Senator Joe Biden and his Defense of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

When Senator Joe Biden came to the defense of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty

N.Y. Times News Service November 1993

US - SENATORS BATTLE OVER FOREIGN BROADCAST CUTS

WASHINGTON; - A plan to consolidate U.S. international broadcasting operations, touted by the Clinton administration as a step toward streamlining the government, seems to be coming apart. 

The main element of the package presented last June by President Clinton envisioned combining the Voice of America with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, the stations based in Munich that broadcast to the Soviet Union and its European satellites starting in the early 1950s. 

Under the plan, elimination of overlapping broadcasts and consolidation of transmitters and administrative staffs were seen as saving about $250 million over the next four years. 

The plan's hard-won compromise, placing the Munich stations under an independent broadcasting authority to be housed in the U.S. Information Agency, together with the Voice of America, also seemed to pacify a powerful conservative lobby bent on preserving Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. 

But in a July hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Joseph R. Biden, D-Del., said that the Munich stations should remain "independent corporate entities." He also said a Radio Free Asia should be created as an independent station to broadcast to China, parallel to Voice of America. 

Administration officials say they are mystified by Biden's insistence on "independence" for the Munich stations and for a Radio Free Asia, which would still be federally financed under his proposals. 

Biden threatened to filibuster for the first time in his 20 years in the Senate, saying that if he is not satisfied, "I will go and make my case on the floor to knock out the whole reorganizational structure." At stake were not only the consolidation of government broadcasting operations, but also the entire Foreign Relations Authorization Act under which the State Department, as well as the U.S. Information Agency, are financed. 

The administration submitted a compromise proposal this week to Biden under which the Munich radios could keep their separate status, technically as private corporations receiving government financing. 

In an interview, Biden said: "It's resolved between the president and me. It is going exactly where I want it to go." 

The Report of The President's Committee on International Information Activities, June 30,1953

The Report of The President's Committee on International

Information Activities, June 30,1953, 

 

Excerpts

 

Radio Free Europe

 

The National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) was created by CIA in 1949 with the following purposes:

 

        1. to create an institution in which the emigres from the satellite nations could find employment which would utilize their skills and, at the same time, document for the world at large the actions of the satellite governments and Soviet Russia;

        2. to utilize the political figures of such emigrations as rallying points and as symbols of unified opposition to communism in this country and abroad;

        3. to relieve the Department of State of the need to deal with emigre political leaders whom they could not endorse as "Governments in Exile" at a time when the United States officially recognized the satellite governments; and

        4. generally to "aid the non-fascist, non-communist leaders in their peaceful efforts to prepare the way toward the restoration in Eastern Europe of the social, political, and religious liberties, in which they and we believe."

                   

The bulk of available evidence indicates that RFE is widely heard, particularly in its three primary target areas, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, and that its programs are well received by its audience. 

        

In the original plan the various national councils were to be responsible for broadcasts over RFE facilities to their respective countries. Since the complexities and rivalries of émigré politics made the organization of national councils difficult, it was decided to set up RFE on a  non-political basis. Emigre staffs were hired for competence rather than political affiliation and programs to various countries are now identified as the Voice of Free Czechoslovakia, Poland, and so on. Although this reason for the national councils no longer exists, they do have potential value in exile relations. If the emigre leaders are prepared to create national councils of their own volition, NCFE should assist them to engage in such propaganda activities as they may be qualified to conduct. Primary attention, however, should be given to the broadcasting phase of NCFE activities. 

        

Certain specific problems arise in connection with NCFE activities, particularly RFE. There is first the question of cover. It has been suggested that, because the present cover has worn thin, RFE's official connections be freely admitted. Such a course, however, would vitiate the principal reason for the existence of RFE as a separate organization. So long as its government connections are not officially admitted it can broadcast programs and take positions for which the United States would not desire to accept responsibility. The Committee believes that the present cover is adequate for this purpose.

 

The American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, Inc. 

 

The Committee was founded in 1951 for the purpose of attempting to utilize the forces of the Soviet emigration against the Soviet regime. The Committee is under CIA sponsorship and guidance, and has not attempted to raise funds publicly, which would assist in providing plausible cover for its activities. Policy has been determined in close coordination with the Department of State. 

