Radio Liberty and Cold War Jazz ©

 Radio Liberty and Cold War Jazz

 

The “Jazz Ambassadors” program  was created by the US State Department in 1956: the US State Department decided to send a group of popular American jazz musicians to countries in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to play Western jazz music and, by extension, to present a visual challenge to Soviet propaganda about racial tensions in the United States. Some of the musicians included Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Phil Woods, Oscar Peterson, and Benny Goodman.

 

In the late 1950s, jazz great Louis Armstrong visited Radio Liberty’s New York studio. He agreed to an interview and introduced the program in carefully rehearsed Russian. He then played his trumpet to the accompaniment of a popular Soviet song "Five Minutes." 

 

The Benny Goodman band toured the USSR in 1962. Goodman became the first jazz musician to tour the Soviet Union for the State Department, when he made thirty appearances in six cities in five weeks. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev attended the band’s opening night in Moscow. Goodman opened the show with "Let’s Dance" and "Greetings Moscow," a number based on a Russian folk song. Khrushchev later sent Goodman a note reporting that he had been “very pleased and delighted to be at the concert.” 

 

Goodman gave an impromptu solo clarinet performance in Red Square. The New York Times noted that he became a visiting “Pied Piper” for curious children who swarmed around him in the shadow of the Kremlin.

 

Since Russian officials had banned the American musicians from fraternizing with ordinary citizens, reportedly band members Phil Woods and Zoot Sims made contact with jazz fans, who called out to them from behind trees and bushes as they walked through Moscow parks.

 

Original compositions of "Soviet" jazz musicians were "smuggled" out of the USSR by members of the Goodman band, who had surreptitiously met with the local musicians. In June 1963, Radio Liberty introduced a new weekly half-hour program produced in New York that was called This is Jazz (eto dzhaz). 

 

The first broadcast was that of eight musicians who played the smuggled jazz compositions: Bill Crow, bass, and alto saxophonist Phil Woods, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims, pianist John Bunch, trumpeter Art Farmer (using mostly the fluegelhorn) trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, baritone saxophonist Nick Brignola and drummer Walter Perkins. 

 

The jazz session broadcast was recorded but not released. A CD entitled The Liberty of Jazz with nine of the songs was recently reproduced by Soyyd Records in a limited edition. The CD jacket includes a photograph of the Radio’s transmitter site in Spain and the famous jazz performers. The songs can be previewed for purchase, including the Louis Armstrong recording of "Five Minutes" with him speaking Russian.

 

Radio Free Europe and Cold War Jazz @

 Radios Free Europe and Cold War Jazz

 

Czech disc jockey Eva Stankova was once described in a newspaper article as a “lovely and vivacious refugee.“ She lived in New York and taped her music programs at the New York RFE office. Her program was called “Date with Eva” that was described in 1951 as, "a disk jockey program, brings once again into the enslaved land the native folk music and western jazz banned by the Reds." She traveled throughout the United States giving interviews over domestic radio stations, which played excerpts from her broadcasts and interviews with jazz greats. 

 

In the 1950s, Radio Free Europe broadcast pre-written scripts, using phonetics, read by famous jazz musicians Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, Woody Herman, Oscar Peterson, Earl Hines and Stan Kenton. Newspapers in 1957 carried her photograph with the caption: "Checkin' in Czech -- Roy (Little Jazz) Eldridge says a few words in Czechoslovakia in the Czech language. Helping the famed trumpeter overcome the language barrier is pretty Eva Stankova of Radio Free Europe." The programs were then made available to U.S. audiences through the Crusade for Freedom. 

 

The Billboard magazine in 1958 proudly proclaimed itself in its sixty-fourth year to be “The Amusement Industry’s Leading Newsweekly.”  The March 3, 1958, issue had a full-page article entitled “A Report to the Music Industry” that dealt with Radio Free Europe and the Crusade for Freedom A photograph of the Munich RFE headquarters and a graphic of the RFE transmitter sites and how programs were broadcast from Germany and Portugal to East Europe.  The article focused on music: “The youth in these countries want to know about and hear the latest American pop, dance and jazz records.  And music of all kinds comprises some 15% of broadcast time to each country behind the Iron Curtain.”

