS) intended to launch a manned balloon on an espionage mission in the early Cold War. 

1 August 1955

 

Memorandum for: Deputy Director Plans/COP                                            

Via: Chief Foreign Intelligence

From: Chief, Soviet Russia Division (SR)

Subject: REDSOX * Mission to Estonia with Support of DIS

1. The Baltic Branch (SR/2) of SR Division has plans for a REDSOX mission to Estonia in the spring of 1956. These plans call for the infiltration of two black agents into the Estonian SSR for the purpose of recruiting resident agents therein for carrying out clandestine operations. 

2. The inception of these plans took place about one year ago. Coincidental with that time, SR/2 had successfully mounted a REDSOX infiltration mission into Northwest USSR by means of a personnel-carrying free balloon. That balloon was launched from a fishing vessel manned by Norwegian Intelligence Service personnel from a bay in the Barents Sea. 

3. The proven capability of a small ship as a launching platform for personnel balloons suggested a similar type might be successfully employed in the Baltic Sea. The employment of a balloon as an infiltration vehicle was considered at the time to resolve to a great degree the problem of security connected with the vulnerability to detection of aircraft overflights of Soviet territory. 

4. Since independent Agency maritime facilities were unavailable to us in the Baltic waters, it was decided to approach a friendly intelligence service that would provide such facilities for our use under natural conditions of cover. The Danish Intelligence Service (DIS) was such a service. For some time, SR/2 has been collaborating with the DIS, via the (redacted) and West European Division, for procurement of intelligence via personnel of Danish flag shipping. 

5. In the spring of this year, SR/2 sent an SR Division balloon operations officer to (redacted) to discuss the feasibility of mounting personnel-carrying free balloon operations into the Baltic states of the USSR from a DIS-controlled boat west of the line 30 miles off the Baltic states' coastline. The results of this mission were positive. Our balloonist and the (redacted) reported that the DIS was genuinely interested in cooperating to the extent of their ability. Subsequent negotiations with the DIS suggested it would be willing and able to provide us with a requisite vessel and the necessary operational, logistic, and meteorological support for mounting the desired operation.

6. In order to stimulate an even greater enthusiasm on the part of the DIS in such undertakings, it was concluded to be in the best interests of the Agency to train two DIS officers in the techniques of balloon operations. Peripheral conversations on this matter suggested the DIS may be willing to assign two of their officers for such training. Prior to extending a firm invitation to the DIS, SR Division examined the possibility of training these officers both in the United States and in Denmark. 

7. We would like to train the Danes in the United States. We envisage two advantages to this. First, the availability of proper facilities specially equipped to handle this training. And second, by providing hospitality to the D1S officers in the United States, we anticipate developing in then a sense of favorable obligation to the Agency. But should DIS find itself unable to spare Its officers for a sojourn here, we are prepared to carry out the training in Denmark. 

8. On 13 July 1955, Chief FI, authorized us to proceed with the invitation; on receipt of this, we took immediate steps to assure us of the availability of facilities for such training in the near future. As soon as a favorable reply is received at this Division, we will go ahead and extend a formal invitation to the Danes.

9. The training course designed to qualify two Danish representatives as balloon launching officers will take approximately four weeks. Sometime after the conclusion of that course, it is anticipated that an SR balloon operations officer will proceed to Denmark to participate with the DIS in balloon launching trials from a DIS fishing vessel of the type planned for dispatch operations next spring.

10. It may also be found advisable, at some time prior to the REDSOX infiltration mission, to take the DIS boat to the operational waters in order that the operational personnel may become familiar with conditions in that area. And should it be consistent with policy at that time, we might take advantage of the vessel's presence there to launch propaganda leaflet-carrying balloons to the Baltic states. An ancillary PP mission of that type may serve to provide the participating personnel with a taste of clandestine operations, which would serve to make them a little more familiar with an operational atmosphere and instill in them a certain degree of confidence in carrying out hazardous missions.

