American Clandestine Radio Broadcasting to Romania in the early Cold War; "România Viitoare — Vocea Rezistenței Naționale" (Future of Romania – Voice of National Resistance), Part Two, ©

In December 1953, SHELLAC was the cryptonym for the clandestine radio subproject in the QKBROIL Romanian country project. The broadcasts had the primary aim of, “disaffecting the Romanian communists and it is planned to supplement these broadcasts with an "intruder voices program to be established in 1954.”  The programs would be broadcast from the same transmitting site near Athens, Greece, from which programs were already being beamed clandestinely to Bulgaria and Albania.

The CIA in 1954 chose Mugur Dumitru Valahu (1920-2003), attorney and journalist, as chief of the new clandestine radio station in Greece. Valahu had escaped Romania in 1948. He first settled in Paris and eventually worked for Radio Paris, BBC, and Radio Free Europe. For Radio Paris, Valahu and his Romanian colleague Gheorghe Bumbesti (1919-2002) were responsible for broadcasting “coded messages” to non-existent persons in Romania that gave the impression that the West had links with a fictitious anti-Communist resistance. Romania protested these broadcasts and Valahu and Bumbesti were forced to resign from Radio Paris. They left France and went to the United States.

In an interview given to Radio Romania’s Center for Oral History on October 25, 2010, Valahu talked about his broadcast experiences in Athens: 

I came into contact with American friends who had been in Romania with the American Commission in 1944-1945 and whom I met in Paris and with whom I discussed this plan of mine about a clandestine post. And then I was told that the US Government was planning to appoint me with the leadership of this post in the psychological war of the Americans.  Bumbesti and I then went to Athens, Greece, and began broadcasting clandestine radio programs to Romania. 

The offices were in Athens in a building, in a villa, where we recorded the tapes on tape. Then these tape tapes, put in a kind of envelope, were sent with a special courier to Thessaloniki, where our transmitter was. The courier who came every day was American, he spoke a little Romanian because he had been through Romania. Our equipment was not extraordinary - there were two tape recorders, a microphone, and so much. For our programs there was a special transmitter.

Valahu began is 15-minute program with: "Here is the clandestine radio station Future of Romania - Voice of National Resistance!. Lieutenant Colonel Dumitru Arbore speaks to you.." It was his broadcast pseudonym. The show was announced through a segment of a 1953 Hollywood American movie  "Blowing Wild" starring Gary Cooper. According to Valahu, “Our broadcasts were quite violent, because I thought I was expressing what the whole people wanted to say, which was hostile to the communist regime.” Valahu focused his programs on intellectuals and the military. Bumbeşti was concerned with peasants and workers. This is an excerpt from a March 1, 1957, broadcast:

The Communists have dug their own grave! Keep your trust in freedom! Brothers! Let's step up the strike of laziness and bureaucracy! Lets boycott the orders of the government servants! Through continuous struggle to freedom and independence! Communists! Listen to the warning of the Romanian people! Break away from Moscow! Break away from the henchmen of the Romanian people! Give us the proof that you are not stooges of the invaders! Give the country a truly socialist government! Move quickly to earn the mercy of the people! Stop the terror, stop the looting and exploitation!

In his oral interview, Valahu said:

We wanted to leave the impression that we were located directly in Romania. In our broadcasts, incitement was our very clear intent.Not only did we attack the government, calling them gypsies, vagrant, stooges, etc., but also at the end of each broadcast we said: "Death to the government’s henchmen!Down with Dej’s gang of gypsies". 

Our shows were nothing like those broadcast on Radio Free Europe or on Voice of America, which were, so to say, more elegant, more moderate, and purely informative. 

From time to time, we met with Romanians who briefed us on the current state of affairs back home. One of the engineers from one of the jamming stations  told us that the government was extremely concerned with our activities on the radio, with the fact that we instigated people and called for capital punishments. Every time our show came on the air, they would say “Here comes Radu Verde.” Radu Verde meant us, and the technician said we were considered public enemy number one from the point of view of the communist regime. 