 

For the 1959 campaign, the Advertising Council also sent out a two-record set to radio stations: one was entitled “But not for me—Freedom is not free” that contained brief personal appeals in support Radio Free Europe, from musicians and entertainers, Duke Ellington, Arthur Godfrey, Hy Gardner, Judy Holliday, Robert Preston and Dorothy Collins. It was distributed with a second record “This Guitar Chose Freedom” that told the story of Hungarian jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo and his escape to freedom in 1956. Television personality Steve Allen was the speaker and Szabo is heard on the record playing songs “I remember you,” ‘Berklee’s Delight,” “You go to my head” and “Chinatown my Chinatown.” The theme of the recording was “How American jazz – stifled behind the Iron Curtain – sounds in a free land.”

Dr. Zhivago and CIA

 Doctor Zhivago

“No single man makes history. History cannot be seen, just as one cannot see grass growing. Wars and revolutions, kings and Robespierres, are history's organic agents, its yeast. But revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track mind, geniuses in their ability to confine themselves to a limited field. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days, the whole upheaval takes a few weeks or at most years, but the fanatical spirit that inspired the upheavals is worshiped for decades thereafter, for centuries. ”

- Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

 

CIA Publishes Doctor Zhivago in Russian and Exposes Life in USSR under Communism

The CIA has declassified 99 documents describing the CIA’s role publishing Boris Leonidovich Pasternak’s epic novel, Doctor Zhivago, for the first time in Russian in 1958 after it had been banned from being published in the Soviet Union. 

The Zhivago project was one of many CIA-supported covert publishing programs that involved distributing banned books, periodicals, pamphlets, and other materials to intellectuals in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This collection provides a glimpse into a thoughtful plan to accomplish fast turn-around results without doing harm to foreign partners or Pasternak. 

Following the publication of Doctor Zhivago in Russian in 1958, Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the popularity of the book skyrocketed, and the plight of Pasternak in the Soviet Union received global media attention. Moscow had hoped to avoid these precipitous outcomes by initially refusing to publish the novel two years earlier. There is no indication in this collection that having Pasternak win the Nobel Prize was part of the Agency’s original plan; however, it contributed to appeals to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and it was a blow to those who insisted that the Soviets in 1958 enjoyed internal freedom. 

Of note, the documents in this collection show how effective “soft power” can influence events and drive foreign policy.

The CIA documents can be found at  

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/collection/doctor-zhivago

 

From Conflict to Smokey Joe's: Secret Tunnel Operations in Vienna ©

 Richard H. Cummings

“Divided Cities and Contested Cities during the Cold War”

Gorizia, Italy

20-23 March 2025

 

 

From Conflict to Smokey Joe’s: Secret Tunnel Operations in Vienna

 

 

            Operation Silver was a collective term for several individual tunnel projects. The British secret service MI6 completed three tunnels in Vienna from 1948/49. They were named Conflict, Lord, and Sugar. The purpose was to tap into the Soviet occupying power's military communication.

            Conflict was the operational name for the first tunnel. In the summer or autumn of 1948, an Austrian telecommunications expert is said to have given British Intelligence an explosive tip: Under Aspangstraße in Vienna-Landstraße, a telephone cable handled a large part of Soviet military telephone traffic as well as the international lines to Prague, Budapest, Sofia, and Bucharest.

            Three men worked around the clock in two or three-hour shifts in the tunnel nicknamed "Smokey Joe's" because of the unfiltered air mixture of cigarette smoke and cellar moisture. When a man heard a telephone call, he activated the recording device, the conversation was recorded on an Edison phone cylinder. The cylinders were then flown three times a week in special barrels from Vienna to London. There, the recordings of the MI6 department were listened to and transcribed. The team comprised of 50 to 60 Russian emigrants, Polish army officers in exile and language experts. The transcripts of summaries from this were incorporated into a regular bulletin about the order of battle of the Red Army in Austria.

