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p The radio stations of the NATO countries are like an iceberg whose visible part is the official mission of broadcasting, the invisible but deeper and more powerful one being covert activity. But both components invariably make an integral whole, one being an extension of the other: broadcasting provides favourable conditions for secret operations the results of which are exploited through radio broadcasting. In the language of the professionals the former is called "studio work" and the latter, "field activity" of the radio stations.

p Thus, according to the British press, the BBC has been for many years collaborating with the MI6 (a branch of British Intelligence) which uses the broadcasting corporation and its foreign correspondents’ bureaus as cover for intelligence agents. The scandal which erupted in 1976 around the Department of Information and Research of the Foreign Office (in fact a sub-division of MI6, which coordinated the propaganda activities of the British mass media) revealed that the BBC, acting on the instructions of the department, regularly included misinformation into its news bulletins and inserted prearranged call signs and coded messages for MI6 agents overseas in its music and information broadcasts. Letters received by the BBC from listeners abroad were regularly passed on to analysts from the Intelligence Service. But the cooperation between the BBC and MI6 continues to this day in spite of the disgraceful exposures. The only result of the scandal 91 was the renaming of the department as the Foreign News Department of the Foreign Office and a nominal reduction of its staff.

p The BBC has a monitoring service to which access is restricted and which operates in close contact with the British and US intelligence and propaganda agencies. The BBC and the Foreign Broadcasting Information Service of the United States exchange information in accordance with a long-term agreement under which the monitoring services of the two countries, and consequently the CIA and MI6, have divided the "air space". The Americans listen in to Asia, the Far East and South America while the British take care of Western and Eastern Europe. The monitoring of radio broadcasts and linkups between aircraft pilots and captains of ships with their bases and of radiotelephone lines in the Middle East region and Africa is done jointly by the two sides. Secret eavesdropping embraces 120 countries, including potential adversaries and allies, non-aligned states and friendly powers. The once immutable rule—"gentlemen do not read other people’s letters"—has long been forgotten in the British Isles. The main recipients of the intercepted information are the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA, the Foreign Office and, of course, MI6.

p The United States also has its own centres of global eavesdropping and surveillance, such as the electron surveillance centre at Edzell (Scotland), the top-secret system deployed in Greenland, and the Diogenes station at Sinop (Turkey). Federal Germany, Britain and Italy also have similar facilities designed to collect and analyse military, diplomatic, commercial and other information passing through channels of communication belonging to other states.

p The well-known Western journalist Emil Hoffmann wrote in his book Medienfreiheifi ("Are the Mass Media Free?"):

p “A special place in the activity of the Western communications media belongs to their links with the secret services which not only supply them with falsified information but also use their services for carrying out their own propaganda activities. The leading role is played by the CIA which has a worldwide network of journalist-agents.”^^1^^

Such “black” propaganda focused on Eastern Europe is the special concern of the US government radio stations Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty based in Munich. They are such a typical example of an “iceberg” whose top, broadcasting, is merely a cover for extensive spying operations and a justification for the presence of g large number of US intelligence 92 agents at these stations that they deserve more detailed examination.

p The entire history of RFE/RL is one of a series of scandalous exposures. The severest blow to these radio stations and a sensational revelation for the world public were the events in 1971 when Senators Clifford Case, a Republican from New Jersey, and William Fulbright, a Democrat from Arkansas, made public the fact that RFE and RL were a creature of the CIA which financed them on a regular basis.

p Senator Case, member of the Senate Appropriations and Foreign Relations Committees, stated that "covert CIA funding of the two stations has been an open secret for years. Both organizations have offices in New York and purport to be privately endowed with funds coming exclusively from foundations, corporations and the public. Both, however, are extremely reticent about the details of their financing." Senator Case noted that both RFE and RL "claim to be nongovernmental organizations sponsored by private contributions". However, "available sources indicate that direct CIA subsidies paid nearly all their costs". In 1970 the CIA provided the stations with 30 million dollars without formal Congressional approval. Senator Case emphasized that Congress had never participated in the authorization of appropriations of funds for RFE/RL, although hundreds of millions of dollars in government funds had been spent during the previous 20 years.^^2^^

p In his book, The Crippled Giant. American Foreign Policy and Its Domestic Consequences, Senator Fulbright writes:

p “One of the more striking—though ineffectual—survivals of cold-war mentality in our European policy is represented by our so-called ‘information’ programmes directed to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. For many years ’Radio Free Europe’ and ’Radio Liberty’ defrauded the American people by pretending to be private organizations relying on private contributions and committed to broadcasting the ‘truth’ to the peoples of Eastern Europe. In fact, the two broadcasters received hundreds of millions of dollars from the Central Intelligence Agency from 1950 until the identity of their secret benefactor became known in 1971. Since then, the two nominally independent propaganda organs have been financed by public appropriated funds....