In February 1956, CIA decided to discontinue the planned operation. One of the reasons was: “Information received late in 1955 through interrogation of a confessed Russian Intelligence Service (RIS) agent indicates that the pool of existing operational support assets in the Estonian SSR are either under RIS control, or RIS monitored, and planned contacts through these channels can no longer be considered operationally secure for the REDSOX agents.”

* REDSOX refers to "Operations involving the illegal return of defectors and emigres to USSR as agents."

Graphic taken from a USA Today newspaper article.

CIA and Early Cold War Sexspionage in Austria ©

 

Instead of a means of gleaning secrets, sex is now used as a method of subverting the loyalty of the individual. Painstakingly constructed sex snares are devised to produce evidence that can then be used as blackmail evidence to force the victims to work against their country’s best interests. Such entrapments are frequent in Soviet bloc countries. They are often complicated and costly, involving scores of skilled operatives and the most advanced electronic and photographic equipment. They are always carried out with a cynical disregard for the feelings of those involved. Usually, they are successful. This modern, technologically sophisticated use of an age-old espionage technique has been called “sexpionage.”    After the war the SIS employed prostitutes in Germany and Austria to wheedle pillow secrets from Russian soldiers, but the value of this intelligence was minimal, and the British were never enthusiastic about such operations. The French, on the other hand, set considerable store by it and, according to a former British intelligence officer, there were at one time more than 400 prostitutes in the pay of French military intelligence “doing their best on their backs in the Vienna Woods.”*

In 1951, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched Operation REDCAP as a "systematic and concentrated program of penetration and defection inducement operations directed at Soviet official installations outside the USSR." 

 

The program included:

·       Agent recruitment in place for local intelligence and counterintelligence coverage. 

·       Agent recruitment in place for USSR coverage. 

·       Immediate defection for intelligence procurement. 

·       Agent recruitment for return to the USSR under official cover. 

·       Immediate defection for employment as an agent to be dispatched under illegal cover to the USSR. 

The program focused on individual Soviet officials and military posted outside Soviet territory, especially in occupied Austria and Berlin. Specifically, the CIA station in Vienna was tasked with learning; 

·       characteristics, 

·       habits,

·       weaknesses (whether sex or alcohol), 

·       places of residence, 

·       restaurants they frequent, 

·       shops they patronize, and 

·       names and addresses of their secretaries and mistresses, if any.

    We should eventually be able to find those in real trouble who are fearful of being recalled. Once we spot them, we can approach them and win their confidence. We must first find out which of them are in a mess, whether in the embassy, consulate, or purchasing mission. Each must be dealt with on his own merits, per his character, temperament, mental equipment, and background. They must be approached individually by our best-trained men who have all the imagination, personality, ingenuity, and linguistic ability to contact these men after we have found out all we possibly can about them. 

CIA chose Rostislov Lvovich Antonov, born in Leningrad, USSR, on November 30, 1920. CIA used the cryptonyms CATARATA, CACHINO-4, and GRALLSPICE 1 to identify him.

During World War Two, 1941-1942, Antonov surrendered as a prisoner to the Germans in the region of the city of Rostov on the Don. Later he entered into service with the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), which was created to fight against the Soviets under General Andrei Vlasov's leadership. He eventually became the confidential assistant to General Vlasov. 

After the war, he was on the Soviet list of “War Collaborators.” He avoided the Soviet army and settled in Kempten, Germany. He avoided forced repatriation to the USSR, bx using the name of a fellow ROA officer Sergei Froehlich for several weeks in May or June 1945. Froehlich was later active with American and German intelligence agencies. 

Antonov legally changed his name to Sergei Lvovich Shebalin, which he used for the rest of his life. He also used the aliases: Tonny CHZIMEK and Alfred DELLINGER.