.           Lord, the longest and most elaborate of the three espionage tunnels, was created at the end of the Simmeringer Hauptstraße – just opposite the Soviet-occupied eastern bank of the Schwechat River The goal was also, in this case, an underground cable, which ran parallel to the road and the Hotel Imperial with the command of the Red Army. Access to the tunnel was via a villa where intelligence officer John Edward Wyke and his wife had previously moved in. Wyke was the right hand of MI6 head Peter Lunn, the driving force behind Operation Silver. The tunnel is said to have been just over 21 meters long. Previously, the house entrance had been renewed with a layer of concrete and dug from the cellar to the cable.

 

CIA Operation

 

            Communications intelligence (COMINT) is information gathered from communications between individuals or groups of individuals, including telephone conversations, text messages, email conversations, radio calls, and online interactions. Specifically, COMINT refers to analyzing the signals containing speech or text generated by these interactions. The targets for the British and Americans were the same: the penetration of Soviet operations and Soviet order-of-battle intelligence. What went on in the Imperial Hotel in Vienna was, accordingly, a major intelligence target. 

            One time Director of CIA Richard Helms wrote in his memoirs: “By 1951 our research showed that the landlines followed the original conduits established for telephonic traffic before World War I in Austria and Germany. The proximity of these lines to areas in which we might work suggested a long-shot possibility of breaking into the mass of communications between Moscow and the Soviet occupation headquarters in Austria, Germany, and the Central Group of Forces in Hungary. However slight our chances, the potential product of a successful operation appeared to justify an all-out effort. Landlines can be intercepted only by tapping the telephone cables. Breaking into the lines—most of which were tucked underground—would be a considerable undertaking, but would have one advantage over radio monitoring.”

            The CIA Vienna station had a blueprint of the underground cables and communications routes between the Soviet command in the hotel and Moscow. Using information from city plans and other sources, Carl Nelson, an officer in the CIA's Office of Communications, was able to put this blueprint together. Helms wrote, "We were well along with this research in Austria when our Vienna office earned that the British had independently come upon the same idea and had made considerable progress in tapping into the underground cables. The potential value of the intercept product in Austria and Germany meant there was too much at stake to risk any overlapping effort in such a narrow field. The British agreed, and we each cooperated to the hilt at all times."

According to one historian, "During its lifetime, the joint operation in Vienna kept a steady supply of firsthand information flowing to top decision-makers in London and Washington. The CIA recruited the first of a series of Soviet intelligence officers at the turn of the year 1952/1953. This invaluable source … contributed greatly to the West's requirements for reliable early warning of a Soviet offensive."

            The deputy head of British Intelligence in London, Section Y, George Blake, had been a Soviet KGB since his imprisonment in the Korean War. In October of 1953, Blake was said to have handed over a folded piece of paper to his KGB contact in London. The folded piece of paper contained a list of all the SIS's telephone tapping operations in the Vienna tunnel operation, as well as information about microphones planted in Soviet and East Bloc embassies in Western Europe. In only their second or third meeting, in early December 1952, “Blake handed over a hugely damaging Minox film of a ninety-page report entitled 'Banner 54/1', which contained a compilation of the tapped calls between Austria and Hungary, obtained via the tunnels in Vienna.”

            The CIA covered 75 percent of the cost of the joint tunnel operation, which ran until 1955 when Austria regained sovereignty. The CIA had been so impressed by Operation Silver's output that it copied it on a much larger scale: in 1954/55, a 450 meter-long tunnel was dug under the Soviet-occupied sector of Berlin: Operation Gold.

Isaac Patch and Radio Liberty Committee’s “Book Project” ©

 Isaac Patch and Radio Liberty Committee’s “Book Project”

 

            Although CIA files and documents relating to Radio Liberty Committee’s book distribution program remain basically closed, we can still glimpse this important Cold War activity.

