The Original Radio Free Asia, 1951-1953, Part Two

 

In preparing the American public for the second Annual Crusade for Freedom, in August 1951, the Advertising Council used the services of actor, and future U.S. President, Ronald Reagan in a Hearst Corporation movie newsreel and a televised public service appeal for contributions. Reagan was also the star and narrator of the short film The Big Truth, written by Otis Carney and directed by Seymour Friedman. Carney would receive a Freedom Foundation award in 1952 for his screenplay. Excerpts of the film, including Lucius Clay speaking in Berlin on October 24, 1950, were then used for a television film appeal for the 1951 Crusade campaign:

 

My name is Ronald Reagan. Last year the contributions of 16 million Americans to the Crusade For Freedom made possible the World Freedom Bell -- a symbol of hope and freedom to the communist-dominated peoples of Eastern Europe. And built this powerful 135,000 Watt Radio Free Europe transmitter in Western Germany. 

 

This station daily pierces the iron curtain with the truth, answering the lies of the Kremlin and bringing a message of hope to millions trapped behind the iron curtain. Grateful letters from listeners smuggled past the secret police express thanks to Radio Free Europe for identifying Communist Quislings and informers by name.

 

General Lucius D. Clay now asks you to join him in a second great Crusade for Freedom to build two more powerful Freedom Stations that will send more messages of truth and hope through the Iron Curtain. And to establish Radio Free Asia to stop the spread of Communism in the Far East. 

 

Crusade for Freedom Motorcade 

The Ford Motor Company donated 1951 model trucks for the Crusade campaign in the 48 states and the District of Columbia. The Chevrolet Division of General Motors donated the same number of 1951 model station wagon cars. The trucks and cars were identical in every state, and each truck was clearly marked Crusade for Freedom and numbered as part of the fleet around the nation. The station wagon had a sign, Crusade for Freedom, in the shape of a flag and two loudspeakers on the roof. Advance publicity, times, and locations where the vehicles would be parked were shared in each state. 

 

The Ford truck carried a replica of the Freedom Bell in Berlin, a Radio Free Europe transmitter tower, with the words Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia. An arrow of Truth pierced the symbolic Iron Curtain. Transcripts of RFE programs were also available to those interested in reading them, and spectators could hear recordings of the programs coming from the Chevrolet's sound system. Helium-filled Replicas of the Winds of Freedom balloon were often launched from the side of the Ford Truck parked in strategic locations. The Freedom Motorcade is an excellent backdrop for publicity photos for the Crusade campaign.

 

November 1951 Extraordinary Meeting

 

There was an extraordinary meeting of the CIA and the U.S. State Department leadership on November 21, 1951, in the home of State Department official Edward W. Barrett, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and an early member of the National Committee for Free Europe. Representing the CIA were Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner, Lloyd, Deputy Chief, Psychological Staff Division, and Tom Braden, Chief, International Branch, Psychological Division, OPC.

 

One of the items which the attendees agreed that "Radio Free Asia would undergo no further expansion until the future course of the Committee for Free Asia had been settled in a manner satisfactory to both CIA and State."  The CIA's Tom Braden said, "RFA is staying right there where it is until they are given further orders." Barrett said, "In regard to the radio audience in China, it was his understanding that there is a small and decreasing audience as the result of Communist repressive measures. He felt that it was better for OPC to put its RFA money into local, non-U.S.-labeled operations in the Far East. He said that we did not need another American voice in the area." CIA Director Dulles suggested “RFA be kept going on its present basis along with CFA for next few weeks until the new head of the organization is selected. He should then be brought in for a discussion of this whole operation.” 

 

Alan Valentine became president of the Committee for Free Asia in December 1951. He previously had been the president of the University of Rochester, ECA Chief in the Netherlands from 1948-1949 and Director of the Economic Stabilization Agency from 1950-1951. He participated in the May 10-11, 1952 state-private strategy meeting on political or psychological warfare at Princeton University. C.D. Jackson chaired the meeting with CIA Director Allen Dulles, Charles Chip Bohlen of the State Department, leading officials from Radio Free Europe, the National Security Council, etc. At one point, Valentine is quoted as saying,

 

            I think we have to bring to Asians more of a sense of moral conviction on

            our part – and I underline moral – if we are to convince them that we mean

            more than just support for our program. Following that, we must be very

            careful to get maximum participation by the Asians maximum control of

            individual activities on a partnership basis with the Asian, and emphasize

            as little as possible our part in the activities.