 

The American Committee has assumed that the most effective propaganda against the Soviet regime can be conducted by former Soviet nationals speaking in the name of a united emigration. Proceeding on this assumption, a great deal of time and effort has been expended in attempting to bring together in one political center the diverse political groups existing in the emigration, which themselves have no leader of recognized stature. 

 

The difficulties in the way of accomplishing this aim are twofold: first, the extreme hostility existing between Great Russian groups and those composed of the various non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union; and second, basic political differences between Marxist and non-Marxist elements in the emigration, regardless of nationality. After long and arduous negotiations, agreement was finally reached in October, 1952, for the formation of a coordinating center composed of four Great Russian and five nationality groups. The entire right wing of the Great Russian emigration and such important minority groups as the Ukrainians and Byelorussians have thus far held aloof. 

 

It is the declared purpose of the American Committee to proceed with propaganda activities utilizing the present coordinating center, and to attempt gradually to broaden the base of the center by the inclusion of additional groups as circumstances permit. Activities of the center include Radio Liberation, a Russian-language station which went on the air from Munich on March 1, 1953, broadcasting initially to Soviet occupation forces in Germany and Austria, 

 

The results to date have not been noteworthy. Undoubtedly more rapid progress could have been made if the idea of a political center had been abandoned and activities on the RFE pattern begun without regard to political considerations. From the outset there have been many advocates of such a course who argued that the whole history of the Russian emigration since 1917 has demonstrated the futility of attempting to persuade its diffuse elements to coalesce in a common undertaking. The prevailing view, however, has been that the psychological impact of a united voice of the Soviet emigration would so much outweigh that of a station under transparent foreign control that the time and effort expended on the formation of a coordinating center were justified. 

 

In a situation short of war the project can probably make its greatest contribution by de-emphasizing its political activities and devoting its major effort to the improvement of broadcasts from Radio Liberation. This station should use Soviet émigrés in an effort to weaken the Soviet regime and should concentrate on the Soviet military, government officials, and other groups in the population which harbor major grievances against the regime. Present plans call for the provision of new transmitting facilities in Spain. It is important that these or other facilities be developed in order to enable Radio Liberation to reach a wide audience within the Soviet Union. 

 

Pending a final determination of its effectiveness, we believe that the activities of the American Committee should be continued. Because results can be expected in the immediate future only from broadcasting, however, it is recommended that major attention should be concentrated on Radio Liberation. Expenditures on the coordinating center can be reduced but should be maintained at a level adequate to keep the organization in being, without active efforts to broaden the base of the center. If through the efforts of the present membership of the center additional émigré groups can be persuaded to participate, such moves should receive the encouragement and support of the Committee. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Radio Free Europe and Nazi and Axis Collaborators ©

 

On 28 June 1985, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report Nazi And Axis Collaborators Were Used To Further U.S. Anti—Communist Objectives In Europe -- Some Immigrated To The United States.

The GAO reviewed the backgrounds of 114 persons and identified five “with undesirable or questionable backgrounds who were employed by U.S. intelligence agencies and who received some form of assistance to immigrate to the United States.” The GAO report concluded: ”GAO did not find evidence of any U.S. agency program to aid Nazis or, Axis collaborators to immigrate to the United States. However, GAO did identify five Nazis or Axis collaborators with undesirable or questionable backgrounds who received some individual assistance in their U.S. immigration. Two of them were subsequently protected from investigation. GAO cannot be sure that it obtained all relevant information or identified all Nazis or Axis collaborators whom U.S. agencies helped to immigrate. “

Radio Free Europe and to a lesser extent Radio Liberty were mentioned in various parts of  the report. According to the GAO report, "In 1954, in response to numerous allegations about the backgrounds of employees of Radio Free Europe and another project, the CIA initiated an internal review of these OPC-initiated projects. An internal review committee investigated were, among other things, communists and/or any other controversial émigrés. 13 employees were terminated. One of the 13 employees had been alleged to be pro-Nazi and another a Nazi collaborator."