            Parallel to Radio Free Europe, the short-wave international radio network that became known as the CIA covertly financed Radio Liberty from its beginning. Eventual financial support from U.S. Government funds for Radio Liberty would amount to $160 million.  William H. Chamberlin, one of the original members of the RLC Advisory Council, succinctly described the major difficulty it faced: 

 

Emphasis was on trying to promote a united organization of Russian and non-Russian émigré groups (Communists, Fascists, and extreme reactionaries excluded), which would carry on radio broadcasting and other anti-Communist activity in the name of a united politically conscious emigration.  

 

This attempt was frustrated by the atmosphere of suspicious hostility, which prevailed among the Russian and non-Russian political groups, and also by personal feuds among leaders of the groups.

 

            The man chosen to unite the émigré groups was Isaac Patch, who had been a career diplomat in Moscow in World War II and later in Prague, from where he was expelled on 24-hours-notice in October 1949 for having been involved in anti-Communist underground activities in Czechoslovakia. 

            Patch joined RLC in Munich as "director of émigré relations" or "political coordinator," in a failed attempt to unite the émigré groups. In his memoirs, he wrote, “My job as émigré relations advisor had run its course. Although I had been unsuccessful in bringing the Russians and non-Russians together in a committee to serve as its sponsor, I did help in recruiting people for the various Radio Liberty desks.”

            Patch then took over the Special Projects Division, which published a newspaper and quarterly journal for the Russian émigré community. In 1956, Patch transferred to RLC headquarters in New York to begin “The Book Project.” He has written that the purpose of “The Book Project” was “To communicate Western ideas to Soviet citizens by providing them with books -- on politics, economics, philosophy, art, and some technology -- all denied them by the Soviet dictatorship.”

            Howland Sargeant, president of RLC, heartily endorsed Patch's Program and presented it to the CIA for financial support. The CIA responded with an initial grant of $10,000. To give cover to the book program, The Bedford Publishing Company was initially created as a "private venture" to publish Western books that had not been previously translated into Russian. The Bedford Publishing House remained physically separate from Radio Liberty operations. Although no longer officially associated with Radio Liberty, Patch attended its regular staff meetings in New York.

            The Bedford Publishing Company had offices in London, Paris, Munich and Rome. Book translations were made in France and England, and publishing was done in Italy. Soviet visitors to cities such as London, Paris, New York, and Rome were given books, as were Western travelers to the Soviet Union. In the 14-year-long book program associated with Radio Liberty, over one million books were delivered to the USSR this way. In his memoirs, Patch broke down this number:

 

35 percent were given to Soviet travelers to the West:

 

·      Engineers,

·      Teachers,

·      Artists, 

·      Students and

·      Journalists.

 

40 percent were given to Western travelers to the USSR:

 

·      Doctors, 

·      Lawyers, 

·      Teachers and

·      Engineers

 

10 percent were mailed to people authorized to receive book packages from the West

Fifteen percent found their way to the USSR by special routes.

            Although CIA funding for The Bedford Publishing Company, as a unit of the Radio Liberty Committee, ceased in 1970, support continued until the Program was consolidated with the International Advisory Council (IAC) into the International Literary Center (ILC) in July 1975.

            Patch wrote, "There was no evidence that the Soviet government made any concerted attempt to disrupt our efforts." He added, “The Book Program was a rewarding endeavor for me and everyone involved. Americans in the Department of State approved of the project, and Walt Raymond, who was my liaison with CIA, told me years later that the Book Program was highly regarded by his agency. It was great fun dealing with books and ideas and working with other book lovers who enjoyed searching for titles and translators. Those of us working on the Program were thrilled to think that those hundreds of thousands of books perhaps helped to broaden Soviet minds and horizons toward democracy and western economic ideas.”

            Isaac (Ike) Patch died on May 31, 2014; he was 101 years old.