p “Purporting to keep the ‘truth’ alive behind the ’Iron Curtain’, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty are in fact hardy 93 survivors of the old cold-war mentality. If our foreign propaganda activities had anything at all to do with an authentic interest in freedom and truth rather than anti-communism, we would presumably be providing funds for a ’Radio Free Greece’ or a ’Radio Free Brazil’ (these countries were ruled by dictatorial regimes at the time of writing—Ed.), both countries whose governments impose a degree of censorship. The rationale for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, and for much of the official propaganda put forth by the United States Information Agency, derives from the old crusading antiCommunist ideology...”^^3^^

p The US Administration, however, did not want to be deprived of the “unofficial” voice of RFE/RL broadcasting to Eastern Europe in keeping with official instructions from the United States. The deception of the American people continued, and it continues to this day. Lie No. 1 is that RFE and RL have broken off all relations with the CIA. Lie No. 2 is that the radio stations are subordinated only to the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB) and are financed only by Congress.

p The allegation that these radio stations broke off relations with the CIA is constantly repeated in many subsequent documents and publications from the Western press. Here are some typical statements:

p “The stations’ relationship with the CIA was completely terminated on June 30, 1971 .”^^4^^

p Another statement purported that in early 1971 both stations had something like a dozen CIA workers; by the start of July 1971 they had all either left the stations or ceased working for the CIA. Beginning with 1972, the statement further alleged, the only remaining link between the radio stations and the Agency was a two-way exchange of informative material which was open to public scrutiny. The stations received listening-post reviews prepared by the external broadcasting services (as is done by many diplomatic affairs correspondents and private editors), and the CIA ordered research papers prepared by radio stations as is done by US and other governmental institutions, universities, organs of the press and individual scholars.^^5^^

p “Both radios once received grants through CIA channels and this has been openly and often stated by American authorities. These grants were switched over to ’public funding’—that is annual appropriations voted by the US Congress—in 1971. The directors of the two stations and leading government officials have stated unequivocally since 94 then that, first, there are no ties whatsoever to the CIA and second, there are no CIA personnel working for, or attached to, the stations.”^^6^^

p One more statement claimed that both stations were shaken and demoralized by the publication of the fact that their broadcasts to.Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were financed by the CIA. They adopted new charters that allegedly put an end to their ties with the Agency and placed them under the authority of a semi-autonomous Board for International Broadcasting in Washington.

p Let us consider first the claim that there are no CIA personnel working for, or attached to, RFE/RL. The Western public is familiar with the evidence collected by intelligence officers of socialist countries who penetrated RFE/RL— Andrzej Czechowicz, Pavel Minarik, Khrisan Khristov and Yuri Marin—which received broad press coverage in the 1970s. Has everything changed and is it all different today, in the 1980s?

p One has only to open the RFE/RL telephone directory to find both the previously known names of CIA operatives and those of newly arrived CIA officers and agents.

p Here are some of them:

p —James L. Buckley, President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an old CIA agent nicknamed “Padre”;

p —George Bailey, Director of Radio Liberty, a CIA officer who began his career at the Clandestine Service Division in West Berlin, later represented the CIA on the editorial board of the magazine Kontinenf,

p —Gerd von Doemming, a CIA agent working under cover as executive director of the Russian service of Radio Liberty; in October 1982 Doemming was appointed head of a RFE/RL office which opened in Salzburg (Austria) and is officially known as the IBI Press Office and located at Reinerstrasse, 2;

p —Jon S. Lodeesen, a graduate of the American intelligence school in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (West Germany); in 1968 he was a second secretary of the US Embassy in Moscow, was declared persona non grata and expelled from the USSR; later he worked at the political department of the NATO headquarters in Brussels; on the staff of RL since 1969; his last post: head of Bailey’s office and also the chief coordinator of the division of planning and "programme support" and of the research division;

p —Keith Bush, Director of the RL Central Research Division, was transferred to the radio station in 1963 from the CIA headquarters, nephew of the US Vice-President, a non-
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staff political instructor at the American intelligence school in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (West Germany);