During the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Valahu described his broadcasts to Romania: “We urged people to become aware of Romanian pride, of the fact that Hungarians were about to rebel and that Romanians could not sit idly by. We just had to do something, we had to hold strikes and street rallies ... We advised people to carry out individual acts, so as not to give way to reprisals against potential groups.”

CIA decided October to close down “Future of Romania” (and Albanian and Bulgarian broadcasts) on October 31, 1960 and Valahu and Bumbesti left Greece. Valahu said, “The Americans took all the papers, all the appliances, everything. I asked for my personal records to be given to me, they said, ‘Lord, no! These are all secrets, we can not give you anything, it's a closed case.’ So we do not even have the copies of our articles or the tapes we have preserved.”

Afterwards, Mugar D. Valahu spent many years in Africa. He went on to become a successful author of books about Africa, including, The Katanga Circus: A Detailed Account of Three UN Wars. He died in southern France on February 24, 2003.. 

Georghe (George) V. Bumbesti returned to the United States and eventually became Deputy Director of the Voice of America’s Romanian Service. He died in King City, California on March 8, 2002.

American Clandestine Radio Broadcasting to Romania in the early Cold War; "România Viitoare — Vocea Rezistenței Naționale" (Future of Romania – Voice of National Resistance),Part One, ©

The Office of Policy Coordination, a hybrid organization of CIA and State Department responsible for psychological warfare operations, proposed a project, presumably in 1951, that included the following points in the best (or worst if you will) Cold War rhetoric:

Undoubtedly some of the broadcasts of the Free Europe program
s and some of the Voice of America broadcasts are listened to by quite a flew Rumanians in the hope that they may grasp some information as to early liberation of their country. We believe and recommend that intensive propaganda by means of a "black" radio be instituted as soon as this plan is approved with a radio station in the vicinity of our proposed forwarding base in Greece. 

From Greece the free Romanians assigned to this radio work, will be in a position to listen daily to the Bucharest Communist radio broadcasts and pick up any points which will he useful
in countering the false propaganda spread by the official Communist station. 

This powerful “Black" radio directed to Romania from Greece, whether on a long or medium wave, will no doubt be subjected to jamming 
in certain areas of the country, but according to past experienced, they will be unable to extend this all over Romania. Consideration should also be given to the dropping of throw-away redios.to the local population. It
is very gratifying that quite a good many free Romanians now in the United States have had opportunity to receive proper training and indoctrination as to the making up of programs directed to Romania under the auspices of the National Committee for a Free Europe. These people will no doubt above very helpful in setting up and running the black radio program with the assistance of U. S. technicians. Attempts should also be made to shadow broadcasts or inject adverse ghost talk into the Communist broad- casts emitted from Bucharest.

In addition to the black radio, consideration should be given to the dropping in of leaflets and posters in various parts of Romania. One of the primary objectives of the black radio should be to uncover the Communist "bullies" and threaten any further Communist crimes with measures
of retaliation. 

Once bases in Romania have been established, it will be easier to carry out threats made by radio and, in fact, carry out acts
of reprisals against Communist leaders and those threatened. Information shall be collected from all possible sources emanating from Romania and from those recently out of the country, in order to piece together the pattern and set up of as many Communist organizations and towns as possible. 

In this way we will have correct information as to the Communist leaders
in various towns and follow up their doings. Should a Communist official or Militia chief embark on a terror campaign against the local population in some areas, then both by radio and by leaflets we could uncover him, threaten him and actually abduct him and leave his body exposed in the “Red Square" of the village or town.

The project was approved on August 7, 1951, and given the cryptonym QKBROIL. The timetable for 1951-1952 included

The current objectives of Project QKBROIL for the support and eventual liberation of a Free Rumania are:

1.    To establish and implement successful psychological warfare propaganda aimed at that country.

a. To accomplish the fist objective, the Chief Propaganda Officer is being dispatched at the earliest possible date to Europe to recruit the remainder of the Propaganda Broadcast Staff. It Is expected that his staff will have been completed and his station manned by the end of February 1952 and operating by the end of March 1952. 

However, it was not until 1954 that broadcasting actually began from a secret CIA transmitter site near Athens, Greece.

Next: Part Two, more details of CIA’s clandestine radio broadcasts to Romania.