Cold War CIA Sponsored Russian Language Propaganda Leaflets/Balloons into East Germany ©

 Cold War CIA Sponsored Russian Language Propaganda Leaflets/Balloons into East Germany

 

The CIA created and controlled Russian émigré organization "Central Association of Post-War Émigrés" (TsOPE – transliteration of ЦОПЭ - Центральное Объединение Послевоенных Эмигрантов) was founded in November 1952. CIA cryptonyms for TsOPE included HBDUCKPIN, AEPAWN, and AEVIRGIL-1. According to one declassified CIA document: "TsOPE was created, supported, and controlled by CIA in order to develop and utilize some of the human resources in the Russian anti-Soviet emigration in support of CIA's political and psychological objective of accelerating evolutionary changes in the character and policy of the Soviet regime." 

 

According to one CIA report, “Experience argues that, by and large, attribution to a real organization lends propaganda a legitimate authenticity which notional attribution cannot achieve. Indigenous press and radio coverage of TsOPE's activities help, along this line, to reinforce the basic leaflet campaign. TsOPE staff members write the leaflets under the close supervision of a contract agent, who transmits policy guidelines and related directions of the case officers.” TsOPE’s headquarters was set up in Munich, Germany, with chapters in Brussels, Paris, and Vienna.

It was proposed to continue financial support of TsOPE, to “enable consolidation of present achievements and to provide for sound expansion of its anti-Soviet psychological warfare program. Specifically, it was proposed in Fiscal Year 1955:

a.     to undertake long-range balloon dispatch of leaflets aimed at our primary target, the peoples of the USSR; 

b.     to carry out short-range balloon dispatch of leaflets aimed at Soviet occupation personnel in Germany; 

c.     to increase both the quantity and quality of defection and disaffection leaflets, pamphlets and ideological materials; 

d.     to provide the group with printing facilities to enable production by the organization itself of leaflets in sufficient quantity for the expanded distribution program; 

The American zone of Germany centering on the Coburg-Hof area, was one base of operations used to launch balloons. In the initial phase, the objective was to launch balloons carrying anti-Soviet propaganda leaflets in the Russian language within the Soviet zone of Germany. Balloons were launched with fuses for targets within a one-hundred kilometer radius of the Coburg-Hof area. Bursting methods was used for targets above one hundred kilometers away but less than the maximum accurate range of five hundred kilometers. The project was a short-range balloon operation, In the initial phase, Soviet installations within a five-hundred kilometer radius of the Coburg-Hof area and inside the Soviet zone of Germany were the targets. 

Personnel employed did not require any special cover. They operated as representatives of TSIOPOE engaged in carrying out an anti-Communist action. Permits were obtained from the Border police for this purpose and the actual launching operations took place in the forest at a safe distance from cities and towns. A camouflaged truck possibly one employed in the transport of just such gas cylinders was needed for the dispatch. These cylinders were used commercially and customarily transported by truck to supply points.

The estimate of costs was based on an average monthly launching of forty balloons carrying 13,500 leaflets each, or a total of 540,000 leaflets per month. Special operations with two three-man enabled the teams to release 3,000,000 leaflets in any given three-day period, weather conditions permitting, or 6,000,000 over a period of one week, The balloon team in Bavaria launched a total of 1,576,250 leaflets in six actions during the month of December 1956. The balloon team in Berlin launched a record total of leaflets during December. A total of 14,993,361 leaflet units were launched in the DDR through the use of 3474 balloons.

The TsOPE shop in Munich printed a total of 530,000 leaflet units during December 1956.The balloon team in Bavaria launched a total of 1,576,250 leaflets in six actions during the month of December 1956. The balloon team in Berlin launched a record total of leaflets during December. A total of 14,993,361 leaflet units were launched in the DDR through the use of 3474 balloons. 

TsOPE operations were terminated in the summer of 1963 for the following reason: “Events have superseded TsOPE’s usefulness and because the CIA personnel and resources allotted to its support could now be used more effectively in other forms of CA (Covert Action) activity.“

 

Code Name "Krüger" ©

Code Name “Krüger”

 

“Krüger” was a source for KGB information from 1972 to 1986, but he did not report to or

work for the KGB. His story has an interesting twist.