 

            Our radio program, though important will bulk less large in our over-seas

            operations than RFE because of its limited effectiveness due to a more

            limited number of receiving sets, and because there are other devices                    which may be used more effectively for our area than the spoken word.

 

            We charge ourselves with the mission of bringing back and maintaining 

            freedom and peace from the Kuriles to Korea to about two billion Asians,

            with a.staff most of whom like myself, are amateurs. 

 

The Original Radio Free Asia, 1951-1953, Part One

The original Radio Free Asia (RFA) was a short-lived and unsuccessful CIA “covert action project,” Its fate was directly connected to Radio Free Europe and the Crusade for Freedom. A 1990 secret CIA Report gave some insight into RFA’s establishment as a “private body”:

 

The Committee for a Free Asia” in 1951, sanctioned by the National Security Council and with the knowledge of Congressional Oversight Committees, supported by covert indirect CIA funding, the Committee had been created to help find ways to contain and expand private U.S. contact and communication with people of Asia following the establishment of Communist regimes in China and North Korea. The emphasis was on a private instrumentality that would be privately governed and would have the freedom and flexibility to do things the government would like to see done but which it chose not to do or could not do directly as well.

 

On March 12, 1951, the articles of incorporation of the Committee for a Free Asia Inc. (CFA) were filed with the California Office of the Secretary of State. Brayton Wilbur, an import-export executive, was the first chairman of the Committee for a Free Asia.  In announcing the creation of the Committee for a Free Asia, Wilbur said, “The people of Asia must have more of the facts about the suffering that follows Communist aggression. They must also be shown an alternative to communism.”

            

In the forward to CFA’s “Prospectus” issued in May 1951, Brayton Wilbur wrote, “The purpose of this Committee is to establish channels of direct communication between the people of Asia and the people of the free world everywhere. Through those channels an exchange of thoughts, the hopes and the inspirations of the people of Asia with the people of America and Europe can weld a union of free men which will roll back the dark forces of Soviet imperialism.”  The Statement of Purposes in the “Prospectus” included the following:

 

To promote, aid, and assist the cause of individual and national freedom in Asia, as opposed to Communist and other totalitarian doctrines. 

 

To initiate, assist and conduct, directly or indirectly, investigations and studies relating to such cause; and to obtain, collect, analyze, publish, broadcast, disseminate and distribute information relating thereto through any and all media of communication. 

 

To assist non-Communist and nontotalitarian elements in the countries of Asia in realizing and maintaining the ideals of individual and national freedom. 

 

To assist non-Communist and nontotalitarian travelers, refugees, and exiles from the countries of Asia in maintaining contact with their fellow citizens for the purpose of keeping alive and promoting the ideals of individual and national freedom; and to make available facilities whereby these travelers, refugees, and exiles can contribute to the cause of the maintenance of freedom under law. 

 

Similar to the original incorporation articles of the National Committee for a Free Europe, the Committee for a Free Asia would not “engage in carrying or propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation.” Committee for a Free Asia offices were set up in San Francisco and New York. 

 

1951 Crusade Campaign

 

Radio Free Asia (RFA) was included with Radio Free Europe in the fund solicitation activities of the 1951 Crusade for Freedom campaign. The Advertising Council put out a Crusade for Freedom fact sheet for the American media, in which Radio Free Asia was mentioned in some detail: “Although it is patterned generally after the National Committee for a Free Europe, there are substantial differences because of the more complex pattern of national viewpoints across the Pacific, and because of the different pattern of Red Aggression in Asia. For one thing, CFA is not only engaged in fighting Communism where it has already seized control, but is also waging a preventive battle to keep Kremlin doctrine from spreading to other Eastern nations.” 

 

On May 2, 1951, General Lucius D. Clay, National Chairman of the Crusade for Freedom, announced two goals for the second annual Crusade campaign: enrollment of 25 million Americans and public contributions of $3,500,00 to build two more “freedom” stations in Europe and begin the construction of Radio Free Asia.

