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.

New Book of Interest: Under the Radar: Tracking Western Radio Listeners in the Soviet Union

Under the Radar: Tracking Western Radio Listeners in the Soviet Union has been published by the Central European University Press and they have included it in their "Opening the Future Program" so that it can be made available free to a wide distribution. Here is the CEU Press's description of the unique program:

Opening the Future at CEU Press is a cost-effective way for libraries to increase their digital collections on the history, politics and culture of Central and Eastern Europe and the former communist countries. Subscribing libraries get unlimited multi-user access to curated packages of backlist books, with perpetual access after three years. The Press uses membership funds solely to produce new frontlist titles like these in OA format. All OA titles are available via Project MUSE, OAPEN, and the ORL (titles 6-9 above are still in the upload process with some of those platforms but will beavailable very soon).

The full list of OA titles funded by our generous member library subscribers can be found at ceup.openingthefuture.net/forthcoming, and the backlist packages to which libraries may subscribe can be found here:ceup.openingthefuture.net/packages."
  
The book can also be downloaded free at the CEU website using the following link: https://ceupress.com/book/under-radar. 

The hard copy will be available for purchase later this month at the usual sites.

From the Publisher,

Western democracy is currently under attack by a resurgent Russia, weaponizing new technologies and social media. How to respond? During the Cold War, the West fought off similar Soviet propaganda assaults with shortwave radio broadcasts. Founded in 1949, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcast uncensored information to the Soviet republics in their own languages. About one-third of Soviet urban adults listened to Western radio. The broadcasts played a key role in ending the Cold War and eroding the communist empire.

R. Eugene Parta was for many years the director of Soviet Area Audience Research at RFE/RL, charged among others with gathering listener feedback. In this book he relates a remarkable Cold War operation to assess the impact of Western radio broadcasts on Soviet listeners by using a novel survey research approach. Given the impossibility of interviewing Soviet citizens in their own country, it pioneered audacious interview methods in order to fly under the radar and talk to Soviets traveling abroad, ultimately creating a database of 51,000 interviews which offered unparalleled insights into the media habits and mindset of the Soviet public. By recounting how the “impossible” mission was carried out, Under the Radar also shows how the lessons of the past can help counter the threat from a once and current adversary.  

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 

Introduction: Why a History of Audience Research at Radio Liberty?

Prelude: My Road to Radio Liberty (amabile)

First Movement (1965–1970): Early Years of Audience Research at Radio Liberty (andante)

Second Movement (1970–1980): First Steps in Audience Interviewing (accelerato)

 

Third Movement (1981–1985): Audience Research Breaks New Ground (sforzando)

 

Fourth Movement (1986–1990): Perestroika Changes the Game (fuocoso) 

 

Fifth Movement (1991–1994): The Post-Soviet Transition (vittorioso, capriccioso, lamentoso)

 

Postlude: The Road Ahead (coda)

 

Appendix 1: Charts and Graphs referenced in text

 

Appendix 2: Vignettes: Max Ralis, Ross Johnson, James Critchlow, Morrill Cody, James Buckley, Ralph Walter, Helmut Aigner, Christopher Geleklidis, Steen Sauerberg, Copenhagen interviewer, Viktor Nekrasov, Andrei Sinyavsky, Victor Grayevsky, Irina Alberti

 

Appendix 3: Methodologies. MIT Simulation. Contribution of Ithiel de Sola Pool

 

Appendix 4: Excerpts from BALEs (Broadcast Area Listener Reports), Agorametrie conflict themes, an example of a mark-sense questionaire

 

Appendix 5: Thumbnail sketches of SAAOR/MOR Staffers

 

Bibliography

  

Olga Kopecká, former Director of Radio Free Europe's Czech Service, RIP

 

Olga Kopecká, the last Director of Radio Free Euope's Czech Service in Munich, died yesterday at age 81 in Prague.

Here is an interview she gave to RFE/RL on the anniversary of the Soviet-led invasion into Czechoslovakia in August 1968: "Radio as a Refuge in Difficult Times" (August 2018)

Czech RFE broadcaster remembers the Prague Spring and Soviet invasion.

Born in 1941 in Pelhrimov, Czechoslovakia, Olga Kopecka was an avid listener of Radio Free Europe (RFE) as a child. Deprived of university education under communism because of her family’s political beliefs, RFE broadcasters were her teachers, she says. She emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1963 and two years later began working for RFE as a broadcaster with the Czechoslovak Service at its Munich headquarters, translating international news reports and producing programs for young people behind the Iron Curtain.

Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968, RFE/RL Pressroom spoke with Ms. Kopecka about the role of RFE broadcasting during that turbulent time.

RFE/RL Pressroom: Do you remember what drew you to RFE as a young girl?