 

“Krüger” was born in 1922 to Russian émigrés in Belgrade. He graduated from Belgrade

High School. During World War II, he went to Berlin in 1941 and studied at the Film Technical

School for two years. In 1943, he became an officer of the Russian anti–Soviet army of General

Vlasov in Germany. He spoke fluent Russian, Serbian, German, and good English. Because of a

war injury, his left leg was amputated at the knee in 1944, and he remained in a military hospital

until February 1946. Afterwards while living in various displaced persons’ camps in Austria, he

was able to get various jobs with the U.S. Army occupation forces as a film projectionist until he

successfully got a job as a monitor with Radio Liberty in 1955, because of his language abilities.

 

He was known to have continuous and serious financial problems in the fifties and sixties

until sometime in 1972. While employed in the Russian Monitoring Section, he was also

controlled and paid by the former DDR (East Germany) intelligence service (MfS). The MfS

was, apparently, operating in behalf of the KGB, since the MfS normally would have had little,

if any, interest in RFE/RL. “Krüger” was paid 1,000 DM on the average per month. In return he

was to supply personal information about RFE/RL’s employees and provide documents

especially from his own department, which monitored and transcribed Russian language radio

broadcasts.

 

Also part of his task was reporting on the large and active Ukrainian exile community in

Munich. He used his RFE/RL employment to maintain contact with them. “Krüger” met his

handler in various locations in Munich and Bavaria. The initial information given to the RFE/RL

security office in 1991 did not give concise details of what “Krüger” was to have allegedly done,

or what information he might have provided to the MfS, or if he acted alone in the MfS tasking.

 

The MfS was directly involved in various activities with non–German émigré groups in the

West (presumably for the KGB), including employees of RFE/RL. In January 1992, the RFE/RL

Bavarian counterintelligence contact finally had the opportunity to meet with the former MfS

intelligence officer, Karl-Hermann Mueller, responsible for “Krüger.” He said the KGB had

originally recruited “Krüger,” but in 1972 they turned over the operation to the MfS. The MfS

was tasked with gathering information about the CIA, and they wanted to use “Krüger” to gather

information about presumed CIA involvement and personnel at RFE/RL. “Krüger” was then

given his code name. He was a member of the Works Council and one can assume that this was

his prime source of information on RFE/RL: hirings, firings, promotions, demotions,

disciplinary action, etc. He provided copies of internal RFE/RL memoranda, the telephonebooks, 

and any other written information. In total, the amount of information provided by “Krüger” was 

about forty inches thick.

 

The MfS used him to gather materials and information about RFE/RL until February 1986,

when Gundarev defected in Athens and was flown to the United States. At the same time, the

MfS sent a message to Moscow asking if Gundarev’s defection could jeopardize the “Krüger”

operation. The KGB answered yes, that Gundarev had knowledge of the KGB’s prior control of

“Krüger.” The MfS thereupon stopped the “Krüger” operation.

 

“Krüger” met his contacts on a monthly basis in a Wienerwald restaurant in the town where

he lived. The MfS and the KGB had conducted a “false flag” operation with “Krüger” as he

apparently thought all along that he was providing information to the British Intelligence

Agency MI5. Mueller later said that “Krüger” was never told his information was going to the

MfS or KGB. He thought that “Krüger” was possibly originally recruited by a KGB agent or

officer named Grynov, who also was at one time possibly controlled by the British intelligence

agency M15. Grynov had previously been an officer in “Krüger’s” detachment during World

War Two, and the two of them maintained contact after the war.

 

Over the years, “Krüger” was paid in excess of DM 100,000 for his information, which

totaled over 2,500 pages. “Krüger” was last known to have met with his MfS contacts in

February 1986. The statute of limitations in these cases was five years, thus there was no

prosecution possibility.

 

Cold War Radio; The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1850-1980,

Chapter 7