Page 200 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 200 of 237

Radio Liberation, which changed its name to Radio Liberty in 1959, is an avowedly private organization with
offices at 30 East 42d Street in New York. It broadcasts exclusively to the Soviet Union, twenty-four hours a day,
from seventeen transmitters in three locations -- Lampertheim, West Germany; Pals, near Barcelona; and Taipeh,
Formosa.

Its programming center is a rebuilt former airport building near Munich at Oberwiesenfeld, which was once
Hitler's airfield. An official of Radio Liberty said the majority of its 1,200 employees are in Munich, but that the
organization also has offices in Paris and Rome, as well as New York, Formosa and Spain.

Radio Liberty does not go to the public for funds. It says it is supported by foundations but does not list them
anywhere. It insists that it receives no government funds, directly or indirectly, but says its budget is "classified."

"We do not advocate revolution," the official said, in explaining why Radio Liberty had changed its name from
the more controversial Radio Liberation. "When the revolution comes, it will have to come from within. In the
meantime, we can feed them ammunition."

According to its official booklet, "Radio Liberty is supported by the American Committee for Liberation, founded
in 1951 by a group of private Americans who formed a working partnership with the free emigration from the
USSR." It first went on the air on March 1, 1953. The American Committee for Liberation also supports the
Institute for the Study of the USSR, Mannhardtstrasse, 6, Munich, which describes itself as a scholarly
organization that puts out a number of publications on Russia, including Who's Who in the USSR.

Radio Liberty broadcasts a heavy diet of news to its Soviet audience. In 1956 it broadcast the text of Khrushchev's
secret speech to the 20th Communist Party Congress. In 1961 it broadcast the fact that the Russians had resumed
nuclear tests. Neither event, of course, had been disclosed to the Russian people by the Soviet government. The
Russians, in turn, have tried hard to jam Radio Liberty.

Possibly, they have taken other steps as well. In 1954 two Radio Liberty employees died under mysterious
circumstances in Munich. In September, Leonid Karas, a writer on the radio's Byelorussia desk was found
drowned. In November, Abo Fatalibey, head of the Azerbaijan desk, was murdered and stuffed under the sofa in
the apartment of a Russian named Mikhail Ismailov.

Police assumed the body was that of Ismailov, a fellow emigre. At the last moment the coffin -- which someone
noticed was too short for the six-foot Ismailov -- was opened. The body was definitely identified as that of
Fatalibey, the Radio Liberty official. Ismailov had vanished. Radio Liberty does not discount the possibility that
the drowning and the murder were the work of the KGB.

Another interesting case was that of Anatoli Skachkov -- a Russian emigre who joined Radio Liberty on January
1, 1957. Skachkov died on July 22, 1959. On November 5, 1962, Izvestia carried an article which accused Radio
Liberty of being staffed by CIA men. It listed eight alleged agents by name. In the course of the article, Izvestia
said Skachkov had fallen from favor with American intelligence:

"He was seized at his place of employment and sent to a mental hospital. The next day two Americans, Valerio
and Sanker, bearing flowers and a bottle of cognac, visited Skachkov. After their visit, he died. The physicians
attributed his death to poisoning."

The tale of poisoned cognac is colorful, but Radio Liberty tells a different story. According to the radio station,
Skachkov was an alcoholic who developed a persecution complex. As a result, he was committed to the State
Institute for the Mentally Disturbed. He died, said Radio Liberty, of "a heart attack." Radio Liberty employed a