p —George E. Perry, a CIA agent on the staff of the RL Office of Public Affairs, who maintains close contacts with the American intelligence school in Garmisch-Partenkirchen;

p —Robert B. Redlich, Director of RL’s Office of Public Affairs, one time head of the American intelligence school at Bad Homburg (West Germany); his chief duties are to maintain contacts with the Deutsch^ Welle radio station, the Western press and CIA agents in the West German mass media;

p —Robert Tuck, graduate of the American intelligence school in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, once an intelligence officer of the US Navy, then of the CIA, former head of the Russian language section;

p —A. Russell Poole, director of the RFE/RL Administration Division, a prominent CIA agent, oversees the security service;

p —Richard H. Cummings, head of the security service, was 96 appointed Director of a RFE/RL branch (1960); in 1971 -1974 worked at the CIA branch at Bad Godesberg; in 1975-1976 was in Teheran where he closely cooperated with Iran’s SAVAK; on the staff of RFE/RL since 1980;

p —Walter K. Scott, a CIA agent in charge of the secret monitoring division in Oberschleissheim (West Germany);

p —Hugh Elbot, a CIA agent supervising the content of RFE/RL broadcasts;

p —Isaac Patch, a CIA agent, was in charge of the special projects division of RL (illegal dispatch of subversive literature) until 1968, now a member of the RFE/RL Committee.

p Among the more notorious figures on the staff of Radio Free Europe are:

p —Zdzislaw Najder, Director of RFE’s Polish section and a CIA agent; has been tried by a Polish court (in absentia) and sentenced for spying for the United States;

p —Vlad Georgescu, director of RFE’s Romanian section and a CIA agent; in 1981 was arrested in Romania for spying for the United States.

p And so we could go on. We can name, for instance, Kazimierz Zamorski, Stanislaw Mikitiuk, Ludwig Lubehski and Bogumil Brydak from the Polish section; Jaroslav Pechacek, Slava Volny, Josef Pejskar and Milan Schultz from the Czechoslovak section, and Asen Mandikov, Rumen Traichev, Dimiter Inkiow and Gilda Koeves from the Bulgarian section...

p Many years have passed since June 30, 1971, the day when, as Washington assured the public, all links between RFE/RL and the CIA had been severed, but to this day US intelligence officers play the leading role at these radio stations, which confirms the well-known fact that RFE/RL have always been and remain agencies of subversion and espionage. We have in fact mentioned only some of the CIA operatives at the central RFE/RL offices; a look at the lists of the personnel of RFE/RL branches or of the Board for International Broadcasting will be enough to show beyond any doubt that the CIA is in full control, directing the content and nature of their broadcasting and illegal activities in Munich, Paris, Rome, London, Vienna and Brussels.

p Before examining the "field work", i.e., the covert spying activity of the radio stations let us take a look at one interesting episode.

p In early March 1983 the RFE/RL centre at Munich received some new instructions on pensioning which stressed that the length of service at RFE/RL should include the work at their branches and associated organizations and institutions. Some 97 employees of RL’s Russian language service assumed that "associated institutions" should also include the anti-Soviet organization CAPE (Central Association of Political Emigres) which was formed after the war and whose staff members were subsequently merged with the RFE/RL staff. About a dozen of them requested the management to have their record of service in emigre organizations included in their length of service at the radio stations. They insisted that RFE/RL and these emigre organizations were without doubt associated organizations since they had been financed from the same CIA budget.

p When Washington rejected the request the “wronged” employees took the matter to court. The heads of RFE/RL were very sensitive to the move since the plaintiffs intended to prove, as they were obviously qualified to, that the CAPE and RFE/RL had engaged, under guidance from the CIA, in joint subversive activities against Moscow, the information aspect of RFE/RL broadcasting being of a secondary and incidental nature.

p This self-exposure was further proof that “field” activity is the radio stations’ only raison d’etre, broadcasting being a screen for espionage. Employees of the radio stations are keen to meet all kinds of people from Eastern Europe, be it gullible tourists or new emigres, from whom they buy or otherwise obtain commercial, political, economic or military information about one of the Warsaw Treaty countries. The radio stations have special teams, such as the so-called research division, staffed with CIA officers who sift, sort out and file away the information gathered as a result. Furthermore, RFE/RL have two services for monitoring radio broadcasts and radiotelephone channels, such as the Moscow-Irkutsk, Moscow-Alma Ata, Moscow-Vladivostok and Moscow-Khabarovsk radiotelephone links. Listening in to telephone conversations is prohibited by international law, but the "cloak-and-dagger boys" obviously consider themselves to be above the law or any international rules.