            

A goal of 1,000,000 signatures of Californians in support of Radio Free Asia, to be enshrined in a future RFA transmitter site, was announced by California Southern Chapter chairman C.B. Tibbets: “Like the scrolls set in place last year with the opening of Radio Free Europe, the 1951 freedom pledges —signed, sealed and delivered – will serve as propaganda springboards from which American truths will hurdle the Communist curtain.” 

 

Radio Free Asia Begins Broadcasting

            

On September 4, 1951, at 6:30 a.m. local time, Radio Free Asia began live broadcasting on a test basis from a rented studio in the commercial radio station KNBC, downtown San Francisco (it was 10:30 p.m. in China). After the sound of a bronze gong being struck three times and music from Mahler’s “Song of the Earth,” the first broadcast began with these words in Mandarin Chinese, “This is Radio Free Asia...the voice of free men speaking to the people of Asia.” 

            

The initial programs of news and commentary were at first 90 minutes long and divided into three segments in Mandarin, Cantonese and English languages. The programs were broadcast via a leased wire RCA short-wave transmitter to Manila, Philippines, and from there to China via a directional short wave antenna. 

 

John W. Elwood, the first director of Radio Free Asia, told the press, “Asians in those areas dominated by Communists had had no access to the truth even about occurrences in their own homelands, let alone truthful reports of world news events.” Elwood was quoted by Time magazine on September 17, 1951, as saying, “Because we have no government ties, we can say anything we damn please.” Time told its readers, “Like its sister organization, Radio Free Europe, R.F.A. was founded by a group of private U.S. citizens who feel that the Voice of America, though effective in its way, is sometimes hampered because of "good & sufficient reasons of national policy."

 

Committee for a Free Asia chairman, Brayton Wilbur, told the press, “The fundamental purpose of the broadcasting efforts of Radio Free Asia will be to pierce the Iron Curtain of Communism in Asia with factual, accurate and truthful news.” He added, 

 

    Eventually, Radio Free Asia will beam towards the various parts of Asia programs             on agriculture, health and other topics designed to assist the people of Asia and to maintain their courage and will to resist Communism. 

 

The symbol chosen for Radio Free Asia was a replica of a wooden Asian bell with the slogan “Let Freedom Ring.” Radio Free Asia broadcasts were expanded to three hours in December 1951, and a third Chinese dialect, Hakka, was added to the broadcast languages.

HARVARD and CABEZONE, two early Cold War CIA Projects affecting Soviet and East European Defectors ©

In January 1950, the National Security Council (NSC) issued Intelligence Directive No. 13, entitled  "Exploitation of Soviet and Satellite Defectors Outside the United States." This directive specifically defined defectors as,  

·      Individuals who escape from the control of the USSR or countries in the Soviet orbit, or who, being outside such jurisdiction or authority, are unwilling to return to it, and who are of particular interest to the U.S. Government because:

 

o   They are able to add valuable new or confirmatory information to existing U.S. knowledge of the Soviet world, and

o   Their defection can be exploited in the psychological field. 

 

NSC authorized and directed that "The Central Intelligence Agency shall be responsible for the covert exploitation of defectors, and shall … coordinate all matters concerned with the handling and disposition of declared defectors from the Soviet Union and the satellite states in order to assure the effective exploitation of all defectors for operational, intelligence, or psychological purposes by the U.S. Government."  

 

NSC Directive No. 13 included these points:

 

Subject to the overall direction of the Chief of Mission, CIA representatives in the field shall have operating responsibility outside the U.S. occupied areas for: 

 

a.   Providing secure facilities and preliminary assessment of a defector’s bona fides and his intelligence or other potential value to the U.S. Government.

b.   Assuring that the other IAC (International Advisory Committee) agencies have adequate opportunity to exploit a defector for intelligence or operational purposes, including immediate access to the defector in the field.

c.    Arranging secure movement of defectors as required.