Olga Kopecka: I started listening when I was ten years old. That was around the time of the first RFE broadcasts to Czechoslovakia. I listened to programs for young people, and I especially liked “Radio University.” I wasn’t allowed to go to university under communism because my family members were known democrats in our small town. They never went to the communist parades with the flags, and they refused to participate in all that shouting and chanting. So we suffered the consequences. Plus, my mother wanted to marry a Dutchman, and marrying a Western foreigner was almost a crime then. My mother and brother, and I emigrated in 1963 and moved to the Netherlands. I studied Slavic languages at university there. It was thanks to RFE that I was prepared for university studies even though I hadn’t been allowed to attend university in Czechoslovakia.

RFE/RL Pressroom: As an RFE broadcaster, you chose the pseudonym “Valeska,” your grandmother’s surname, in order to conceal your identity and protect your family…

Kopecka: Yes, if anyone found out who I was, my family still in Czechoslovakia would have been persecuted. There was so much harassment; it was unbelievable.

RFE/RL Pressroom: What was the mood like in RFE’s Czechoslovak Service when the Prague Spring reforms and the easing of censorship began in 1968? What did you expect, and how did it influence your broadcasts?

Kopecka: We were glad but we were worried. There were signs that not everything was as rosy as it seemed. There were Warsaw Pact military exercises staged around Czechoslovakia that summer, but they “forgot” to withdraw their armies completely when the exercises finished. The end of censorship wasn’t all it seemed either. At the height of the Prague Spring, we had a visit in Munich from a group of journalists from Czechoslovakia from a magazine called Student. They wanted to write a series of articles about RFE based on their conversations with us, but they were only allowed to publish the first parts of the series.

RFE/RL Pressroom: It must have been a very emotional time for Czechs and Slovaks. You woke up on the morning of August 21, and your country had been invaded. How did you feel?

Kopecka: I was absolutely furious but not very surprised. Something like that was to be expected. We were afraid Moscow would not allow the total parting of communist countries. We saw their reaction to the Hungarian uprising in 1956, which was put down by force, so we weren’t so surprised.

RFE/RL Pressroom: RFE wanted to prevent additional violence, so the Czechoslovak Service adopted a very strict editorial policy during the invasion. How did that affect your reporting?

Kopecka: It was a wise policy. Some people were really angry, and we couldn’t publish what they wrote. But we also had to be especially careful for years after the invasion for other reasons. We began receiving phone calls from Soviet agents and state security from other communist countries pretending to be dissidents. They would feed us fake news in the hopes we would report it and lose credibility. We had a strict system of vetting these phone calls and verifying the information. We even had a reporter who was a recent exile who knew all of the prominent dissidents and could recognize their voices.

RFE/RL Pressroom: During the so-called ‘normalization’ period that followed, when all of the liberal reforms of the Prague Spring were scrapped, how did you and your colleagues at RFE keep hope alive for people back home?

Kopecka: We reported as much as possible about what was going on in the West, and steps Western governments were taking to try to force communist governments to honor the promises they made regarding human rights, specifically the Helsinki promises. We reported about the Solidarity Movement in Poland and the rise of religion. Knowing about these events and efforts gave people hope. It let them know they had not been abandoned.

--Emily Thompson

Courtesy of RFE/RL

The first Radio Liberation broadcast to Ukraine, on August 16, 1954

The first Radio Liberation broadcast to Ukraine on August 16, 1954:

Dear brothers and sisters! Ukrainians!

Today, for the first time, we address you over Radio Liberation. We live abroad, but our hearts and thoughts are with you always. No iron curtain can separate us or obstruct that. Today is a day of joy for us, for, over the air, our vibrant word of greeting, joy, and hope will reach you.

Over one million of us Ukrainians are living abroad. For a long time, we have been telling people in the free world the truth about life in our country. The beginning Ukrainian broadcasts over Radio Liberation entrust us with a new task. We shall speak to you and for you, fellow countrymen, because there in our homeland, you have neither freedom, nor democratic press, nor a free radio.

Wherever we may be … our paths all converge toward Kiev and the towns and views of Ukraine … Kiev Rus, which became the cradle of our Ukrainian nation's existence was an important cultural center, the focus of ancient democratic freedoms in Eastern Europe. Through Kyiv, the "mother of Russian cities," our culture spread to all corners of Eastern Europe. Later, in Khmelnytsky's time [the seventeenth century), the Cossacks gave the Ukraine glamour and might.