OPC was the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination.

The GAO report did not list the individuals of interest by name but by letters. “Subject B” of the report was Stanislas Stankevich, a freelancer for the Byelorussian broadcast service of Radio Liberty. During WWII he was mayor of the town of Borisov in Byelorussia, 1941-44, and he was given the nickname "Butcher of Borisov" for his alleged collaboration with the Germans in extermination of the Jews in that area. He went to Berlin in August 1944 and worked for the German Ministry for the East until March 1945. In 1947, he was denounced as a “war criminal” in the U.N. General Assembly. 

Even with that background, he still immigrated to the United States because, in part, "About 1951, his subject was approached in the U.S. zone of Germany by a Soviet agent, who attempted to recruit him. He reported this approach to a U.S. intelligence agency and assisted that agency in the Soviet agent’s eventual apprehension and conviction. For his actions, the intelligence agency assisted him in immigrating to the United States several years later. Before and after his immigration, he was employed on a project that was financed and supervised by another U.S. intelligence agency." 

On July 2, 1985, Radio Moscow, Domestic Service, broadcast a brief announcement about the GAO report. This brief broadcast mentioned one Stanislav Sankevich (as reported) who "has found a place in the American subversive ideological center Radio Liberty." 

Stankevich died in December 1980. 

Ferenc Koreh – “A lifetime of Propaganda” 

A 2006 Department of Justice report contained some details about the denaturalization case against Hungarian-born Ferenc Koreh in chapter five: "There is a measure of irony in the prosecution of Ferenc Koreh for his propagandist activities on behalf of the Nazis in that once he emigrated, Koreh devoted himself to propaganda on behalf of the United States. In the United States, Koreh inveighed against Communism; as a Nazi propagandist, he incited the populace to revile innocent civilians and urged the government to promote policies of discrimination and subjugation." 

From 1941 to 1944, Koreh was an editor for a “pro-Axis” private newspaper and responsible for “writing, reading and editing articles, meeting with government officials to discuss the paper's content, publishing news stories received from the government, and assuring that the government's political policy was reflected in the paper.” In 1944, he was worked in the Hungarian Ministry of Propaganda as the Press Information Officer and Deputy Director of the Information Section. After World War Two, he was convicted in Budapest of “war crimes.” In 1950, Koreh immigrated to the USA without mentioning his work at the Ministry of Propaganda and became a US citizen in 1956. From 1951 to 1974, he worked full-time for Radio Free Europe and freelanced after 1989. 

His citizenship was revoked in 1994, and a deportation action was filed against him. Koreh admitted responsibility for publishing anti-Semitic articles, conceded his deportability and designated Hungary as the country to which he should be sent. On January 13, 1997, he was ordered deported but with the agreement not to affect the order unless Koreh's health improved. It did not, and he died on April 1, 1997, at age 87. 

Evgeny Georgievich Golubev: The CIA’s Frustrated Frogman in the Early Cold War, Part Two ©

In mid-June 1952, Golubev was taken from Yokohama to an island 25 kilometers away. He and Ogden lived in tents on the island for about two months. All this time, he was engaged in physical training and practicing practical techniques associated with dispatching into Soviet territory and conducting subversive work in the USSR. He was periodically taken out into the open sea at 700-1000 meters from the beach, launched into the water in a swimming suit on a rubber raft, and offered to independently get to the beach, from where, in the course of training, he kept radio contact with the boat, and then returned to it. 

During the night of August 17-18, 1952, Golubev disembarked from a speedboat about 700 meters on the southern coast of Sakhalin near the village of Kuznetsovo. His tasks were to 

·       photograph objects on the coast in the area of the Kuznetsovo settlement; 

·       recruit an agent for subsequent use by American intelligence against the USSR; 

·       obtain Soviet documents, including passports, party, Komsomol, military cards, and various certificates. 