From 1945 to 1951, Shebalin was in a displaced persons (D.P.) camp in Kempten and Memmigen, Germany. He also became involved with the local black market. He was arrested in November 1945 on a charge of being a "Russian Nazi" and was found not guilty. In 1947 he again was arrested for possession of false documents but released without a trial.

On the recommendation of Froehlich, Shebalin was recruited from the Memmigen DP camp and began working for the CIA in June 1951. One CIA officer wrote, "Shebalin loves adventure and interesting deals, loves the black market and plays it with rare skill, and was a combination of a sincere anti-Bolshevik and black marketeer."

His first assignment was to examine the possibility of establishing a net of exiled Russian agents who could release propaganda balloons into Iron Curtain countries. He succeeded in organizing this net and did preparatory work for the CIA, but both of these projects were abandoned due to a lack of funding. Shebalin's second assignment was to train agents to penetrate the Soviet Zone of Germany.

One CIA cryptonym for operations in Austria was GROOVY. Shebalin was sent to Vienna as a spotter with the specific tasks:

·     Exploration of Vienna black market channels for Redcap possibilities. Soviet citizens dealing in the black market would be relatively easy to approach and, with careful planning, to blackmail.

·     Exploration of the Vienna underworld for possible REDCAP contacts. The use of Vienna prostitutes for possible contacts has thus far fallen through mainly because we have been unable to find a reliable Austrian to exploit this possibility; other contact means may also be gambling, drug addiction, etc.

His cover was that of a businessman working for a Munich company LINDEX, co-run by Sergei Froehlich.

At a meeting on July 29, 1952, Shebalin and his CIA contact discussed various possibilities of successfully finding Russian-speaking Austrian girls for potential operational use, including newspaper advertisements. He explained, "In attempting to find an Austrian girl with a knowledge of Russian, he had tried a number of gimmicks, none of which seemed to offer any hope of concrete results. He hoped that sooner or later, he would come up with some idea that would enable us to find the type of girls necessary for successful operations against the Soviets."

In March 1953, during a meeting with his CIA case officer, Shebalin casually mentioned that he might have to go to the Linz area in Austria to operate in the black market to find targets against the Soviets. The case officer noted Shebalin's suggestions that girls could profitably be used in such work. The case officer mentioned in passing, "it should be borne in mind that in any dealings with such girls, the necessary precautions should be taken against contracting any disease. The warning was presented in general terms so as not to make the agent think it was directed solely at him (although it actually was). "  

Shebalin was unsuccessful for the CIA in Vienna, and the operation was terminated. Shebalin moved to Salzburg to await emigration. before leaving with his wife and child for the United States in February 1954 under CIA sponsorship. The rationale for CIA sponsorship was:

Subject, a former captain of the Soviet Army and later General VLASSOV'S adjutant, has been utilized under various projects of the S.R. Division since November 1951. Subject perforated the groundwork in two of the projects, but due to a lack of funds, these projects were abandoned. At present, the Subject is still connected, although indirectly, with REDCAP and counter-espionage operations. Reports from the field by the Subject's case officers speak well of his capabilities, motivation, and suitability for intelligence work. The Subject will be employed as an interrogation specialist by the Assessment and Recruitment Section of the S.R. Domestic Operations Base in this country. It is felt that his immigration to the United States is desired to assure his valuable services indefinitely and to secure his continued allegiance to American interests. 

He was under contract with the CIA until October 31, 1954, when the CIA decided that his operational usefulness to the Agency was minimal, and he became a" disposal/resettlement "case. While in Washington, D.C., he and his wife attended the “Americanization School“ to learn English for U.S. citizenship. They then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1960 he became a U.S. citizen. 

On January 11, 1977, Shebalin reportedly died in an automobile accident and was buried in the Oakland cemetery in Philadelphia.

* David Lewis, Sexpionage: The Exploitation of Sex by Soviet Intelligence 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The 1954 Murder of Radio Liberation's Chief Editor Abdulrachmann (Abo) Fatalibey ©

One of the first major acts of violence against the radios was the yet unsolved and controversial murder of the Radio Liberation Azerbaijan Service Director in 1954, presumably a KGB-directed murder.