Project HARVARD was activated initially in 1948 to provide safe-house and Operational aid facilities for all CIA activities in Germany. HARVARD was expanded in 1952 when the CIA set up the "Defector Reception Center" (DRC) near Frankfurt and Kaiserslautern. The objectives of the Project were changed when HARVARD was assigned 

           responsibility for the rehabilitation and resettlement of defectors, agents, and agent-trainees as their usefulness to the CIA is exhausted. In this latter capacity, HARVARD strives, insofar as possible, to resettle some of these individuals with an eye to their future usefulness for defector inducement and Psychological warfare purposes. In effect, HARVARD handles the resettlement aspects of the Defector Program, to which, under NSCID No. 13, the CIA is firmly committed. 

CIA had another defector project at the Frankfurt, cryptonym CABEZONE, which was financially separately supported by HARVARD. Actual debriefing and interrogation of defectors and potential defectors, including the use of the lie detector, was the responsibility of the CABEZONE officers. Afterward, if approved by CABEZONE, the defectors would be turned over to HARVARD for relocation and resettlement. The number of resettlements from 1953 through 1961:

1953                95

1954                182

1955                61

1956                114

1957                194

1958                90

1959                93 

1960                56

1961                74

For example, during the fiscal year 1953, HARVARD successfully resettled 95 defectors, of which 55 were resettled between 1 January and 1 July 1953. HARVARD provided for,  

·      immediate housing and subsistence on the local economy, 

·      arranges for documentation and legal status in Germany, 

·      takes care of personal needs, welfare, and morale problems,

·      arranges for physical examinations and medical and dental care when indicated, 

·      arranges for language instruction and apprenticeship training, 

·      handles official formalities involving births, weddings, name changes, European travel, etc., and 

·      arranges for transportation to resettlement destination

CIA's Cold War Project AEROOT Accomplishments, 1955-1958 ©

Below is a list of achievements of the CIA Project AEROOT involving early Cold War operations into Estonia as listed in the 2 April 1957, Memorandum for the Chief of Foreign Intelligence: 

Subject: Request for renewal of Project AEROOT

This is a continuing project on Foreign Intelligence (FI) operations involving Estonia and Estonian nationals of the USSR. The original AEROOT Project was approved on 13 May 1953 under Basic Plan AEBASIN and has been continued by means of renewals and extensions to 31 October 1956

Summary of AEROOT accomplishments in the period 5 April 1955 to 1 November 1956: 

a. Recruited and trained two REDSOX agents. *

b. Recruited three REDSKIN agents. **

c. Recruited two Soviet Estonian residents as informers. 

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

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

f. Spotted one principal agent (P/A) candidate for work in cooperation with Finnish IS. 

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

h. Recruited a merchant seaman qualified to visit Soviet ports. 

i. Recruited two mail drops for S/W correspondence with Estonian SSR. 

j. Detected RIS control of a Swedish IS agent in Estonian SSR, with whom we also were in unilateral communication. 
k. Established, with the aid of a liaison, that all Swedish and British IS agent assets in Estonian SSR were under RIS control. 

1. Provided two PM agent candidates for Hot War covert operations training. 

m. Thirteen reports were disseminated, of which three were judged to be of considerable value and ten of value, probably true. 

n. Expanded our network of emigre informants in several countries dealing with matters of interest to Clandestine Services. 

From 1 November 1956 to 31 March 1958, project AEROOT's accomplishments included: 

a. Recruited, trained, and dispatched a contract agent under deep cover in Finland. His mission was to exploit REDSKIN leads obtained from his Finnish contact and resident Estonian nationals in Finland.

b. Spotted a recruit for development as a resident foreign intelligence (FI) agent for the exploitation of REDSKIN channels in Finland. 

* Operations involving the illegal return of defectors and emigres to USSR as agents

** Operations involving legal methods of placing, recruiting, and communicating with agents within the USSR.

Who Killed the Wanderer?: The Unsolved Murder of Georgi Markov ©

  

“In her wildest dreams Agatha Christie couldn't have conjured a more bizarre murder and a more bizarre murder weapon than the one that killed a Bulgaria writer named Georgi Markov who, while living in exile in London, wrote commentaries for Radio Free Europe.”