Golubev possessed two waterproof bags, two radios that worked on different frequencies, a rich set of chemicals, painkillers (morphine derivatives, sleeping pills, poisons of both instant and delayed action), 25,000 rubles in small banknotes, 100,000 rubles in large denomination bills, and 25 gold "ducats" from royal coins. He also had two submachine guns and three combat knives, one of which had a serrated blade. In addition, he was given fictitious documents in the name of Vorobyov. Golubev was now tasked with: 

·       infiltrating the vicinity of the Chelyabinsk-40 nuclear plant; 

·       conducting surveillance of the facility; 

·       obtaining documents from the soldiers guarding the closed city; and 

·       collecting and storing water and soil samples outside the protected perimeter. 

Golubev was expected to stay on Soviet territory for two or three days. He was then to use his radio to contact the American intelligence center in Japan, report on the completion of the mission, call for an American boat to enter Soviet territorial waters, and return him to Japan. 

Soviet border guards arrested him immediately after arriving on the beach. He was still wearing the wet suit with a mask and fins. 

On December 26, 1952, Golubev was interrogated from 2 AM to 6 AM, during which he admitted everything. He was then flown to Moscow for further interrogation. On December 30, 1952, a copy of the interrogation was sent to Joseph Stalin, who wrote on the first page, “Read.” 

Golubev was subsequently found guilty in a closed trial and sentenced to death. In January 1960, the Soviet Information Bureau in Moscow published a propaganda book, Caught in the Act: A Collection of Facts on U.S. Espionage and Other Subversive Activities Against the USSR. The book listed 23 Western agents who infiltrated the Soviet Union from August 1951 to June 1959 on 14 missions. Names and details were given, including that of Golubev. The photograph above is from the book with this caption: “To overcome water obstacles, American intelligence supplied spies thrown into the territory of the USSR with swimming suits. Such a suit was seized from agent Golubev.” 

The Chicago Tribune national syndicated columnist Don Oberdorfer wrote a book review published in newspapers throughout the United States in May 1961. He included the Golubev story: “They say ‘frogman’ E.G. Golubev swam from a high-speed launch to the beach of Soviet-held Sakhalin Island near Japan on August 17, 1952.” 

Evgeny Georgievich Golubev: The CIA’s Frustrated Frogman in the Early Cold War, Part One ©

ByRichardH. Cummings onAugus t22, 2022

On July 24, 1951, the CIA’s Project Approval Board approved Project WSBAKERY and notified the Far Eastern Branch:

The object of this project is the establishment of two reception and training centers, one within the continental limits of the United States and a second in a more forward area (possibly Alaska or the Aleutians) for the reception training and forward movement of selected Russian agents to be employed in Far Eastern operations presumably Eastern and Northern Siberia.

The Board has been impressed with the thoroughness and careful thought embodied in WSBAKERY. The Board is also most strongly of the opinion that no effort should be spared in developing early penetration of Communist Russian territory and that Siberia provides a hitherto little developed but potentially fruitful field for such operations.

WSBAKERY was then integrated into Basic Plan AEACRE in February 1952. Basic Plan AEACRE was to “provide for the establishment of a Domestic Operations Base in or near Washington for the interrogation, assessment, training, briefing, and preparation for dispatch of agents for infiltration into the USSR.”

One agent selected for agent penetration training was Evgeny Georgievich Golubev, a Russian national born in 1923 in Kizlyar, Grozny region, USSR. In June 1947, Golubev deserted the Soviet Army in the Azerbaijan SSR and illegally crossed the Soviet border into Iran. He was immediately arrested by the military authorities and imprisoned. He contacted the British Intelligence Service in August 1948 and offered information. He told an employee of the British Embassy about the airfields, weapons, and command personnel of the military units he served in the Soviet Union.

At the beginning of 1949, having arrived from Isfahan to Tehran, he contacted a British intelligence officer named Jarvis, who was working under the legal cover of a representative of a British company in Tehran. Golubev supplied him with information for money: the deployment, formation, and command personnel of the 103rd rifle cadet brigade, 84th naval brigade, 414th Georgian division, and 513th separate auto battalion, in which he served.

During one of the meetings with Jarvis in 1949, the British intelligence officer suggested that Golubev undergo special training in an English intelligence school for a later drop him into the Soviet Union. Golubev agreed to undergo intelligence training at an English school and then carry out intelligence missions on behalf of the British.

