Introduction
For over 40 years, Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) were two American-sponsored radio stations in Munich that broadcast to countries behind the Iron Curtain. They were described in a secret 1969 Central Intelligence Agency report as “the oldest, largest, most costly, and probably most successful covert action projects aimed at the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.”
By the time of the report, thousands of persons worked for these radio stations for almost 20 years at a cost of over $300 ml. Yet, for years much of their existence remained covered in a Cold War shroud of mystery and intrigue. Early records no longer exist, and many persons responsible for the stations’ development have died, leaving fragmentary records. The archives of American and Eastern intelligence services remain classified, inaccessible to the public, or destroyed in the immediate post-1989 years.
All of the intelligence services of the Warsaw Pact operated against RFE/RL for over 40 years. Sometimes this was centrally coordinated activity, and sometimes the countries ran their own operations. In this case, hostile actions spoke louder than words in the battle of ideas fought by East and West.
Asymetric responses
“Radio Liberation from Bolshevism” first broadcast on March 1, 1953, from transmitters in Lampertheim, Germany, to the Soviet armed forces in Germany and Austria. Within ten minutes, the Soviet Union started jamming the broadcasts, an activity that would continue for another 35 years. On August 14, 1954, the Ukrainian Service of Radio Liberation (later Radio Liberty) began its first broadcast from Munich to Ukraine with these words: “Brothers and sisters! Ukrainians! We live abroad, but our hearts and minds are always with you. No iron curtain can separate us or stand in our way.”
The station’s name was changed to “Radio Liberation” in 1956 and then renamed Radio Liberty in 1963.
Émigrés from both RFE and RL faced intimidation, blackmail, murder, threats of murder, and kidnapping. The first and only direct physical attack on RFE/RL headquarters in Munich took place on February 21, 1981. On that date, an international team of terrorists led by the infamous “Carlos the Jackal” exploded a bomb that injured employees and caused over two million dollars in damage.
Numerous propaganda books about both stations were published in East Europe and the former Soviet Union whenever those regimes wanted to counter the radios’ effective programming with domestic and international propaganda. The information in these books was mostly fabricated with tendentious information supplied by agents inside the stations.
A review of the history of RFE/RL would not be complete without mentioning some of the intelligence service activities directed against the radios and their personnel.
Case Study
Agents TARAS, NIKOLAJ, CERNY, and others, were active in Soviet KGB and Czechoslovak SNB operations against the Ukrainian Broadcast Service of RFE/RL in 1988-1989.
The Ukrainian minority in Czechoslovakia (mostly in Slovakia) was of concern to both the Czechoslovak intelligence service SNB ((Sbor národní bezpečnosti or National Security Corps) and the Soviet KGB. For example, the 2nd Administration of the SNB’s 12th Division sent “secret collaborators” to contact the Ukrainian Service employees of Radio Liberty and other emigres in the West. The 2nd Administration also sent reports to a Soviet KGB officer “P” of the 5th Department, 2nd Division.
The Soviet KGB used the “secret collaborators” from Czechoslovakia, as it was known that Radio Liberty employees would not have trusted visitors directly from Ukraine, whom they would believe were “agent provocateurs.” Thus, the idea was developed to use the Ukrainian minority in Czechoslovakia, especially those considered “dissidents,” for intelligence operations against Radio Liberty.
The following excerpt is one of many now becoming available showing the extent of the efforts of Warsaw Pact countries’ spy agencies to infiltrate these stations.
Operation “NIKOLAJ,” October 1989 Report Excerpt:
Subject: Object “NIKOLAJ” – report about Radio Liberty. The Object of the Operation “NIKOLAJ” traveled in July and August 1989 with his wife to capitalist countries. They left Czechoslovakia via Austria in the private car of a Radio Liberty editor, who was returning home to West Germany from a visit to her husband’s parents who live in the CSSR.
“NIKOLAJ” spent three days with the Radio Liberty couple in Munich. In several discussions, he learned that the wife is currently following the Soviet press and is preparing a press review for the Ukrainian section of “Radio Liberty.” She is in a better position than her husband at RL; she is a producer, has a good relationship with the head of the Ukrainian section, Bohdan Nahajlo, and with the entire management of “Radio Liberty.”
An excerpt from a secret report naming members of RL’s Ukrainian Service
With the permission of RL’s director and after receiving a sticker with the word “VISITOR” printed on it, “NIKOLAJ” was allowed to enter the premises of the Ukrainian section. A security guard at the entrance asked for “NIKOLAJ’s” passport and kept it. “Radio Liberty” has about 1,600 employees, of whom 21 work for the Ukrainian section.
One editor conducted an interview with “NIKOLAJ” on the topic “Ukrainian Culture in the CSSR;” he (NIKOLAJ) requested that the interview be broadcast in full and without any changes.
Bohdan Nahajlo, as mentioned above, who is editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian section, is about 35 to 40 years old. His parents are Ukrainians, but he was born in the United Kingdom. “NIKOLAJ” also met with the editor Ivan Kacurovsky, an ethnic Ukrainian who is about 70 years old, a member of the first wave of immigrants, and who holds strongly anti-Soviet views. Furthermore, “NIKOLAJ” personally met with the announcer of the Ukrainian section Olexa Bojarko and with the Ukrainian emigre poet Ema Avdijevska. Both are using pseudonyms.
Among the Ukrainian emigres, there is little information on the lives and activities of Ukrainians living in the CSSR. The employees of the Ukrainian section of “Radio Liberty” are only interested in the situation in Ukraine and have developed no efforts to obtain information from the CSSR. They consider the CSSR to be a conservative state in which restructuring (perestroika) has not gained ground; they believe that the CSSR does not want to introduce (reforms) similar to those in the other socialist countries.
In general, “NIKOLAJ” learned that RL currently has very reliable and quick channels to Ukraine. They receive information on all the activities of the internal opposition, demonstrations, and the situation in Ukraine and the USSR. The Ukrainian emigres also took advantage of the lack of paper in the USSR. They provided paper for certain publishing houses in the USSR to enable them to publish rehabilitated authors according to the wishes of the Ukrainian emigres and the internal opposition.
“NIKOLAJ” had a stopover in Munich only on his way to KZ (Kapitalisticke Zeme–capitalist countries?) and back to the CSSR. He focused his attention on his stay in the USA and Canada, where he spent most of his time. Information about “NIKOLAJ’s” stay in the USA and Canada will be delivered to the Soviet friends in the following report.
The reports ended here as the collapse of Communism in Czechoslovakia took place in November 1989, and with that, the hostile activity against RFE and RL ceased. My book Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe 1950-1989 details the hostile activity.
This is but one example of what went on well into the Gorbachev era despite the declared policy of glasnost and perestroika. And even after the Soviet Union stopped jamming RFE/RL in November 1988.
