Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is an American government-funded media organization broadcasting news and analyses in 27 languages to 23 countries across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. Headquartered in Prague since 1995, RFE/RL operates 21 local bureaus with over 500 core staff, 1,300 freelancers, and 680 employees at its corporate offices in Washington, D.C. Nicola Careem serves as the editor-in-chief.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was an attempted countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the policies caused by the government's subordination to the Soviet Union (USSR). The uprising lasted 12 days before being crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on 4 November 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter of a million Hungarians fled the country.
Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. According to author Deborah Davis, Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA. In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups.
Earl Russell Browder was an American politician, spy for the Soviet Union, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s. During World War I, Browder served time in federal prison as a conscientious objector to conscription and the war. Upon his release, Browder became an active member of the American Communist movement, soon working as an organizer on behalf of the Communist International and its Red International of Labor Unions in China and the Pacific region.
The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization created in 1949 by the Cominform and propped up by the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, WPC engaged in propaganda efforts on behalf of the Soviet Union, whereby it criticized the United States and its allies while defending the Soviet Union's involvement in numerous conflicts.
The National Committee for a Free Europe, later known as Free Europe Committee, was an anti-communist Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) front organization, founded on June 1, 1949, in New York City, which worked for the spreading of NATO influence in Eastern Europe and to covertly destabilize Soviet Bloc countries.
Frank Gardiner Wisner was one of the founding officers of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and played a major role in CIA operations throughout the 1950s.
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was the covert operation wing of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Created as a department of the CIA in 1948, it actually operated independently until October 1950. OPC existed until 1 August 1952, when it was merged with the Office of Special Operations (OSO) to form the Directorate of Plans (DDP).
The National Alliance of Russian Solidarists is a Russian anticommunist organization founded in 1930 by a group of young Russian anticommunist White émigrés in Belgrade, Serbia.
Melvin Jonah Lasky was an American journalist, intellectual, and member of the anti-Communist left. He founded the German journal Der Monat in 1948 and, from 1958 to 1991, edited Encounter, one of many journals revealed to have been secretly funded by the CIA through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) was an international anti-communist organization founded as a coordinating center for anti-communist and nationalist émigré political organizations from Soviet and other socialist countries.
Abdurrahman Fatalibeyli, born Abo Dudanginski, was a Soviet army major who defected to the German forces during World War II.
At various times, under its own initiative or in accordance with directives from the President of the United States or the National Security Council staff, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has attempted to influence public opinion both in the United States and abroad.
CIA involvement in Hungary from 1950-1957 and again in 1989 consisted of clandestine intelligence collection, gray psychological operations, and counterintelligence activities. As noted in the book Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, an organization called Radio Free Europe (RFE), was funded at the time by the CIA to broadcast Hungary from at least from 1950 to 1956. However, RFE operated on no directives to foment revolution.
With Europe stabilizing along the Iron Curtain, the CIA attempted to limit the spread of Soviet influence elsewhere around the world. Much of the basic model came from George Kennan's "containment" strategy from 1947, a foundation of US policy for decades.
During the Cold War (1947–1991), when the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in an arms race, the Soviet Union promoted its foreign policy through the World Peace Council and other front organizations. Some writers have claimed that it also influenced non-aligned peace groups in the West.
Carmel Offie was a U.S. State Department and later a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official, who served as an indispensable assistant to a series of senior officials while combining his official duties with an ability to skirt regulations for his and others' personal benefit. He has been described as "being as close to openly gay as was permissible in 1930s American officialdom". He was dismissed from the CIA in 1950 after an arrest a few years earlier brought his homosexuality to the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Lavender scare that saw a purge of the State Department personnel because of charges of homosexuality.
The Crusade for Freedom was an American propaganda campaign operating from 1950–1960. Its public goal was to raise funds for Radio Free Europe; it also served to conceal the CIA's funding of Radio Free Europe and to generate domestic support for American Cold War policies.
Political warfare is the use of hostile political means to compel an opponent to do one's will. The term political describes the calculated interaction between a government and a target audience, including another state's government, military, and/or general population. Governments use a variety of techniques to coerce certain actions, thereby gaining relative advantage over an opponent. The techniques include propaganda and psychological operations ("PsyOps"), which service national and military objectives respectively. Propaganda has many aspects and a hostile and coercive political purpose. Psychological operations are for strategic and tactical military objectives and may be intended for hostile military and civilian populations.
Ruzi Nazar was an Uzbek nationalist who spent most of his adult career working for the CIA against the Soviet Union. He was born in Soviet Central Asia at the time of the Russian Revolution. After joining the Nazi collaborationist movement during World War II, Nazar lived most of his life in exile, first in Germany and then in the United States and Turkey. During three decades from the early 1950s he was a CIA officer serving for eleven years in the American Embassy in Ankara and then for a decade in Bonn. He also worked on clandestine missions in Tehran in 1979 and Afghanistan in the early 1980s.