When George Washington Stopped World War III Before It Started! ©

George Washington, the first President of the United States of America, was born on February 22, 1732.

For the 1954 Crusade for Freedom fund-raising campaign in behalf of Radio Free Europe, the Advertising Council developed three themes:

•   "Help end World War III before it starts" 

•   "Send truth through the Iron Curtain" 

•    "Let George do it" (referring to the face of George Washington on the one-dollar bill). 

Below we will look at the third theme that was used to rally Americans to action in the Cold War: "Let George do it."

The goal of the massive 1954 campaign was to raise ten million dollars to "beam through the Iron Curtain." The Ad Council mailed a campaign guide to 20,000 advertisers, agencies and media executives. Newspaper ads were sent to "daily, weekly, farm, labor, foreign language, religious and Negro papers." 85,000 two-color ads were to be posted on busses, trolley and commuting railroads. 15,000 post office trucks were to carry Crusade for Freedom posters.

The "kit" sent to television stations included films that featured prominent television and stage stars. There were 26 million homes with televisions in the United States. The estimated number of “home impressions” from network spots of the Crusade for Freedom was 3 billion, In addition, there were 18,500 spot announcements on local television stations. Radio kits were sent to 2,700 local radio stations that resulted in an estimated 700,000 announcements.

The Outdoor Advertising Incorporated supported arranged for 8,000 large24-sheet billboard posters which were to "generate more than 1 1/2 billion advertising impressions." This outdoor advertising was to be "one of the greatest public service contributions in history."

One of 1954 newspaper and magazine advertising themes was "Let George Do It“ -- a play on the American slang "Let Someone Else Do it."  The text of one advertisement was:

The best way $1 from you can help end World War III before it starts.

Take a look at one of the dollars in your pocket. Believe it or not, that dollar might buy you the thing you want most in all the world-peace.

That single dollar can help send Truth through the Iron Curtain-Truth to 70 million restless, freedom-loving captives of Communism who can do more than anyone else to stop Soviet Aggression dead in its tracks!

Radio Free Europe (an independent American enterprise supported by private citizens like yourself) is getting the Truth through to them now ... Truth to counteract Soviet lies about you ... Truth about their own countries and their Soviet masters.

RFE is sending Truth day and night, from 21 powerful radio transmitters.

Your dollar can help do even more.- It can send at least 100 words of Truth and hope where they are needed most. It can help build new transmitters, send more programs. It can help stop World War III before it starts.

Another Ad read:

Let George Do It

No, you wouldn't as a rule.

But here’s one time you can — andhelp stopWorld WarIII before it starts.

You can do it with your dollar, which carries the portrait of "the man who couldn't tell a lie."

Through Radio Free Europe your George Washington dollar can carry the TRUTH to 70 million Communist-controlled people behind the Iron Curtain— if you'll let it.

Give a "Truth-Dollar“ for Radio Free Europe — the free world's most effective promoter of hope and courage behind the Iron Curtain today.Send your dollar to Crusade for Freedom, c/o your local Postmaster. 

It will buy 100 words of TRUTH on Radio Free Europe for those captive millions who are our first line of defense against Soviet aggression. Your dollar will squelch a Red Lie

"Let George Do It“— today!

Ferit Agi, Veteran Journalist And Former Director Of RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service, RIP

Ferit Agi, a veteran journalist and former director of RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service, died on December 25 in Munich, Germany. He was 75.

Born to a Tatar émigré family in Manchuria, China during World War II, Agi experienced Soviet brutality first-hand from his earliest years. As an adult, he dedicated his life to defending human dignity and individual rights and promoting pluralism and diversity.

When Agi was just two years old, in 1945, Soviet forces entered Manchuria and his father was detained by Joseph Stalin’s secret police and sent to the Gulag for his political activism among Tatar emigres. Agi did not see his father again until he was 25 years old. By that time, the family had taken refuge in Turkey. Agi pursued a degree in Turkic studies at Istanbul University, served in the military and participated in local Tatar cultural life.

In 1969, he received an offer to join RFE/RL, then based in Munich, Germany. He remembered that period of his life with humor, saying he went to Germany with one piece of luggage, expecting he would not stay long. 

