Broadcasting freedom: the Cold War triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty

Abstract

Broadcasting Freedom. The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Arch Puddington. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000. 382 pp. $27.50 hbk. The second half of the last century saw a hot war congeal into a cold war of bluster and polemic. President Truman in 1950 declared as vital the effort to add a strong American voice to the campaign against communism. Policy thinkers turned to the powerful reach of radio. The rebuilt Voice of America from World War II served official government policy. Serving a more independent role were Radio Free Europe, powered up on May Day 1951, and Radio Liberty, joining battle about two years later. These stations fought Soviet jamming to broadcast to the entire Communist bloc, RFE to Eastern Europe, and RL to Soviet Russia and its republics. Refugees and dissidents provided the talent to what became a project unlike any in U.S. history or tradition: a far-reaching propaganda campaign during peacetime. It was strategy for a new war, political instead of military, an idea to which the author credits to diplomat George F. Kennan. The author's comprehensive history of RFE-RL relies on official archives as well as some 100 interviews with many of those pivotal to RFE-RL survival over forty years. As a former RFE-RL New York bureau deputy director, Paddington offers particular understanding of the freedom radios' operation. As a historian he relies on extensive primary evidence to offer a final response to a question asked through the decades by presidents, dictators, and radio pundits: just how effective was this CIA-- financed broadcast operation? Not many people knew about the connection, not for the first thirty years at least. That secret was maintained by the radio directors' evasive answers to early cold-war-era journalists, who chose not to pursue the matter. RFE-RL was advertised as democracy's voice supported by contributions from the American people. Somewhat true. Well, 19 percent true, actually, according to Paddington. Contributions alone could not support such a long reach and a staff of hundreds based in Munich, however, requiring majority funding from the beginning. As the U.S. military activity in Vietnam drew to an end, CIA meddling became a scapegoat for U.S. foreign policy failures left and right. Congress assumed control of RFERL. The freedom radios faced a heavy hand of partisan pressure more intense by far than broadcasters had known under surprisingly open-minded policies. A peevish assault by Arkansas Sen. J. William Fulbright nearly marked RFE-RL's demise, but the Reagan administration later restored support. The end of the cold war and the Clinton administration budget cuts that followed marked the first major reduction to an operation that stretched more than forty years. …

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