Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: The CIA Years and Beyond (review)

A video marking 60 years of broadcasting at Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) begins with a grainy, black-and-white clip of Ronald Reagan narrating a promotional film about the radios. As footage of a radio tower rolls by, Reagan intones: "This powerful 135,000-watt Radio Free Europe transmitter pierces the Iron Curtain with the truth, answering the lies of the Kremlin, and bringing a message of hope to millions."

This tongue-in-cheek glimpse of a bygone era is entertaining, but the segment also unintentionally points up one of several ambiguities that have shadowed RFE and RL ever since Ramparts magazine and The New York Times published articles in 1967 exposing the radios' ties to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Were the stations supposed to be independent sources of news and information, as their sponsors claimed? Or were they just propaganda tools of the U.S. government, as the ham-handed Reagan promotional video unwittingly suggests?

Ross Johnson's fervent hope in this valuable new book is to be able finally to settle some of these nagging questions and misperceptions. By focusing on RFE's and RL's formative first two decades, he not only fills a gap in the literature but manages to convey many of the subtleties and complexities about the radios' formation and early development that helped give rise to their somewhat ambiguous image.

The chief cause of this ambiguity was RFE's and RL's relationship to the CIA. Johnson does not see that connection as a problem and explains why in his view the agency turned out to be a helpful, even necessary, institutional base. One reason was policy-related. George Kennan conceived of the idea to establish a broadcasting operation using Soviet-bloc émigrés as a weapon of psychological warfare, which placed it squarely under the purview of institutions like Frank Wisner's Office of Policy Coordination and the CIA.

The relationship also had a financial basis. Voice of America (VOA) already existed through public funding. In the postwar environment it was highly unlikely that Congress would be willing to appropriate money for a second, similar-sounding government radio operation. Far easier to use the agency's clandestine funds.

Another source of confusion is the fact that the nature of RFE's and RL's mission changed over time. RFE's first broadcasts out of New York in July 1951 were unvarnished propaganda salvos against the Soviet-bloc regimes—"short and negative," reflecting the perspective of U.S. hardliners. Only after management succeeded, following some political and bureaucratic struggle, in transferring production and transmission operations from New York to Munich did "a second RFE" emerge, eventually developing a quite different role as "surrogate broadcaster" for the captive nations. The service would no longer be a simple mouthpiece for the United States but one run substantially by émigré broadcasters who were thought to know best what would work with their audiences.

The decision to grant considerable autonomy to the individual services was critical to RFE's (and RL's) long-term success. But it also played a part during RFE's bleakest episode—the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Johnson calls that experience "the story that never dies." His defense of the overarching—and relatively circumspect—official policies that were in effect well before the uprising is spirited but also well-sourced. So is his critique of certain instances in which the guidance coming from headquarters was not honored in the breach. The violations that did occur, he says, were less dire than many have believed. What is more, the really egregious broadcasts more likely came from the "many other foreign radio stations" that were broadcasting to Hungary during the revolution (such as the right-wing Radio Madrid).

Some of these points are disputed by other researchers (and certainly many Hungarians are unlikely to be persuaded), but Johnson's access to all the available recordings, log tapes...