But Agi’s term in RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service lasted an incredible 37 years.

He began as a radio producer, moderator and broadcaster, becoming director of the service in 1989. Agi led the service’s move from Munich to Prague in 1995, creating a network of local correspondents in Tatar-populated areas of the former Soviet Union. In 1997, he oversaw the opening of a bureau in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s Tatarstan Republic and launched the rebroadcast of RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir programs on FM affiliates in Tatarstan. 

Agi gained the deep respect of his colleagues as well as RFE/RL’s management. In 2002, he was asked to oversee the launch of a new North Caucasus Service and briefly led it. Colleagues remember him as a gentle person but also as a man of firm principles if it came to RFE/RL’s mission and standards. 

In 2006, Agi retired from RFE/RL and moved back to Munich with his family, but remained in close touch with the Tatar-Bashkir service and its correspondents in the field. He also published a book of his father’s memories about life in the Gulag.

Ferit Agi is survived by his wife, Aische, also a long-time RFE/RL employee in Munich, and his two children, Kerim and Banu. 

Source RFE/RL

The Battle for Timisoara, Romania, December 1989, Radio Free Europe Correspondent Eggleston's Eye-witness Report ©

Roland (Roley) Eggleston, RFE/RL's correspondent in Budapest, Hungary, was in that city on December 22, 1989, when word reached him of the developing events in Romania, He telephoned a Hungarian-Romanian-speaking interpreter and asked her to accompany him to Romania. Below is his exciting eye-witness account of the battle for Timisoara, Romania December 22-25, 1989 -- adapted from the January 1990 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in-house publication Shortwaves. 

At the border we discovered most of the crossings were closed. From the radio, my interpreter learned there was one post not far away, which was still open. We quickly drove there. I identified myself as a Radio Free Europe journalist. The officer in charge was dubious and twice searched the car thoroughly. A second soldier jumped around us excitedly, convinced we were bringing assistance for the revolution. I paid 53 DM and finally received an entry visa in my passport, but the officer cautioned us that there was still shooting taking place on the roads.

Without further incident we drove to the nearest city, Arad, and found our way to the center square. It was now dark. I witnessed an amazing scene: the square was crowded with people, all kneeling, with candles, reciting the Lord's Prayer. Although we were told there had been no incidents, and that a single member of the dreaded Securitate was tied up in the local town hall, gunfire broke out in the square as we departed Arad.

The road to Timisoara was clear, and in total darkness, without the aid of street lights, we made our way to the center of the city. I thought 1 must have become hardened from movies or television, as the scene which then unfolded seemed to be unreal. We had just parked in the square when a firefight began between the Securitate and the Romanian army. Together with my interpreter, we had to lie face down in the street as bullets struck around us.

The most frightening aspects of the battle were helicopters, which hovered overhead, manned by the Securitate, shooting indiscriminately at anything that moved.

At nearly all intersections barricades had been thrown up and manned by civilians with armbands. At one such barricade, I asked for help in making my way to the city hospital, where I knew much of the story of the battle of Timisoara was taking place. I again identified himself as a correspondent for RFE. This was greeted with cheers and praise, and shouts that, "You're the only ones who told us the truth!"

A burly man in civilian clothes offered to take us through the barricades to the hospital. He was reluctant to go into the building with us, but eventually did so.

We were hardly inside, when a woman doctor began screaming and pointing at this man. People rushed up, pinned back his arms and dragged him away. The doctor said she recognized him as being in the hospital a week earlier, carrying a machine gun and in the company of Securitate, who were hauling away civilians wounded in earlier fighting. 1 never saw him again.

I used a hospital phone to try to call Munich but could not get through. Next to me, on the floor, lay the body of a civilian with his arms outstretched over his head. I couldn't tell whether he had fallen like that or had been shot with his hands in the air. I assumed he was one of the Securitate.

The next day I finally found an international line at the Timisoara police station and was able to telephone my reports to RFE/RL. We stayed overnight in the hospital. The staff, extremely helpful, made beds available and offered us endless cups of hot tea. We ate the same food as the hospital staff; margarine, bread, and cold sausage.

