Page 201 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 201 of 237

Joseph Valerio and a Paul Sanker in its news department, but "neither Valerio or Sanker ever visited Skachkov, so
the whole premise is a fabrication."

But the continuing Soviet attacks on Radio Liberty and its present and former employees provide some indication
that this radio station "supported by a group of private American citizens" is reaching the Russian people in
sufficient numbers to be irritating to the Soviet leadership.

By far the biggest, and from time to time the most controversial, of these radio operations is Radio Free Europe,
which says it is a "private non-profit, non-government network broadcasting through the Iron Curtain to eighty
million captive people in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria."

One distinction between Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty is that RFE broadcasts exclusively to the five
satellite nations, while Radio Liberty broadcasts exclusively to the Soviet Union.

Radio Free Europe was born in 1949, with the formation of the National Committee for a Free Europe. In 1950
the committee's Crusade for Freedom fund drive was launched by General Eisenhower and General Lucius D.
Clay, the hero of the 1948-49 Berlin airlift. The purpose of the fund drive was to raise money for RFE.

"We need powerful radio stations abroad," Eisenhower said in launching the crusade, "operated without
government restrictions."

Clay struck the same theme. He praised the Voice of America but said: "There seemed to me to be needed another
voice -- a voice less tempered perhaps by the very dignity of government; a tough, slugging voice, if you please."

In 1950-51, the directors of the National Committee for a Free Europe * included Clay, Allen Dulles, C. D.
Jackson, who became Eisenhower's psychological warfare adviser, and A. A. Berle, Jr., who participated in the
Bay of Pigs operation a decade later.

RFE has twenty-eight transmitters at three sites. Two locations are in West Germany, at Biblis, near Frankfurt,
and at Holzkirchen, near Munich. The third site is at Gloria, near Lisbon. RFE headquarters, like Radio Liberty, is
at Munich. The organization employs about 1,500 persons.

"We're supported by contributions from the American people, mainly from the Radio Free Europe Fund," a
spokesman said. He added that RFE is "privately managed and privately financed." However, he said "we work
within the published policy of the United States Government."

Asked how it went about making sure that its broadcasts were consistent with United States foreign policy, he
rep1ied: "We read the New York Times."

Are any government funds behind RFE? "No," was the reply, "but I prefer to put it positively -- we are supported
by voluntary contributions." RFE's budget figures, however, are not published anywhere.

For a time, RFE dabbled in some intriguing balloon operations. In 1953 it set up something called the Free Europe
Press, which began wafting rubber and plastic balloons filled with propaganda materials to Eastern Europe. For a
time the balloon barrage went under the code name "Operation Prospero."

In February, 1956, the Czech Government charged that a balloon released by RFE had caused the crash of a
Czech airliner on January 18 of that year in the Tatra Mountains of Slovakia. The crash killed twenty-two and
injured four.