Shortly after this conversation with Jarvis, however, Golubev was arrested by the Iranian police for theft and sentenced to six months in prison. For this reason, his espionage relationship with Jarvis ended, and after leaving prison, he did not cooperate with British intelligence.

Through a translator at the American embassy, Golubev met American “diplomat” Ronald Otto Bollenbach. During 1946 and 1947, Bollenbach was the Assistant Air and Naval Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Golubev passed on information he knew about the location of military-industrial facilities on the territory of the Soviet Union, Soviet military units, their numerical strength, weapons, and the material situation of the population in the USSR.

Bollenbach offered him the chance to undergo espionage training at an American intelligence school. In August 1951, Golubev and three other agent trainees flew from Iran to West Germany.

After arriving in Munich, he was placed in a safe house on the city's outskirts. In the first half of September, he was taken to the intelligence school in Bad Woerishofen, Bavaria. On the instructions of Bollenbach and another American intelligence officer in Munich using the name "Vasily," Golubev was photographed and subjected to a medical examination. He then received a CIA preliminary clearance.

At the intelligence school, Golubev studied reconnaissance methods, radio communications, parachuting, firearms training, topography, the structure of various branches of the Soviet Army, photography, document forgery, and sabotage. The head of this school was Harold Fiedler, listed as a major in the U.S. Army. The teaching staff were all Americans except for one instructor.

In February 1951, Golubev went to Landsberg, where he received practical exercises on the explosion of rails, pipes, telephone poles, and other objects.

Golubev was sent to the United States for further reconnaissance training at the CIA's Domestic Operation Branch (DOB). While at a CIA safe house near Washington, D.C., under the guidance of CIA officer Mike Ogden, he studied topography, radio, and photography and trained in shooting using various types of weapons. He also studied the Soviet Primorsky Territory for future operations.

Under the guidance of Americans who called themselves "Rad," "Tony," and "Georges," Golubev went skiing, hunting, and mountaineering. At the same time, he was trained in making huts in the forest and maintaining fires in the snow.

Golubev was given the CIA cryptonym CACIOSO and was trained for nearly three months (from March 3, 1952, to May 23, 1952). He and Mike Ogden flew to Tokyo, Japan, for more training. There he met another American intelligence officer named “Bill,” who took Golubev by car to a safe house near Yokohama. During this time, Golubev daily went to the seashore, accompanied by the American trainers, and swam for three to four hours.

In the same safe house, he began to study the legend developed for him by American intelligence, connected with the upcoming transfer to Sakhalin. According to the legend, he was Alexander Mikhailovich Vorobyov, who was demobilized from the Soviet Army in 1948, after which he lived in Lviv, Dnepropetrovsk, Voroshilovgrad, Kizlyar, and the village Pravda on Sakhalin..

Book of Interest: Cold War Camera

 

Cold War Camera explores the visual mediation of the Cold War and illuminates photography’s role in shaping the ways it was prosecuted and experienced. The contributors show how the camera stretched the parameters of the Cold War beyond dominant East-West and US-USSR binaries and highlight the significance of photography from across the global South. 

 

Among other topics, the contributors examine the production and circulation of the iconic figure of the “revolutionary Vietnamese woman” in the 1960s and 1970s; photographs connected with the coming of independence and decolonization in West Africa; family photograph archives in China and travel snapshots by Soviet citizens; photographs of apartheid in South Africa; and the circulation of photographs of Inuit Canadians who were relocated to the extreme Arctic in the 1950s. Highlighting the camera’s capacity to envision possible decolonialized futures, establish visual affinities and solidarities, and advance calls for justice to redress violent proxy conflicts, this volume demonstrates that photography was not only crucial to conducting the Cold War, it is central to understanding it.