The next day I went to grave sites where the bodies of persons executed had been found. It was a nightmare scene, with many of the bodies mutilated terribly, among them small children.

After three days in Romania, my interpreter and I joined a convoy of automobiles, protected by a Romanian army tank, which made its way out of Timisoara toward the Yugoslav border.

At nearly every small village along the way, local farmers, armed with iron bars and clubs, stopped us despite the army tank escort and searched the cars thoroughly, looking for members of the Securitate. I put my RFE/RL identification to good use on these occasions.

We eventually reached the Yugoslav border and from there to Szeged, where I filed another report to RFE/RL, using the facilities of Hungarian Television, which was quick to cooperate. 

Listen here to the battle sounds of Timisoara on December 17, 1989, as broadcast over Radio Free Europe's Romanian Broadcast Service on December 20, 1989, after verification of its authenticity.  

In March 1990, Roley Eggleston received one of the first "President's Award for Outstanding Achievement" from then RFE/RL President Gene Pell. The plaque he received read, "For outstanding journalistic achievements covering events in Eastern and Western Europe and for dedication to the mission of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty."  In his remarks, president Pell cited Roley's journalistic abilities and his physical courage while reporting on the Romanian Revolution.

Photograph of Timisoara courtesy of The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER). Audio, photograph of Roley Eggleston receiving his award for his reporting, and article adaption courtesy of RFE/RL.

Updated: Ulysses Fights Moscow: When Kirk Douglas agreed to do a Radio Free Europe broadcast Interview, after being insulted by Radio Moscow ©

Famed Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas celebrated his birthday on December 9, 2019; he is 103-years-old. Below we will take a look at a little known Cold-War vignette involving him and Radio Free Europe.

In 1950 Kirk Douglas was on the national board of the Theater for Freedom (TF), formed by another Hollywood great John Wayne. The purpose of the Theater for Freedom was "to enlist the men and women of the entertainment world on the side of America in the psychological war now raging, to use their talents and mobilize resources in an all-out offensive against Communism."

Radio Moscow on April 14, 1954, broadcast the following:

Once upon a time an Italian film producer invited an American artist to play a part in a film based on Homer’s „“Odyssey.“ In reply to this suggestion the artist said he was interested in knowing whether Mr. Homer wrote any other film scripts. He did not know who Homer was, but in our country fifth grade history books tell about Homer.

The 1954 film was Ulysses; the producer was Dino de Laurentiis.

Kirk Douglas, was born Issur Danielowich Demsky in Amsterdam, New York, on December 9, 1916, of Jewish immigrant parents from Gomel, Belorussia. His acting career began in the 1930s, with the stage name Kirk Douglas. He then legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas in 1941, when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

The Crusade for Freedom contacted Kirk Douglas, who on May 6, 1954, agreed to answer the Radio Moscow program by speaking over Radio Free Europe, in the Russian language. Douglas said, “Ordinarily I wouldn’t dignify any Communist propaganda merchant with a reply, but this broadcast’s true purpose is to picture the American people as a nation of ignoramuses, without education, breeding or culture.“

He added that he welcomed an opportunity to answer Radio Moscow because, “It did much more than attack me, it uses me as an instrument. I shall use truth to beat down Communist lies. I think any honest picture of our American way of life will do just that.”

Newspapers carried story with the headlines reading:

·      “Film Star Kirk Douglas has declared War on Commies.“ 

·      “Reds Pick Out Wrong U.S. Actor to Scorn.“ 

·      “Kirk Douglas to Answer Russ Slap in Russian.“ 

·      “Actor to Answer Communist Insult, Radio Free Europe to Carry Reply.“

A photograph of Kirk Douglas reading a Russian grammar book accompanied the newspaper articles and carried the caption: “Boning Up on Russian.“

Photo above of Kirk Douglas before the Radio Free Europe microphone with RFE's Hungarian legendary disc jockey Geza Ekecs courtesy of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

2nd Edition to be published in 2019

The publisher (McFarland) of my book Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 has agreed to publish an enlarged 2nd edition (three new chapters on Clandestine Radio), with updated chapters of the 1st Edition —presumably it will be in the 2019 Spring or Summer Catalogue.

There will be more information on this as it develops.