Page 198 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 198 of 237

Radio stations of thirteen Communist countries, he said, "transmit more than four thousand hours of radio
programming abroad every week in sixty-three languages. Leaving nothing to chance, the broadcast languages
include even Esperanto ... The Soviet Union leads this radio propaganda parade with some thirteen hundred
weekly hours of radio propaganda directed abroad. Red China comes second, with almost seven hundred hours
weekly, followed by East Germany ... with little Cuba in fourth place." [1]

Surprisingly, the fact that black-radio operations are conducted by the United States was indirectly admitted by
President Eisenhower in his Middle East speech to the UN General Assembly on August 13, 1958:

"The United Nations Assembly has on three occasions, in 1947, 1949 and 1950, passed resolutions designed to
stop the projecting of irresponsible broadcasts from one nation into the homes of citizens of other nations ... we all
know that these resolutions have been violated in many directions in the Near East. If we, the United States, have
been at fault, we stand ready to be corrected."

For the background to this unusual passage in the President's speech, one must look to 1956 and Suez. In the
aftermath of the abortive Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt, Nasser increased his efforts to bring the entire
Arab world under his domination. A major weapon in this campaign was Radio Cairo.

Up until 1956, the British-controlled Near East Broadcasting Station at Zyghi, on the south coast of Cyprus, was
the most powerful propaganda voice in the Middle East. NEBS was a British black-radio operation, ostensibly
under private ownership.

Beginning in 1956, Nasser's radio supplanted NEBS. Cairo spread the most violent sort of propaganda against its
Arab neighbors and the United States. Its "Voice of the Arabs" was on the air from 6:30 A.M. to 1:15 A.M. the
next morning, broadcasting throughout the Middle East and as far south as the Belgian Congo from two seventy-
kilowatt transmitters on the Mokattam Hills overlooking Cairo, and from two other transmitters on the Nile Delta.

By 1958 Radio Cairo was openly urging bloody revolution in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. In February of that year
Nasser had seized power in Syria and proclaimed the United Arab Republic. Iraq's King Feisal II countered by
joining with his Hashemite cousin King Hussein of Jordan to form the Arab Union.

On May 2, 1958, as an example, Radio Cairo broadcast to Baghdad: "Arise, my brethren on the police force and
in its army in Iraq. Stand side by side with your brothers and your people against your enemies! The freedom of
Iraq is in your hands."

Since Iraq was the world's sixth largest oil producer and the only Arab member of the pro Western Baghdad pact,
the CIA felt this kind of talk from Radio Cairo could not go unanswered. As a result, by 1958 the CIA had set up
a series of clandestine radio stations in the Middle East and along its fringes to counteract the influence of Radio
Cairo.

Meanwhile, a crisis was brewing in Lebanon over the selection of a successor to President Camille Chamoun,
whose term was expiring. The CIA had helped elect Chamoun, then turned against him.

On July 14 Brigadier General Abdul Karim el-Kassem took over Iraq in a pre-dawn coup which had not been
"clearly predicted" [2] by the CIA, according to Allen Dulles. In the coup, twenty-three-year-old King Feisal and
his uncle, the crown prince, were murdered. Premier Nuri as-Said, captured while trying to escape dressed as a
woman, was also killed.

The next day Eisenhower, in Operation Blue Bat, sent the Marines into Lebanon to shore up the Chamoun
government. Two days later the British airlifted 1,000 troops into Jordan.