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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Radio Free Europe Broadcasts as Gray-Black Propaganda ©

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            

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

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

A recently published book of interest:

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

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents

Introduction

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

Author Information

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

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

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

Moderator 

Eric Lohr

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

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

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

NTS and Radio Free Russia

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

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

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

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

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

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

NTS stopped broadcasting from Taiwan in 1974.

TsOPE 

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

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

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

TsOPE broadcasts ceased in 1962.

Voices from the East: Cold War CIA-sponsored Russian Language Broadcasting from Taiwan, Part One, Radio Liberty ©

A long-forgotten, or little-known fact is that Radio Liberation/Radio Liberty broadcast in the Russian language not only from Spain and Germany but also from Taiwan for almost 20 years: from May 1, 1955, to December 31, 1973, to eastern parts of Siberia and the Maritime Provinces of the Soviet Union. 

Below I will summarize the Radio Liberty transmitting site at Pa Li, Taiwan -- CIA cryptonym FJHUMMING.

On Sunday, August 13, 1950, the Chinese Nationalist shortwave broadcasting station, "The Voice of Free China," began transmitting to the Soviet Union. The content of the broadcast was short items of international news presented in a straightforward manner, without comment. The announcer spoke fluent Russian but with a Chinese accent. The broadcast was promptly and effectively jammed. 

The original small 1 kw short-wave transmitter was at Panchao, just outside the western edge of Taipei. This was an interim location while a new base was being constructed at Pa Li, on the coast 20 km north of Taipei, an area free of any obstruction.  This provided an over-water reflection of the signals directed to the U.S.S.R’s Far East region. 

An agreement was signed on December 4, 1954, between the Radio Liberty Committee (RLC) and the Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC), which allowed the RLC to use transmitting facilities owned by the BCC -- the "broadcasting arm" of the Republic of China on Taiwan. 

The agreement provided that the BCC furnish the land and personnel for operation and maintenance of the facility and that RLC provide and maintain the antenna system and related equipment and parts. Under the agreement, the BCC assigned transmitting time blocks to RLC for its use for 8 hours each day. RLC was required to pay the corporation $16.50 an hour for each transmitter provided. In 1971,

By the 1970s, Radio Liberty had 17 transmitters, totaling 1.8 million watts at locations in Germany, Spain, and Taiwan, which broadcasted 295 transmitter hours a day in Russian and up to 18 other languages of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 

News programs were produced locally. While some feature programs broadcast from Taiwan were flown from Munich or New York, this was a time-consuming process, so a local program department was established in Taiwan, supplemented by a correspondent in Hong Kong. Eventually, there was a staff of 16 persons working for RL. 

To monitor the effectiveness of its broadcasts originating from the site in Taiwan, Radio Liberty had a monitoring facility in Sapporo on the island of Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. 

This audio clip of Radio Liberty signing on is from DX History, http://www.ontheshortwaves.com/Recordings/Liberty.mp3

RL 1961 on 9720 kHz at 0700 UTC, recorded in Japan by NSB "DX Time" Producer Jun Kato)

When the Eagle became a Swan ©

At 04:50 AM, December 2, 1953, Radio Free Europe put a 50 kw, mobile, medium-wave (AM band) transmitter, code name “Eagle” on the air to Czechoslovakia, with the playing of Beethoven’s “Egmont Overture.” This transmitter was in addition to the medium wave transmitter operating in Holzkirchen, near Munich, which was so heavily jammed that RFE decided to add the second transmitter. The mobile transmitter complex, located in Cham near the Czechoslovak border, consisted of seven trailers: a cooling van, studio van, frequency receiver, power supply van, diesel tanker, shop van, and a RCA 50 kw transmitter, identified as MB-50.

The frequency chosen for its broadcasts was 854 kHz, which happened to be the primary frequency of Radio Bucharest. That frequency also had been used with low power by the Armed Forces Network (AFN) in Berlin for the American military. High-level negotiations were required to get the AFN to agree to dropping the frequency so that RFE could use it. AFN moved to another frequency, and almost immediately began complaining that coverage was not as good as it had been previously on 854 kHz.

It is doubtful that RFE’s programs were heard as interference from Radio Bucharest was severe and two Czechoslovakia jammers began blocking the frequency within minutes after it went on the air. Romania protests to the United States and to Germany eventually  forced RFE to close down the transmitter.

The “Eagle” was quietly shipped to the Germany port of Bremenhaven, where it remained in storage for several years, until CIA thought it would be useful to move the transmitter into the Caribbean and begin a black radio operation beamed toward Cubs as “Radio Americas”.

The medium-wave transmitter, still inside its van, was shipped to Swan Island, where it broadcast to Cuba for the next eight years. The transmitter was then moved to Vietnam, where it conducted clandestine operations until the end of the war in 1974. While in Vietnam, the transmitter operated from an airplane, and was often referred to as “The Blue Eagle.”

Radio Romania today is still using the 855 kHz frequency with a 250 kW transmitter located at Tancabesti. 

James (Jim) Critchlow, RIP

James (Jim) Critchlow was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1926; he died on July 7, 2019. 

He was one of the first American managers with Radio Liberation in Munich. In brief, he was with Radio Liberation / Radio Liberty in Munich, 1952-1962; bureau manager, Radio Liberty, in Paris, 1962-1965; director information, Radio Liberty Committee, Inc., in New York City, 1965-1972. 

Jim was the author of the book Radio Hole in the Head: Radio Liberty: An Insider's Story of Cold War Broadcasting,

Jim was also Chief Soviet and East European research, United States Information Agency, Washington, 1972-1976; planning and research officer, United States Board for International Broadcasting, Washington, 1976-1985; visiting professor, University of Illinois, Champaign, 1986-1987; fellow, Russian Research Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, since 1987. Freelance broadcaster the Voice of America, Washington, since 1991.

In November 2018, Jim Critchlow gave an interview to RFE/RL in Prague. Here are some excerpts from that interview about the early days of Radio Liberation / Liberty.

(In 1953) We weren’t directly connected to the transmitters, so we had somebody on a motorcycle who would pick up the tapes of the broadcasts at the studio in Munich, then hand them off to the conductor of a train bound for Mannheim -- our only transmitters were located near that city. So, the time between when you recorded the broadcast and when it actually went on the air could be anywhere from five or more hours. 

When Stalin died, somebody got me out of bed at two o'clock in the morning and we rode up the autobahn to Mannheim. We set it up so that the broadcasters could dictate the programs to us over the phone and we could put them on the air immediately. 

Our transmitters were not very powerful in those days and we had no way of knowing how many people were listening, but one interesting sign was that within minutes of our first broadcasts, the Soviet jamming took effect. 

The rest of the interview can be read at:

https://pressroom.rferl.org/a/james-critchlow-interview/29610685.html