In the fire and storm of the Revolution of 1917, Ukraine was re-established as an independent state. Our people, longing to be masters of their own destiny in their own country, proclaimed the Ukrainian Democratic Republic. That was done in a democratic way-the manifestation of the sovereign will of the Ukrainian nation. It took place in accordance with the principles of self-determination of peoples. But the Ukrainian Democratic Republic fell victim to Bolshevist aggression. To deceive the Ukrainian people, to persuade them that nothing had happened, the aggressors converted the Ukrainian Democratic Republic into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which the Communist dictatorship made an instrument of oppression of the Ukrainian people.

In the struggle against Communism, our native land has made great sacrifices on the altar of liberation. But we have faith in God's justice. We are convinced that those sacrifices were not made in vain and that God will reward Ukraine for all her sufferings. The struggle of the Ukrainian people will achieve their purpose.

And you, the Ukrainian people, "master in your house," will take your seat in the "circle of free peoples" The words of Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko, the beloved Ukrainian national poet of the nineteenth century, will come true: “And there will be a son, and there will be a mother, and there will be justice on earth. Because "in our house there is truth, and strength, and the will for freedom."

 

 

August 10, 1951, Press Release: Radio Free Europe Expands Services to Bulgaria

National Committee for a Free Europe 

350 Fifth Avenue, New York 1, N. Y.

August 10, 1951

 

FOR RELEASE AUGUST 11, 1951, or thereafter

 

RADIO FREE EUROPE EXPANDS SERVICES

 

Radio Free Europe will add Bulgaria to its list of "target countries" behind the Iron Curtain tomorrow (Aug. 11) as the first of a special series of programs, written, produced, and broadcast by Bulgarian exiles, goes on air from the station's transmitters at an undisclosed location in Europe.

 

Owned and operated by the National Committee for a Free Europe, Radio Free Europe began broadcasting to Czechoslovakia and Romania on July 14, and to Poland and Hungary on August 4. Hard-hitting commentaries by distinguished political and intellectual exiles, folk and national music "forbidden" behind the iron curtain, and broadcasts of Eastern European news otherwise denied the 80,000,000 enslaved peoples between Germany and Russia, make up its programs broadcast on regular schedules to the five target countries.

 

Tomorrow's program to Bulgaria will feature an address by Dr. G.M. Dimitrov, President of the Bulgarian National Committee and. editor of its newspaper. Dr. Dimitrov has known persecution from the time Hitler's henchmen sentenced him to death for collaborating with the allies until 1946, when he escaped from the communists. He is the former secretary-general of the Bulgarian Agrarian Union.

 

In his address tomorrow, he will emphasize to his fellow Bulgarians the fact that the United States is maintaining its contacts with the Bulgarian people, notwithstanding severance of diplomatic relations, and is actively supporting the victims of Communist tyranny until the day they once again are free.

 

Recalling the birth of the French Republic on Bastille Day, 1789, he will issue a ringing call to his people to remain firm in the face of communist terrorism. "No earthly power has been able to halt the fight of the people against tyranny, injustice, and terror," he will say tomorrow. "The bloodiest terrorists of the past -- Nero, Robespierre and Marat, could not foil it. Hitler failed to stop it. Stalin will not be able to stop it either."

 

The National Committee for a Free Europe, which owns and operates Radio Free Europe, is a private corporation formed by a group of leading American citizens last year to "halt communism and save freedom for the world." Among its membership of leading Americans are labor leaders, businessmen, scholars, statesmen, and church leaders. Its main offices are located at 350 Fifth Avenue: New York City.

 

Intensified activities of the National Committee for a Free Europe and of Radio Free Europe will be made possible by funds raised in the forthcoming Crusade For Freedom, headed by General Lucius D. Clay. The campaign will be inaugurated on September 4th by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

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

Excerpts from a 1951 Radio Free Asia advertisement

 

SLASH THE RED TENTACLES SMOTHERING ASIA

 

Give your dollars to the Crusade for Freedom...Broadcast the Truth behind Asia's Iron Curtain

 

Unless the Kremlin Gang is stopped in Asia and stopped fast, the free world will be facing the largest, most powerful, and best geographically integrated fortress the world has ever known.

 

China is already Communist controlled.  But we have millions of friends in China... freedom-loving men who hate their Red Masters, men who hunger for the TRUTH and the knowledge that the free world is concerned for them.  To these men, we must send words of hope and encouragement so they will rise again and wrest their native lands from the hands of the foreign dictator.

 

We're doing a good job in Europe right now. Over Radio Free Europe's two powerful transmitters built and supported by the American people...we are blasting the Soviet propaganda being fed the truth-starved peoples of the Satellite nations. Daily, exiled patriots speak to their countrymen in their native tongue, exposing Moscow lies...identifying Red informers...bringing to these prisoner peoples new hope and a will to fight.

 

THE SAME JOB MUST BE DONE IN ASIA. Must be done now...and can be done with the dollars you contribute to the CRUSADE FOR FREEDOM.