 

(Ed Bradley, 60 Minutes, CBS Television News Program, October 20, 1991)

 

On September 7, 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré, who lived and worked in London, was assaulted in broad daylight on London’s Waterloo Bridge. His life and death show evidence of how far a regime will go to silence its opposition. 

 

Time magazine, in February 2010, ranked the murder of Georgi Markov at number 5 of the “top 10 assassination plots”, just below the murder of Leon Trotsky in 1940 and the attempt on Adolph Hitler in World War Two.

 

On June 15, 1969, Georgi Markov's play "The Man Who Was Me" was previewed before a general audience and party officials in Sofia, Bulgaria. While the audience enthusiastically responded to the play, the party members did not. The play was stopped. A close friend warned him to leave Bulgaria. As part of his preparations to leave, he burned his diaries of fifteen years. Using a passport and visa issued three months earlier, Georgi Markov defected to the West, crossing into Yugoslavia. He saw Bulgaria for the last time.

 

He settled in England and became a broadcast journalist for Radio Free Europe, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), and Deutsche Welle, the German international broadcast service.  

 

Markov's large audience in Bulgaria listened to his prime-time Sunday-night broadcasts over Radio Free Europe. He dared to tell his audience that Bulgarian President and Communist Party chief Todor Zhivkov wore no clothes.

 

In June 1977, Communist Party Chairman Zhivkov chaired a Politburo meeting and stated he wanted the activities of Markov stopped. The Interior Minister reacted and requested KGB assistance in the killing of Markov. Though he wanted Markov killed, he wanted no trace to Bulgaria. The Chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, agreed to the assassination as long as there would be no trace back to the Soviets.  Thus, the Bulgarians and Soviets were operating under a double case of “plausible denial. “

 

Former KGB general Oleg Kalugin has publicly admitted his role and the role of the KGB in supplying the Bulgarian intelligence service with both the weapon and the poison. Purportedly, the highly secret KGB laboratory known as the "Chamber" developed both the weapon, concealed in a US-manufactured umbrella, and biotoxin ricin impregnated in a wax-coated pellet the size of a pinhead.

 

Markov received various warnings and anonymous threats to stop broadcasting his inside knowledge of Zhivkov and the obsequious circles of Bulgarian intellectuals and government officials. Markov persisted until his death and peeled away the artichoke leaves of lies and corruption in Bulgaria.

 

A grotesque black comedy followed with three attempts to kill Markov in 1978.  The first attempt was in Munich in the spring, when Markov visited friends and colleagues at Radio Free Europe. An agent failed in an attempt to put a toxin in Markov's drink at a dinner party held in his honor. The second failed attempt was on the Italian island Sardinia while Markov enjoyed a summer vacation with his wife Annabel and daughter Sasha. The final and successful attempt was in London on President Zhivkov‘s birthday, September 7, 1978.

 

On that day, Markov worked a double shift at the BBC. After finishing the early morning shift, reportedly, he went home for rest and lunch. Afterward, he drove to a parking lot on the south side of Waterloo Bridge to take a bus to his office at the BBC. As he neared the waiting bus queue, he experienced a sudden stinging pain in the back of his right thigh. He turned and saw a man bending to pick up a dropped umbrella. The man, facing away from Markov, apologized in a foreign accent, hailed a taxi, and departed. He has never been identified.

 

Though in pain, Markov continued on his way to the BBC building. He then noticed a small blood spot on his pants, told colleagues what happened, and showed one friend a pimple-like red swelling on his thigh. Afterward, at home, Markov developed a high fever. His wife called a colleague at BBC, who took Markov to St. James hospital, where he was treated for an undetermined form of blood poisoning. He did not respond to doctors’ efforts, went into shock, and after days of delirium, pain, and suffering, Georgi Markov died in London at age 49 on September 11, 1978. 

 

British authorities later ruled that Markov had been “unlawfully killed” and died of "septicemia, a form of blood poisoning caused by bacterial toxins, possibly a result of kidney failure."