On Monday, November 22, 1954, an eighty-year-old Munich landlady was cleaning a small kitchen she rented in her apartment. She moved a couch and noticed something large lying underneath. Something she had not noticed before. She called a neighbor to help move the couch. As they moved the couch out from the wall, they saw a horrifying sight: a man's body lying face down with his hands tied behind his back.  They immediately ran out of the apartment building and asked a neighbor to return with them. He picked up a flashlight, and they all returned to look at the body. Then, they called the Munich police.

            The landlady identified the body to the police as Soviet émigré Michael Ismailow to whom she rented the kitchen.  Only Ismailow had the key, and he used the kitchen infrequently, she told the police.  She could not see the face of the man because his coat was pulled up over his head as the police removed the body.  She assumed it was Ismailov, and the police accepted her assumption as fact without further investigating the identification of the body.

            The next day, the Munich newspapers reported the murder of Michael Ismailow. The initial medical report was that he had died of strangulation after being struck on the head with a hammer. The murderer remained unknown. Two days later, he was buried in a Munich cemetery.

            Meanwhile, Radio Liberation (as Radio Liberty was then called) Chief Editor Abdulrachmann (Abo) Fatalibey failed to show up for work and did not call to say he was sick. This was highly unusual; his colleagues knew him to be punctual and conscientious. Colleagues went to his apartment, but it was empty, with no sign of what had happened to him. They declared him missing to the Munich police and RL Management.  The Munich press speculated that Fatalibey was the prime suspect in the murder and had disappeared and committed the act.

            Somehow, a rumor started at Radio Liberation that the person buried as Michael Ismailow was actually Fatalibey. The police were notified and exhumed the body. After a full examination, the coroner said that the body was the missing RL employee Fatalibey, not Ismailow.

            Police later reconstructed his last night: 

November 20, 1954,  Fatalibey worked at the station "Radio Liberation" until 4PM,  then went to the US Military Post Exchange at Prinzregentenstrasse and from there to "Cafe Freilinger" at Leopoldstr. There he drank until 7:45 PM. He then took streetcar No. 22 to Nordbad, where he probably changed into No. 7 (direction Ostfriedhof-Alpenplatz). From around 8 PM to 9 PM, Fatalibey was with Ismailov at the latter's place at No. 6, Alpenplatz, together with Mrs. Ruhland, a tenant on the 2nd floor in the same building. Mrs. Ruhland left at 9 PM. Around 1 AM, Ismailov was seen alone, and for the last time, in the restaurant "Alpenhof."

            Ismailow became the suspected murderer of Fatalibey.

            This is probably the first "political murder affecting RFE/RL. I write probably because Belorussian Service employee Leonid Karas failed to show up for work at Radio Liberation two months earlier and was reported missing. A week later, his body was found floating in the Isar River. How the body got there was never discovered, but lacking any evidence of wrongdoing, his death was officially ruled a suicide or an accident.  

            Radio Liberation became a subject of Munich newspaper attention for the first time since the first broadcast in March 1953. This caused as much stir within the RL American management as did the murder of Fatalibey. The life and death of Abo Fatalibey could be taken as the metaphor for all émigrés who worked at RFE and RL. It is necessary to review the details of his life to fully understand the reasons why he was murdered. 

            The following is extracted from his "autobiography" for employment with Radio Liberation. Abdulrachmann (Abo) Fatalibey was born in 1908 of a Turkic Father and Azerbaijan mother. His grandfather had been a colonel in the Tsar's army. He attended various public and military schools in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. With the help of local military officer sponsorship, he moved to Leningrad in 1926 to attend the Military Engineering School for the next three years. He joined the Communist Party then as a peasant origin member.