p The subversive radio stations keep extensive files with detailed data about prominent people in Eastern Europe, which store away every bit of painstakingly gathered information about party and state leaders, managers and executives in industry, transport and agriculture, scientists, artists, actors, writers, educational workers, clergymen of various faiths, commanding officers in the armed forces and heads of internal security. Each card contains, in addition to the usual biographical data, information about the private life, connections, 98 weaknesses, friends and enemies of the "subject of study". Note is also made of whether the person in question expresses the same views both officially and privately and of his or her attitude to the Americans and the Soviet Union. The cards are being constantly fed with new particulars obtained both from overt sources (the press and radio) and from secret reports by informers. The CIA station at RFE/RL systematically employs this information in planning secret operations.

p US intelligence officers in Munich study letters from listeners in the East. When the second letter arrives or if the very first message is considered to be sufficiently interesting by the CIA, an appropriate card is added to the files. Letters from people signed with their initials or a fictitious name are examined with particular interest. As a rule, such a listener reveals his identity ve.ry soon, and if he looks promising enough, the CIA checks up on him with the help of a suitable person, such as an American tourist. The CIA also searches for potential collaborators and informers through such false-front organizations as the Intora company in Austria which is an undercover branch of RFE/RL. Its real objectives are hidden behind the innocuous pursuit of studying public opinion and the audibility of radio broadcasts.

p One can get a pretty good idea of this aspect of RFE/RL’s “field” activity from an article printed in the Austrian newspaper Volksstimme, a summary of which is given below.^^7^^

p Officially the Intora firm is engaged in studying the market and assessing public opinion. It occupies a new super-modern three-storey building at 52 Hadikgasse, Penzig-Vienna. Its entrance, however, is not situated on Hadikgasse but Gyrowetzgasse, and one generally gets the feeling that the firm is not interested in publicity. Its doors are securely locked day and night and one can pass through them only after extensive explanations through the intercom. Helmut Aigner, the chief of Intora, is keen to assure every visitor that his firm has "a solid financial base" and is engaged in studying public opinion and in market research. It soon transpires, however, that the “market” which Intora is investigating consists of people who come to Austria from the socialist countries, while "opinion research" entails fishing for information about the political, economic and military situation in those countries, in short, spying.

p “The solid financial base" of which Aigner is so proud is explained by the fact that Intora’s principal clients are the subversive spying radio stations Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America, which are in their turn managed and funded 99 by the CIA. For that very reason Intora is not interested in publicity.

p Every day Intora sends out as many as 70 agents to hunt for people. They are particularly interested in citizens from Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the USSR and Czechoslovakia. It does not matter whether they come to Austria on holidays or on an official mission, on business or for private reasons. The only necessary conditions are that the people who are questioned should not have left their homeland more than three months earlier and that they intend to return home. The last point is particularly stressed by the chief. The obvious intention is to use these people further for spying purposes on their return home.

p Before each questioning for spying purposes the firm’s agents must report to their office in person or over the telephone. They dial number 825102 in Vienna and give the place and time of the talk with their “subject” and the telephone number by which they can be reached. The report is recorded on tape. This procedure enables Aigner to interfere in any questioning and make it a recruitment deal.

p There is particular interest in the questioned person’s attitude to RFE, which is sufficient evidence of the extremely close relations between Intora and the American radio station...

p The information obtained during questioning is immediately passed on to RFE and consequently to the CIA. This is done quite legally in neutral Austria. Day in and day out. The authorities shut their eyes to the existence of this spying institution and its revolting manhunts. "We repeat in this connection," Volksstimme writes, "that the very fact that such a spying institution exists runs counter to Austria’s constant neutrality and the decisions of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.”

p The chief of the research office in Vienna, Helmut Aigner, a former commercial traveller, forwards the answers to questionnaires which have been actually received or fabricated to Henry 0. Hart, Director of the East European Area Audience and Opinion Research Division of Radio Free Europe, who has close ties with the CIA. Along with the study of persons questioned for intelligence purposes Hart uses the information obtained as a result to convince US Congressmen of the usefulness and effectiveness of his radio station and of its popularity among the East European nations in order to 100 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1985/AB166/20100128/166.tx" squeeze additional millions of dollars out of the American taxpayers for its maintenance.

p The International Literary Association in Italy is a centre for implementing the so-called Project Jackson aimed at flooding the East European countries with subversive literature. Special divisions of RFE/RL, the editorial board of the anti-communist magazine Ku/tura and the emigre "literary institute" headed by former Polish prince Jerzy Giedroyc every day select and send anti-communist brochures, leaflets and books through various clandestine channels to the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Special forwarding posts in some West European countries take part in this activity. Illegal literature to Poland has been dispatched from Edinburgh by S. Blaszczyk; from Cologne by A. Chilecki, who was tried in absentia in the Polish People’s Republic and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for spying; from Stockholm by M. Lisihski; from Geneva by R. Kaczynski; and from Rome by L. Zagorski. This “literary” activity is financed by the CIA. US intelligence officers also use the association as a cover for recruiting agents from among citizens of socialist countries who go abroad on business trips or as tourists.

p The RFE/RL centre also receives information from the employees of its territorial branches who seek to win the confidence of tourists, students who go abroad on scholarships and people who come to Western Europe from Eastern Europe on official trips, in order to obtain any information that can be of use to the CIA. They often pose as journalists or "emigres eager to meet their countrymen". For instance, Oleg Werbitsky, a staff member of RFE/RL, acting on the Americans’ instructions, makes contacts with tourists and other people from Eastern Europe who visit the "Meeting House" in Munich in order to get information from them. Egon Kronsas, an interpreter in the Russian language who is employed by the Siemens A. G. Munchen firm, attends to Soviet specialists during their trips to West Germany. He receives his instructions beforehand from RFE/RL and sends the information gathered during the trips to the management of the radio stations.

p Other sources of information are Western journalists accredited in East European countries and also Western students, businessmen, scientists and tourists who agree to render one service or another to RFE/RL. And finally there are the socalled internal emigres—people who have completely and utterly severed all ties with their homeland and forgotten that 101 they are Russians, Poles, Czechs or Bulgarians. The material received from this category of informants is considered by the CIA to be the most valuable and credible. It is from material of this kind that the so-called "Samizdat Archive" is made up.

p “Samizdat" is one of RL’s creations and is used for preparing so-called "scientific studies" which are sent to 570 subscribers, including bodies of the press, government institutions 102 and various Sovietology centres in the West. Some of the “samizdat” material has been written by so-called dissidents.

p But much of this material can be safely stamped "Made in RL". Since the trickle of rotten information is very meagre and often dries up, the RFE/RL’s research division comes up with something of its own making which is passed off as “ samizdat” material, or signs it with the name of a dissident, or sends a prefabricated “draft” in a diplomatic pouch to a foreign correspondent in Moscow, Prague or Warsaw, who then sends it back to RFE/RL as material allegedly coming from sources in those capitals. This is confirmed by statements made by the Soviet journalist Yuri Marin who had worked at RL and by current reports in the Polish press. The manipulation of “ samizdat” material which had actually been made in Munich was widely practised by the radio station during the events in Poland.

p Can one expect objectivity from a “samizdat” publication scribbled either by hateful misfits or by CIA professionals from the research division of RFE/RL? And what kind of policy can be pursued by Western leaders who are guided in their appraisal of current events by “samizdat” texts or by "learned studies" prepared by RFE/RL?

p The CIA regards RFE/RL, besides all else, as the guiding centre of emigre organizations through which it coordinates their subversive activities against the countries of the socialist community. The main objective set by Washington before the emigre groups directed by RFE/RL is to form so-called representative organizations of emigres from Eastern Europe on a nationality basis. The next step would be to integrate such associations into a multinational emigre conglomerate. It was to this end that the "Resistance International" was founded in Paris in May 1983 through the efforts of people such as RL director George Bailey, Eduard Kuznetsov, the head of the RL news division, and the rabid anti-Soviet activist Vladimir Bukpvsky. The fact that Bailey, a high-ranking CIA agent, was participating in this venture clearly showed the renegades abroad who had financed the establishment of the “International”. The system of measures undertaken to step up the activity of RFE and RL and raise their rank in the hierarchy of US government agencies is also aimed at reinforcing the position enjoyed by the CIA at the radio stations. One such measure is the appointment of more agents from the US special services to leading posts in some national sections and in the analytic and security services. Steps are also being taken to ensure maximum secrecy with regard to the operation of 103 CIA units at RFE/RL. The heads of the CIA consider the main task of its station at RFE/RL to be that of supporting emigre organizations and anti-socialist centres by maintaining regular contacts with prominent dissidents to bring their activity into line with CIA directives, providing them with financial and material support, and supervising the content of radio programmes.