 

An investigative reporter in Bulgaria, Hristo Hristov, published two books in English based on his years of research into Bulgarian intelligence files. His books include a copy of the passport and photographs of an Italian art dealer and small time-criminal, code name “Piccadilly,” seemingly used by Bulgarian intelligence service in the murder. In August 2021, the Austrian news agency APA reported that an Italian with a Danish passport Francesco Gulino, known as "Agent Piccadilly," was found dead in his home in the Austrian city of Wales. He lived in abject poverty. A doctor confirmed the death of the 75-year-old former secret agent. Police said that there was no evidence of violent death.

 

A copy of an umbrella that was adapted into a “pistol” and believed by many to have been used to deliver the ricin that killed Markov is on display at the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. Former KGB General Oleg Kalugin, however, stated to a Bulgarian newspaper interview in 1998: “The umbrella was only a cover. Georgi Markov was killed with a small special instrument. A weapon like a pen manufactured in the Soviet laboratories.”

 

The minute pellet that contained the poison is on display today in the Crime Museum at New Scotland Yard in London. It has been estimated that one ounce of ricin could kill as many as 90,000 persons. British scientists later estimated that only about 450 micrograms were used to kill Markov.

 

One Bulgarian general committed suicide rather than face trial for destroying thousands of pages of information about Georgi Markov. Another general was found guilty, spent a few months in jail, and reportedly now lives quietly in a villa in Bulgaria. The case has been investigated by generations of Scotland Yard policemen and remains open in England.  In Bulgaria, the case should have been closed in 2008 due to a thirty-year statute of limitations, but authorities decided to keep it open another five years.

 

In 2006, WNET of the television public broadcast service (PBS) network in New York aired a program on Georgi Markov’s death called Secrets of the Dead: Case File Umbrella Assassin. The producers have made their findings available on the Internet, including a re-enactment of the murder, a photograph of the pellet, video clips, and an interactive “Teacher’s Toolbox” for educators and students to “examine the evidence.” 

 

Also included in the program was an interview with American Dr. Christopher Green, who had assisted in the forensic investigation in 1978.  Dr. Green said:

 

We had pretty much all of the story from a forensic point of view. We had the body, the thing in the body that he was hit with -- the pellet -- and the stuff from the pellet. We knew that the material used to kill him, ricin, had been under development by a foreign service linked to the incident. We also knew that he had been a target of assassination attempts in the past. The story of him being a target was very well known. Therefore, we had information on the means, motive, and opportunity.

 

And yet, with all the public information and years of official investigation, no one has been charged with the crime. The dots have not been completely connected. The final piece of the puzzle to complete the picture remains to be found. Georgi Markov’s death proved how far a totalitarian regime would go to protect itself from the truth. The murder of Georgi Markov seems destined to be another footnote in the history of the Cold War. Georgi Markov deserves a better fate.

 

Georgi Markov was buried in Saint Candida and Holy Cross Churchyard cemetery in Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset, England. The epitaph on his gravestone is reads in Bulgarian on one side and English on the other side:

 

In Memory of Georgi Ivanov Markov

Novelist & Playwright

Most dearly beloved

By his wife Annabel

His Daughter Sasha

His Family & his Friends

Born Sofia 1. 3. 39

Died London 11 .9. 78

In the Cause of Freedom

Further Information:

 

To listen to Georgi Markov speak over the BBC in 1976 about his favorite music, visit http://mycentury.tv/bulgaria/181-georgi-markov-qmy-kind-of-musicq.html

 

Chapter 3 in my book Cold War Radio: the Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950 – 1989 (McFarland & Co, 2009).

 

Markov’s Radio Free Europe programs posthumously were collected and translated into English as The Truth That Killed (London: Wiedenfeld and Nicholson, 1983).

 

For information from former Soviet KGB officers about the Markov murder, see Oleg Kalugin, Spymaster; My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage against the West (New York: Basic Books, 2009). And, Oleg Gordievsky and Christopher Andrew, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (New York: Harper Collins, 1990).

 

The interactive television program Secrets of the Dead: Case File Umbrella Assassin on the murder of Georgi Markov, including the interview with Dr. Christopher Green, can be viewed at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/case_umbrella/index.html

 

For full details of “Piccadilly”, including photographs, see Hristo Hristov’s books, The Double Life of Agent Piccadilly and Kill the Wanderer at http://hristo-hristov.com/

 

Radio Free Europe's "Voice of Free Albania" ©

 

It is not generally known that Radio Free Europe (RFE) broadcast to Albania, as the "Voice of Free Albania," from June 1, 1951, to September 30, 1953. If at all mentioned in the histories of RFE, Albanian broadcasts are usually mentioned in the footnotes. Below is a short look into RFE and Albania in the 1950s.