 

Table of Contents

 

List of Illustrations  ix
Acknowledgments  xv

Cold War Camera: An Introduction / Thy Phu, Andrea Noble, and Erina Duganne  1

Visual Alliances
1. Ernest Cole's House of Bondage, the United States Information Agency, and the Cultural Politics of the World War / Darren Newbury  33
2. Icon of Solidarity: The Revolutionary Vietnamese Woman in Vietnam, Palestine, and Iran / Thy Phu, Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandi, and Donya Ziaee  67
3. Group Material's "Art for the Future": Visualizing Transnational Solidarity at the End of the Global Cold War / Erina Duganne  113
4. Interrogating the Cold War's Geo-Politics from Down South: Chile from Within (1990) and the Construction of a Situated Visuality / Ángeles Donoso Macaya  143
5. Decolonization and Nonalignment: African Futures, Lost and Found / Jennifer Bajorek  167
Photo Essays
6. Bifurcated and Parallel Histories / Tong Lam  195
7. Preservation of Terror / Eric Gottesman  203

Structures of Seeing
8. Ending World War II: The Visual Literacy Class in Cold War Human Rights / Ariella Aïsha Azoulay  213
9. “Planted There Like Human Flags”: Photographs of the High Arctic and Cold War Anxiety, 1951–1956 / Sarah Parsons  239
10. Urban Albums, Village Forms: Chinese Family Photographs and the Cold War / Laura Wexler, Karintha Lowe, and Guigui Yao  263
11. Travel, Space, and Belonging in Soviet Domestic Photo Collections of the Cold War Era / Oksana Sarkosova and Olga Shevchenko  293
12. Exhibiting Ethnic Minorities, Democratizing History: Cold War Legacies and the Jews in Poland's Visible Sphere / Gil Pasternak and Marta Ziętkiewicz  327

Bibliography  359
Contributors  389
Index  395

 

Author/Editor Bios

Thy Phu is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, and author of Warring Visions: Photography and Vietnam, also published by Duke University Press.

Erina Duganne is Professor of Art History at Texas State University and author of The Self in Black and White: Race and Subjectivity in Postwar American Photography.

Andrea Noble (1968–2017) was Professor of Latin American Studies at Durham University and author of Mexican National Cinema.

 

Duke University Press

New Book of Interest published in Finland

 A new book of interest has been published in Finland. Here are some details in English.

INTELLIGENCE AND ESPIONAGE: TRAINING, OPERATIONS, AGENTS

A good spy doesn't go to the safe, he searches and recruits people who have the key to the safe.

A true espionage bible from an expert in the shadow world. Jukka Rislakki, who has closely followed the topic for decades, has written a thorough work on the history, present and future of espionage. He comprehensively presents the industry's key actors, methods of operation and legendary spies both in Finland and internationally. 

Pseudonyms, poisons, assassinations, shadowing and kidnappings In the world of espionage and intelligence, many methods are the same, but a lot has also changed. A thorough work on the history of espionage and intelligence and the present day from a Finnish perspective. It tells about the most central players in the industry, legendary spies and what methods they use.

The book tells incredible stories, both sad and unintentionally comical, including answers to questions such as these:

·      What is intelligence and what is espionage? 

·      What is code and cipher? 

·      Who were Sorge, Sonja and Zoja?

·      What was operation Ryan? 

·      What does MKULTRA mean? 

·      Who was agent "Lassila"? 

·      Why did Hohlov have to learn to whistle well? 

·      What did the "home Russians" do? 

·      How did Finland abandon its agents in Estonia? 

·      What was Britain's legendary SIS really like? 

·      What impossible task did Veera Tervaoja get? 

·      What are KGB, FSB, CIA, NSA, MI6, Vkoel, Supo, NKVD? 

·      What mistakes did the intelligence services make in Barbarossa 1941 and Ukraine 2022? 

·      What does the Secret Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) Agency do? 

·      How die the CIA help Armi Kuusela become Miss Universe? 

·      What did Reino Hallamaa do in Pori jazz? 

·      What was the "half-burnt codebook"? 

·      What was the Secret Police Chief Titlinen list of agents  ? 

Jukka Rislakki is a former editor and investigative journalist who has written, among other things, spy novels and non-fiction books. In addition to Finland, his books  have been published in the Baltic countries, Ukraine, and the United States.