            He returned to Azerbaijan as a Soviet military officer. He completed some more military schools and returned to the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District. He continued to be active in the Communist Party and Soviet army in both Moscow and Leningrad before being assigned to Kalinin in 1936.  Three years later, he was finally interviewed in-depth about his "social origins." He was then expelled from the Communist Party for concealment of his "social origins."

            When the war with Finland broke out, he was sent to the front and awarded the military order "The Red Star" as a Red Army soldier. Fatalibey was accepted back into the Communist Party. When the war with Germany broke out in July 1941, Fatalibey was Deputy Chief of Staff for the Soviet 27th Army.  He was captured by the German army in September 1941 and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.  

            Fatalibey was approached by the German military to work on their behalf. He accepted and eventually was sent to Berlin. The Germans formed battalions of nationality groups to fight against the Soviet Army.  Fatalibey volunteered for the Azerbaijan Legion, rumored to number about 20,000, and in August 1942, he was sent to the front with the First Battalion, later renamed the Lion Battalion. He was decorated for his action against the Soviet Army and returned to Berlin, where in 1943, he was elected to a high office in the Azerbaijan Congress.

            The Lion Battalion was then sent to aid the German war effort in Italy. In 1945, Fatalibey was captured by American forces marching through Italy and put in a prisoner-of-war camp. He wrote political letters and pamphlets to American and British political leaders and sent them out of the camp. The American military released him, but he had to move to various refugee camps before settling in Rome in 1948.  

            Fatalibey continued to write anti-Soviet and pro-Moslem pamphlets and drew the attention of the Palestinian Religious Leaders. He was invited to Egypt, where he became a military advisor for the Palestinian cause--he might even have fought against Israel, according to unconfirmed information. He wrote that he made the necessary battle plans, but they were never implemented. He moved to Jordan with some Palestinian leaders.  Later, he crossed the border into Turkey and settled in Istanbul.

            While in Cairo, Egypt, he claimed he maintained close contact with American and British officials and continued writing anti-Soviet political pamphlets sent to Washington and London. He was invited to Munich for a successful interview with Radio Liberation officials and returned to Turkey to await a job offer.

            In 1950, he returned to  Munich to become part of the American Committee for the Liberation of Bolshevism. He was called "The Major" in Munich's émigré community.  

           Almost a year before the date of Fatalibey's death, on November 30, 1953, at approximately 5 PM, two officials of the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), Munich, went to the Munich police and declared that émigré Michael Ismailov was strongly suspected of espionage. He intended that night to remove important information directly or indirectly from Germany. 

            Three Munich policemen followed Ismailov that night. At 8.40 PM, a person who was unknown and accompanied by another person, also unknown at that time, gave Ismailov a briefcase, which he took and continued on his way. At the next intersection, Ismailov was arrested.  The papers in the briefcase that Ismailov received were submitted to CIC and the Bavarian Land Office for the protection of the Constitution since they were written in a foreign language (probably Russian language RL scripts). Both agencies returned the document with the notation "no interest". 

            Thus, Ismailov's agent activities could not be proved. He was, therefore, only sentenced to two months imprisonment for violation of passport regulations.

            After the murder of Fatalibey, two employees of Radio Liberation declared to the police that they had known all along that Ismailov was an agent for the East and had instructions to do away with Fatalibey and to obtain material concerning "Radio Liberation. In agreement with CIC, and presumably Fatalibey, they had tried to establish Ismailov's guilt. They were the ones who handed the documents to Ismailov in November 1953.

            After being criticized for a poor investigation, the Munich police responded with, “Had CIC at that time properly informed the German police, it might have been possible to convict him not only for violation of passport regulations to two months imprisonment, but also for espionage activities or traitorous connections in violation of other German or Allied High Commission laws add thus prevent him from doing any further harm.

            The Radio Liberation New York Programming Center sent a draft program on December 2, 1954, about the Fatalibey murder to Munich. “We have reservations re any mention. Treating it as act Soviet agents would certainly tend increase feeling Soviet omnipotence and hopelessness resistance. Would discourage potential defectors to know how MVD can reach abroad. Also see possibility some aspects case vulnerable to Soviet counterattacks. Leave it to you to decide whether possible positive gains outweigh these negative considerations.” 