 

If we can stop the Communists in Asia...and we can by exposing them...we can win the cold war, and prevent a global hot war. No matter what you contribute to the CRUSADE FOR FREEDOM, the cost will be small...for you can't put a price on freedom, your freedom, and the peace of the world.

 

Doubts about Radio Free Asia

 

The Advertising Council leadership was doubtful about continuing an advertising campaign for Committee for a Free Asia and Radio Free Asia:

 

Consideration must be given to our relationship, if any, in 1952 to Committee for Free Asia. In 1951, when CFA got organized (with funds supplied by NCFE, as recited in CFA's prospectus, Crusade raised its stated goal from $3 to $3 ½ million to get Radio Free Asia started. This was done largely in deference to the attitude on the West Coast, which tends still to be oriented more towards Asia than Europe. This association with RFA doubtless was advantageous to Crusade on the Coast, even though we could speak of RFA in only the vaguest terms (it did not begin its broadcasts until September, and when it did do so the explosion was inaudible).

 

The advantage to the Crusade of having RFA on its team to round out the feeling of a world fight against Communism presumably remains the same. Over against this is the possible danger of the Crusade being associated in the public mind with an organization with no close association. There is no discoverable body of opinion in CFF/RFE/NCFE, which holds that RFA or it corporate parent, CFA knows what it's doing or is going about it wisely or adeptly. 

 

The problem of Communism (and combating it) in Asia is considerably different from that in Europe, strategically and philosophically –let alone tactically.  It solves no problem to recite this fact to our West Coast friends as a reason why “we” (RFE) don’t add a transmitter aimed at China. Committee for Free Asia is an established fact. It has prestige on the Coast by reason of its membership. But so far, no word of its doings has come to our attention, which spells a large accomplishment. 

 

Radio Free Asia Ceases Broadcasting

 

On March 31, 1953, Harold Miller, president of the Crusade for Freedom, sent a letter to the American Heritage Foundation, including information about Radio Free Asia.  In particular, “The Committee for Free Asia is a different operation. It works with and for Asia groups and individuals in free countries. Because of the delicate nature of any Western relations with Asian groups and individuals, particularly in those countries which have only recently become independent, CFA’s operations must necessarily be less militantly anti-Communist.” 

 

Also, in March 1953, The Central Intelligence Agency reviewed Radio Free Asia’s operation and decided to stop broadcasting. The CIA then sent its findings in a report dated April 1, 1953, to W. H. Jackson, chairman of The President’s Committee on International Information Activities:

 

         Programs Are Not Heard

 

Present broadcasts are on a week (10 k.w.) signal, which cannot regularly be heard anywhere in Asia. Although the broadcasts are not heard, they have served a real purpose in that their production has enabled RFA to build an especially efficient staff, about half of it Chinese. However, CFA has proposed for some time that it be equipped with facilities, which provide a stronger signal, and is now urging that this be done of the broadcasts be terminated. Further expenditures for programs that are not heard can no longer be justified simply in terms of training.

 

RFA’s international broadcasts to Mainland China and the Chinese in

        Southeast Asia are not now reaching the target areas. Either sufficiently powerful transmitting facilities should be provided, or the broadcasts should cease.

 

The decision was made to cancel Radio Free Asia: on April 15, Brayon Wilbur told the press that on April 30, 1953, Radio Free Asia broadcasts were to be replaced with “other means of communicating with Asian peoples. The committee feels that short-wave broadcasting is no longer as effective as other committee activities have been developed. The Committee planned to concentrate on assisting national radio stations in Far East Countries rather than doing the broadcasting from San Francisco.” Wilbur added, “The committee’s operations in the Far East include opening anti-Communist bookstores, producing films, books and magazines, establishing youth centers and helping Oriental youths to get education.”

 

The Committee for Free Asia held a special meeting on August 6, 1954, in San Francisco and resolved to,  

Amend the articles of incorporation, and change the name from the Committee for a Free Asia, Inc., to the Asia Foundation.

Through trial and error, we began discarding some of our original concepts that did not fully satisfy American objectives in meeting the aspirations of the peoples of Asia. For example, "We found that our initial and heavy reliance on some types of' informational programs did little to foster constructive work in Asia and were unfavorably regarded by many Asians. As a specific instance, we terminated the activities of Radio Free Asia in 1953.

The amended articles of incorporation, including importantly the change of' name to The Asia Foundation, should dispel some Asian suspicions that we direct primarily a propaganda or cold war agency. Furthermore, the changes should soothe the sensibilities of many individual Asians and some Asian governments who have been disturbed by the phrase "Free Asia" and who felt the word "committee" had the connotation of being some­thing temporary, a stop-gap organization with short-term policies that would likely fade away.