At the regular monthly meeting of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) board of directors on July 20, 1950, it was resolved to increase the 1950-1951 budget of the National Councils Division by $60,000 for "support of the National Committee for Free Albania."

 

In announcing the inaugural broadcast on June 1, 1953, RFE's press release said, "It will warn Albanians of new 'security' measures planned by the Kremlin's MVD police and further advise: 'Be cautious, my friends, be patient.'"

 

By 1953, Radio Free Europe had 20 short-wave transmitters and one medium-wave transmitter. Three transmitters were used to broadcast to Romania (3 hours per day), Bulgaria (3 hours), and Albania (1 1/2 hours).

 

Albania was included in Crusade for Freedom campaigns for Radio Free Europe. For example, the 1952 Crusade opened on November 11, 1952, with a national goal of $4,000,000 and signatures of millions of Americans on "Freedom-Grams" in the shape of a normal telegram that would be sent over the Iron Curtain. On the backside of the "Freedom-Gram," this message was translated into Albanian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, and Bulgarian:

 

Do you listen to Radio Free Europe?  I hope you do, for I am one of the millions of American citizens who have voluntarily contributed to building these stations, which bring Truth to you who are deprived of it.

 

In America, millions voluntarily pray for an understanding between our peoples. Please add your prayers to ours. Surely our common faith in God is the place where hope for freedom begins.

 

I am a (occupation)

Name

Address

 

Note to Contributors: Replies to this Freedom-Gram may be

received in a foreign language. If you should be unable to

translate them, free translations may be obtained by forwarding the 

letters to Crusade for Freedom c/o your local Postmaster

 

Eventually, six million Americans signed the "Freedom-Grams," which were then sent to West Germany for inclusion in the balloons provided by the Free European Press.

RFE's Albanian language broadcasts ceased on September 30, 1953, primarily because it was not cost-effective broadcasting to a country that reportedly only had an estimated nine-thousand radio in a population of one-and-a-half million. 

Book of Interest: A Frontline of Espionage. Studies in Hungarian Cold War Intelligence in Austria

The book featured below makes a valuable contribution to Cold War histography and is highly recommended:

Magdolna Barath, Dieter Bacher (eds.) A Frontline of Espionage. Studies in Hungarian Cold War Intelligence in Austria, Budapest – Pecs 2021.

“After World War II it was widely known in Europe that the redefined and democratic Austria became a crossroad of the intelligence services of the previously allied forces, now gradually confronting each other, a meeting point for intelligence and counterintelligence networks and a continuous source of recruitment of new agents. The vast number of Hungarian refugees and their political composition provided excellent opportunities to build intelligence network on both sides. In this volume Austrian, Danish and Hungarian outstanding researchers of Cold War espionage present their findings on the activity of the Hungarian communist state security intelligence officers in Austria, Germany and Denmark, the actions of Soviet counterintelligence against Hungarians in Austria, and many more topical issues. On the whole the volume gives an insight into a world, which still has numerous blurred details.”

 

From the introduction:

 

The contributions to the present volume focus on the many diverse aspects of Hungarian Intelligence in Austria, which shows how diverse how this research field really is, for this reason, we have divided the studies into three major categories

 

·      The first major category centers on the structural and organizational issues of the secret services and their agent network, as this forms the basis for all further research, and relevant resources are usually available in abundance.

 

·      The second major category pertains to certain intelligence operations and their goals…these studies give insight into the planning, preparation, and implementation of intelligence practices and also enable us to draw general conclusions on intelligence strategies.

 

·      The third and last category attempts to reconstruct the structures and activities of certain bodies of intelligence. During the early phase of the Cold War, “human intelligence” (HUMINT) or information collected by agents was one of the most important sources of information, and the present volume contains a variety of contributions on this operative method.

Table of Contents: