A Look Over My Shoulder

by Richard Helms

  In addition to travel expenses for NSA delegates to world conferences, and annual meetings of foreign youth and student organizations, scholarships were provided for foreign student leaders to study at American universities. After graduation, some of these young foreign nationalists went on to play leading roles in the political movements in various Third World countries and the United Nations.

  The impact of the NSA was most clearly to be seen at the Soviet propaganda festivals in Vienna in 1959 and Helsinki three years later. For the first time American students, in collaboration with other democratic representatives, were in a position to take on the apparatchiks in public and at their own level. As a result of this counterattack, the Soviet representatives and their student front personnel scuttled off the field in Vienna and later in Helsinki. After a trouncing in Finland in 1962, Moscow was unable to sponsor any future youth festivals outside Eastern Europe.

  The notion broached by Ramparts that CIA had, on its own authority, somehow funded such an ambitious covert effort while incidentally corrupting the idealism of American youth fired an intense editorial reaction in the press. A Harvard dean called it “a poisonous business.” Senator Eugene McCarthy compared it to an unspecified activity of Hitler. The more responsible levels of criticism were dampened to a degree when Senators Richard Russell and Robert Kennedy stated plainly that the student program was well known, had been approved by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, and had been fully cleared with Congress. As useful as this was with the more thoughtful press, the trite truth is that sensational charges linger longer than any after-the-fact proof that the allegations are false.

  As the storm of media attacks on the Agency neared its peak, I was startled to find a flattering sketch of myself on the cover of Time magazine. The Agency and I both would have preferred a bit less coverage than the five-page lead article, “The Silent Service,”* contained, but on the whole it was a fair treatment and, I think, helpful. Time also slipped, and offered the scandal’s sole, faintly amusing moment when it explained that the handful of NSA officers who over time had been briefed on the Agency funding were known in CIA jargon as being “witty.” Some of the students were undoubtedly witty, but the Agency term for an outsider who had been briefed on a secret project was that he had been made “witting.”

  From the beginning Wisner and I agreed that the best way to handle the project was to leave both the tactical and strategic planning to the student leaders. They understood the problem at the ground level, and had the brains and gumption to deal with it. Through our relationship with the two or three senior NSA officers who were security cleared and briefed on the Agency’s financial support, we were able to monitor the expenses and to offer routine guidance. Aside from this, the NSA was in the hands of the students. Any substantive political intervention by the Agency would have lessened, if not destroyed, the impact of the project. The notion put about by some of the “shocked” critics of the program that CIA was somehow using the students for espionage was absurd. None of the students had or might plausibly be expected to gain access to the intelligence the Agency was seeking. Moreover, no operations officer in his right mind would have attempted to slip an espionage harness onto these bright and politically rambunctious activists.

  The Ramparts publication and ensuing press hysteria effectively put an end to Agency support to the NSA, and in time to the Congress for Cultural Freedom, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty. The boldest of these operations was the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The events that led to the congress began at a conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan in March 1949. As one of a string of Soviet-initiated and -supported “cultural” meetings, some eight hundred intellectuals and artists gathered to protest American “warmongering” and to be cautioned by the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and other Soviet delegates against the “hatemongering,” and the thrust for world power of the new American “fascists.” Clifford Odets denounced “fraudulent reports of Soviet aggression,” while ignoring the Soviet military occupation of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.

  The Waldorf meeting was one of the first postwar Cominform-sponsored propaganda efforts staged in the West. Despite the presence of Aaron Copland, Lillian Hellman, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, and Odets, New York City was not the place for the meeting. For all of the hair-splitting and nuanced political differences between the intellectual, academic, ethnic, and recent refugee groups, New York also housed a solid and well-informed non-communist consensus. The Cominform promoters and their front men were taken by surprise when Sidney Hook, Mary McCarthy, Dwight MacDonald, and a dozen anti-Stalinist intellectuals punctured the Soviet propaganda balloons with a series of pointed questions that provoked strenuous debates as to what was really going on in the USSR and the areas of Eastern Europe occupied by the Red Army.

  In Washington, Frank Wisner, who had barely got the Office of Policy Coordination up and running, realized the potential importance of rallying a group of well-established non-communist left scholars, intellectuals, and émigré political figures. The potential value of such a counterforce was obvious—it was the likelihood of melding such ardently independent individuals into any organization that seemed remote. (Sidney Hook once remarked that he could not recite the multiplication tables without infuriating somebody.)* After consultation with the White House, Wisner offered covert Agency support for an upcoming State Department-sponsored conference in Paris—the “International Day of Resistance to Dictatorship and War.” The French Communist Party professed outrage at the meeting but might have saved its breath. The neutralist flavor of many participants and the anti-American enthusiasm of the French delegates effectively diluted this response to the Cominform’s defense of Stalin’s dictatorship. Paris was the wrong venue for the April 1950 meeting.

  A subsequent venture, partially funded by the State Department and quietly by CIA, in Berlin proved more effective. The some two hundred sponsors and delegates represented many of the best-known noncommunist writers and political activists. Among them were François Bondy, Sidney Hook, Arthur Koestler, Melvin Lasky, Malcolm Muggeridge, Carlo Schmidt, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender, and Manes Sperber. The conference opened in June 1950, the day after North Korea launched its invasion of South Korea. Some four thousand Berliners—few of whom had any illusions about Soviet reality—joined the delegates and sponsors at the opening meeting.

  In considering the success of this conference, the State Department and the Agency decided that if the Congress for Cultural Freedom was to have a future, it could not be known as an official mouthpiece for U.S. foreign policy. The potential value of the congress would depend upon its political independence and ability to rally the best available noncommunist left intellectuals—the persons most likely to make a success of the congress. President Truman, already under attack for being soft on communism, could not be expected to ask the U.S. Congress for funds to support any organization which his conservative Republican opponents would perceive as a grab bag of left-wing intellectuals, many of whom were outspoken critics of some aspects of U.S. foreign policy.

  Despite the objections of the State Department and Pentagon officials who had organized and promoted the Berlin meeting and the organization of the congress, overt U.S. support was withdrawn. Henceforth, funds for the congress would come from private subsidies, with substantial covert support funneled through the Agency.

  In the years that followed, the congress, under the leadership of Michael Josselson, took on and bested the Soviet efforts to subvert the political and intellectual life of the non-communist world. Josselson was born in Estonia in 1908. His family, members of what has been called the “Baltic Diaspora,” emigrated to Germany at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. After graduation from the university in Berlin, Mike moved to Paris to work as the European representative of such American firms as Saks and Gimbel’s. In 1936 he emigrated to the United States and obtained citizenship in 1942. After military service in a Psychological Warfare unit, he
remained in Berlin as a Cultural Affairs officer. It was there that he became a charter member of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and attracted the attention of CIA. In 1950, Mike was named executive director of the congress. He held this post until his retirement in 1967.

  As one of the founding members, Mike Josselson deserves a large measure of the credit for keeping the congress intact and focused on its original missions. His ability to manage relations between such a wildly assorted, unruly, genius-level intellectual and political prima donnas, while simultaneously overseeing some twenty politically hefty journals and refereeing innumerable conferences and seminars, was quite simply phenomenal. That he spoke fluent English, Russian, German, and French, and could make his way in a handful of other languages helped, but was only one element in the rare combination of his extraordinary intelligence, political wisdom, and full measure of administrative competence. Mike’s devotion to duty came at the expense of his health. After a series of heart attacks, he retired to Geneva, where he died in 1978.

  There is no doubt that the problem of attempting to hide his relationship with CIA from his close associates and friends was a considerable additional burden for Mike. With the passage of time, the slim cover for Mike’s CIA relationship tattered. The attacks ignited by the Ramparts disclosures tore Mike’s double life to pieces. He deserves much more recognition for his role in the Cold War—and it was a war—than he will ever receive.

  *Time, Feb. 24, 1967.

  *Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy (New York: Free Press, 1989), p. 34.

  Chapter 34

  —

  TALK RADIO

  In late 1948, even before the Congress for Cultural Freedom took shape, James V. Forrestal, the secretary of defense, George Kennan, the director for policy planning at State, Robert Joyce, who had returned to State as a policy advisor after OSS service, Frank Wisner at CIA, and a group of private citizens in New York incorporated the National Committee for Free Europe. At the suggestion of Dean Acheson, the secretary of state, former ambassador George C. Grew was elected chairman of the New York group, which among others included General Eisenhower, Allen Dulles, then still in law practice in New York, and Adolf Berle, an assistant secretary of state under President Franklin Roosevelt.

  The committee’s first objective was to provide useful employment and a rally point for some of the prominent Eastern European political figures and intellectuals who were scattered among the thousands of refugees streaming into Austria and West Germany. Many exiles were well known in their homelands, but only a few had the language or work backgrounds that offered a reasonable prospect of useful employment at their professional level. Like the working-class refugees, the white-collar group were anxious, even desperate, to find work. Many were uniquely qualified to select and prepare the news and editorial comment that the Eastern European governments were most determined to censor.

  Another, but not insignificant, value of these exiles was the operational and research data offered by their intimate knowledge of their homelands. The Committee for a Free Europe—later to be better known as Radio Free Europe (RFE)—received continuing contributions from private and business sources, but the projected scope of the committee operations meant that substantial secret government funding would be required.

  As soon as the Agency project was drafted and the National Security Council had briefed appropriate members of Congress, the pressure on CIA intensified. The communist bloc population were to be immediately convinced that they had not been forgotten. The first step would be to provide Eastern Europe with uncensored straight news. Pending the time needed to establish broadcast facilities, the use of leaflet-carrying balloons was authorized.

  For some time I had been convinced that the invention of radio had put two traditional secret intelligence utensils permanently on the shelf. Mother Nature may have had spies in mind when she perfected carrier pigeons, but by the end of World War I, pigeons had no more status than dead ducks, and further research in the military use of propaganda-bearing balloons was shelved. Short-range, across-the-lines balloon propaganda operations were used to some slight effect in World War II and, to a lesser degree, in Korea. In 1951 the possibility of floating propaganda-laden balloons over the Iron Curtain was fostered as a standby until radio broadcasts could be gotten under way. The notion was bold enough to attract Frank Wisner’s support. Aside from the obvious possibility that rogue winds might shower downtown Budapest with balloon loads of hard-hitting news in Czech, I confess to not having been convinced that even the most news-starved citizen would risk a stiff jail sentence by rushing to pluck pamphlets from a nearby bush.

  Wisner disagreed with my prejudice. The prospect of blanketing Eastern Europe with timely propaganda material fascinated Frank, and it was balloons away! A forgotten trove of weather balloons was uncovered. Meteorologists were rallied to research upper-level air currents, and to map altitudes at which prevailing winds might offer access to targets in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Pilot balloons were rigged so that they could be monitored from the launch sites to test the altitudes offering the most likely target access. Ballooning techniques and facilities improved to the point that by 1953, 60,000 balloons could be launched in a single campaign. The use of balloons capable of carrying 400-pound loads was abandoned because of the hazard to aircraft.

  One of the more ingenious methods of releasing the propaganda over the desired target involved dry ice and some fancy calculation. On platforms dangling beneath the balloons, open boxes containing tens of thousands of loose pamphlets were supported on one side by blocks of dry ice. By the time the balloons reached the target area, the ice was calculated to have evaporated to the point that the boxes would tip over, spilling the pamphlets into the wind. Meanwhile, RFE radio stations were coming on air.

  Even the best operations are sometimes blessed with a light side. The Agency’s elongated transparent plastic, high-tech balloons bore an eerie resemblance to the fanciful science fiction sketches of visitors from Mars. As secret intelligence luck had it, two of these balloons wafted far off course and landed upright, side by side in a village square in rural Austria. It took the local priest to convince a clutch of village grandmothers that the odd couple were neither Heaven sent nor invading Martians.

  Our balloon barrages created a longer-lasting and more furious reaction from Eastern European authorities than the much more effective RFE broadcasts. Along with protests on the diplomatic level and at the United Nations, attempts were made to shoot down the balloons with anti-aircraft fire. When this failed, propeller-driven aircraft were used—jet fighters proved too fast to target the slow-moving targets.

  By the mid-1950s, the pugnacious balloon operations, which had been controversial from the beginning, had become an anachronism in the eyes of all but the true believers. Radio was the accepted cross-border communication means of choice.

  While preparing its own transmission facilities, RFE attempted to buy radio time from two powerful commercial stations: Radio Luxembourg and Radio Monte Carlo. When neither station was willing to risk losing its audience by interrupting entertainment programming with an occasional hour of news transmitted in any of the Eastern European languages, the committee turned to RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) in Berlin for advice. RIAS, an official U.S. government station, had won a wide audience in East Germany. The down-to-earth advice from Berlin confirmed that of the broadcast experts being assembled in New York. To hold an audience and compete with the communist-controlled broadcasts, Radio Free Europe would have to create Eastern European versions of the NBC and CBS commercial stations.

  In addition to the straight news and political comment prepared by native writers, and read by native speakers, the RFE broadcasts would have to be spiced with bits of sports, popular music, and cultural programs. All of the material was to be independently prepared by Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, and Bulgarian staffs supervised by substantively competent (and, when possible, linguistically qualified) Americans. A
lbania, one of Frank Wisner’s more obscure enthusiasms, was initially on the broadcast list. Reason prevailed, and Frank was talked out of attempting to influence the million and a half Albanians, many of whom lived without radios.

  Unlike the broadcasts offered by the Voice of America—many of which were written by staff employees, translated, and aired by native speakers—the RFE programs were to simulate as closely as possible material that might have been broadcast from within the target areas had there been no censorship. This was a tall order.

  Those of us who were still establishing the postwar espionage service wondered if Frank Wisner and his relatively inexperienced staff appreciated the task they were undertaking. Monitoring editorial material in five different languages, presiding over émigré personnel who did not share a common language, and ironing out century-old Eastern European attitudes and prejudices were a formidable undertaking. Finding politically savvy and linguistically qualified supervisors, while also recruiting the exile editors and writers able to produce the substance of programs, was no less daunting a prospect.

  Wisner persevered. On July 4, 1950—a scant thirteen months after the Radio Free Europe Committee was established in New York—RFE transmitted its first program: thirty minutes of news expressed in idiomatic, accent-free Czech. Some five weeks later, broadcasts had been initiated to Romania, Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria.

  In practice the policy guidance supplied by State and the Agency was thrashed out at daily staff meetings. As soon as news and editorial content were decided, the exile editors and writers prepared scripts for immediate broadcast. Because the editors and writers often brought full measures of national, ethnic, and religious attitudes to their work, news and editorial comments were strictly separated. In contrast to the straight news programs, editorial articles favoring one or another faction were always signed. After-the-fact editorial control was maintained by random sampling and close scrutiny of the various programs.