At Fatalibey’s burial in Neu-Ulm on 5 December 1954, a Radio Liberation statement was read to inspire other émigrés to keep up the struggle: "It is of paramount importance that the Bolshevik leaders know that the anti-communist liberating struggle of the peoples of the Soviet Union--of which Radio Liberation is the voice--are not to be intimidated nor checked by the assassination of its front-line fighters.  Let us see to it that Fatalibey has not died in vain." 

            The RL program on the death of Fatalibey was addressed to "Comrade Soldiers, Sailors, and Officers" of the Soviet Union and broadcast on December 7, 1954. The program ended with this thought: “His murder shows that his recent activities, like the activities of Radio Liberation as a whole, had begun to hurt the dictatorship in a vital spot.“

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hungary 1956: Radio Free Europe as a Transmission Belt

One area that led to the allegations that Radio Free Europe (RFE) was inciting Hungarian freedom fighters was the re-transmitting of information and appeals, sometimes without comments, from the various independent radio stations broadcasting in the medium and short waves that sprang up in Hungary after October 23, 1956, and lasted to November 9, 1956.

RFE had one of the world’s largest radio monitoring stations in Schleissheim, outside Munich. It was here that the freedom fighters’ radio stations were heard, recorded, and sent to the headquarters building in Munch. However, the freedom fighter’s radio stations in Hungary did not have a fixed time or frequency on which to broadcast. RFE sent engineers to the Austrian-Hungarian border to search for transmissions and sent their results to Munich and Vienna. 

 

There were at least 14 and possibly as many as 50 local freedom stations on the air. The chief ones were Free Radio Gyor, Miskolc, Pees, Debrecen, Dunapentele, Free Radio Rakoczi (Kaposvar), Szombathely, Nyiregyhaza, Radio Damjanich (Szolnok), Free Radio Eger, Free Radio Szechenyi (Szeged), Radio Vorosmarty (Szekesfehervar) and the Radio of the Workers' Council of the County of Szabolcs-Szatmar. RFE set up a special radio monitoring unit in Vienna to augment the monitoring in Schleissheim. In this way many, if not most, of the small radio station appeals were recorded and re-broadcast by RFE, not in the original voices, mostly due to poor quality, but with RFE staffers. 

 

Every evening at 5 p.m., the directional antenna at Holzkirchen (outside Munich,) used to broadcast to Czechoslovakia on the medium wave was turned to broadcast to Hungary.

 

Cord Meyer, former CIA staffer responsible for Radio Free Europe and other projects, wrote:

 

In the period immediately following the outbreak of fighting in Budapest, RFE became the best source of information available to the United States on what was actually happening throughout Hungary. 

 

As local revolutionary councils to announce their demands seized the low-powered provincial radio stations, the sensitive monitoring equipment of RFE in West Germany was able to pick up these weak signals and get translations promptly back to the Washington analysts and policymakers. 

 

From these broadcasts, it became quickly apparent that the revolution was on a national scale and not simply confined to street fighting in Budapest. 

 

Since these local radio stations, fourteen in all, could be heard only in their immediate provincial areas, they soon began making direct requests to RFE to replay their revolutionary demands on its powerful transmitters so that the whole country could be informed of the speed and depth of the revolt. 

 

The American management of RFE recognized immediately that the decision to rebroadcast back into Hungary such far-reaching demands involved policy considerations beyond their competence and they asked me for guidance on how to react. I took the problem up with Allen Dulles. He asked me to discuss it with Robert Murphy, then the number three men in the State Department. By the end of the day, we had our policy guidance from the top level of the Eisenhower administration. 

 

RFE was given authority to rebroadcast local programs when specifically requested as a communication service, but with attribution to the local station making the request and with identification of the program as a verbatim repeat of the original broadcast. To the extent that RFE then served as a transmission belt for communications between provincial revolutionary councils it played a significant role in spreading throughout Hungary the news of what was happening not only in Budapest but also in the outlying towns. In so doing, the radio did not act irresponsibly but as the disciplined instrument of a conscious policy decision by the Eisenhower administration. 

 

This rebroadcasting by RFE did serve to identify the radio with the fundamental goals of the revolution, and in the wisdom of hindsight RFE was later blamed for what was in fact a high-level policy decision of the administration. 

 

Interestingly, some radio stations also broadcast in Morse code.  Here is one example, on November 4, 1956, this message was sent from an unidentified radio station: 

 

Special appeal to Radio Free Europe. Early this morning Soviet troops launched a general attack on Hungary. We are requesting you to send immediate military aid in the form of parachute troops over the Trans-Danubian provinces. S.O.S. Save our Souls.

 

Reportedly, the last heard broadcast was on November 9, 10:15 p.m., from an unidentified station: "Send news. in general and in detail. We look forward to news. Say something."

 

Famed author James Michener included a quotation from a 1956 refugee in his book The Bridge at Andau, that I believe, succinctly captures the reaction of those who listen to the live broadcasts of Radio Free Europe: 

 

 

No Hungarian is angry at Radio Free Europe. We wanted to keep our hopes alive. Probably we believed too deeply what was not intended by the broadcasters to be taken seriously. The wrong was not with Radio Free Europe. It was partly our fault for trusting in the words. It was partly America’s fault for thinking that words can be used loosely. Words like ‘freedom,’ ‘struggle for national honor,’ ‘rollback,’ and ‘liberation’ have meanings. They stand for something. Believe me when I say that you cannot tell Hungarians or Bulgarians or Poles every day for six years to love liberty and then sit back philosophically and say, ‘But the Hungarians and Bulgarians and Poles mustn’t do anything about liberty. They must remember that we’re only using words.’ Such words, to a man in chains, are not merely words. They are weapons whereby he can break his chains.

 

For more information about the role of Radio Free Europe and examples of what the freedom stations were transmitting, see Allan A. Michie, Voices through the Iron Curtain: The Radio Free Europe Story.

 

Cold War Frequencies, Book Review Extracts

 

Book Review Extracts

Those who wish to appreciate the totality of the East-West conflict from the end of World War II to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, must also include a study of the Cold War’s hidden dimension, to wit, intelligence. This book provides a great opportunity to do so.

Cummings’s book introduces many of the major American players involved in the broadcasting endeavor during the Cold War—for instance, Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner, DeWitt Poole, William E. Griffith, and others. It is gratifying that it does not omit several lesser-known personalities, such as Ferdinand Peroutka and Pavel Tigrid. Readers will appreciate learning about Operation WINDS OF FREEDOM during which from 1951 to 1956 some 500,000 balloons carried about 300 million leaflets from West Germany across the Iron Curtain to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. 

The book brings up the devilish Operation KAMEN, a stratagem whereby the Czech secret police (StB) lured victims into a trap involving false border markers and the misuse of U.S. Army uniforms and insignia. Cummings also writes about the role of RFE broadcasts during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. 

Much of this has been known. But many readers are unlikely to have heard of other topics the book brings up, including, for instance, Russian-language broadcasts from Taiwan that targeted Siberia. Starting in 1950, they continued for almost twenty years. Cummings brings even the well-informed reader onto a new territory with his chapters on clandestine broadcasts from Greece to Bulgaria and Romania, the Voice of Free Albania, and “black” stations broadcasting to the Baltic States and to Ukraine, Belarus, and Slovakia. Regarding Slovakia, the focus is on the White Legion and the kidnapping of Josef Vincen, one of its founders. 

Igor Lukes, University Professor, Professor of History & International Relations, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies  Volume 27 • Number 1 • Winter-Spring 2022.