p What is the reason for this tender concern for the radio stations in Munich? A rather cynical answer to this question can be found in an article published in the French magazine Le Monde diplomatique in December 1977 which said, in particular:

p “It matters little whether Radio Free Europe is funded by American secret services or gets the money from more respectable sources. What matters is that it represents the shock force of Western propaganda in its psychological warfare...”

p Two other CIA broadcasting ventures were Radio Free Asia and Free Cuba Radio. The latter, established in the early 1960s, purchased air time for its propaganda broadcasts against the government of Fidel Castro from commercial radio stations in Florida and Louisiana (WMIE and WGBS in Miami, WKWF in Key West and WWL in New Orleans). Other CIA broadcasts were transmitted by a short-wave station, Radio Swan, from a tiny island in the Caribbean. That powerful station, ostensibly operated by a steamship company in New York, could be heard over much of the Western Hemisphere.

p Radio Free Asia began broadcasting to mainland China in 1951 from Manila. It was an arm of the Committee for Free Asia which was set up by the CIA as the Eastern counterpart to the Free Europe Committee, and the CIA considered it a match to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. The Committee for Free Asia later changed its name to the Asia Foundation which provided cover for CIA operatives and carried out a variety of media-related ventures...^^8^^

p The CIA takes an active part in implementing Project Truth masterminded by the USIA. The CIA and other government agencies are required to declassify and place at the USIA’s disposal material that can be used in the project. An interdepartmental committee was set up in line with a presidential directive to supervise the project and ensure the satisfactory cooperation of all the agencies engaged in carrying out Project Truth. Charles Wick was appointed the committee’s chairman, his deputy being the chairman of an administrative committee in charge of current activities. It should be pointed out in particular that Project Truth is being implemented with the 104 active participation of not only the US special services but also "those in other NATO countries. One “fruit” of the joint efforts under Project Truth was the information alleging that the CIA had supplied the State Department with sufficiently detailed data proving that peace movements in West Germany were being financed by the Soviet bloc.

p Later on, a report reached the press that the CIA had declined requests for permission to publish that material. The US intelligence agencies and external propaganda bodies have always come up with difficulties with regard to handling the propaganda material disseminated abroad. American journalist John Crewdson who contributed several articles on this subject to 7776 New York Times several years ago wrote in particular:

p “The CIA’s efforts to mold foreign opinion ranged from tampering with historical documents ... to embellishing and distorting accounts that were otherwise factual ... to outright fabrications ...

p “But there is no such mechanism for alerting newspapers, magazines and broadcasting stations in this country as to which of the foreign dispatches that come chattering across their teletypes are distorted or, in a few instances, altogether false. There is, the former officials say, simply no practical way of letting Americans know that some of the stories they read over their morning coffee were written not by a foreign correspondent but by a CIA officer in a corner of some American embassy.

p “The CIA accepts, as an unavoidable casualty of its propaganda battles, the fact that some of the news that reaches American readers and viewers is tainted with what the Russians call ‘disinformation’. The agency has even coined terms to describe the phenomenon: blowback, or replay, or domestic fallout.”^^9^^

p The USIA’s cooperation with the CIA is by no means limited to activities under Project Truth. Staff members of the USIA and the CIA also work in other subcommittees of the National Security Council and in other interdepartmental committees which conduct psychological warfare operations. CIA operatives use the USIA as a cover. There is known to be close cooperation between the USIA and the CIA in the financing of secret publications.^^10^^

p USIA employees collect secret information and obtain data on the attitude of different sections of the population in other countries to Washington’s foreign-policy moves. This information is subsequently used for Project Truth. They analyse 105 information and draw up evaluations on the strength of their material for the White House, the State Department and other government institutions. Close attention is paid to the collection of information on public opinion in countries where the agency has its branches. Its surveys contain very valuable information which is then classified.

p John Reinhardt, Director of the USIA under President Carter (it was then called International Communication Agency), said during hearings at the Subcommittee on International Operations of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1 979:

p “It is through our research operations that we perform our primary advisory role. We are the only organization in the Government which is concerned with the opinion of foreign peoples, as distinguished from their governments.”^^11^^

The USIA’s close links with the CIA and other US special services as well as the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House in particular (through personal contact with the President and the Chairman of the Special Planning Group) enable the agency to plan, prepare and implement major propaganda actions in the course of the psychological warfare waged against the socialist countries. It is characteristic of the present US Administration that almost all the anti-communist propaganda campaigns have been initiated personally by President Reagan.