$1.8 Million in Public Gifts Masked a $15 Million State Engine
By Marcus Boone ·
Listeners were led to believe Radio Free Europe was a private venture while the state funded nearly all of its $15 million budget and spent five million on unattributed activities.
Burnett Anderson’s memorandum to Edward R. Murrow, dated April 11, 1962, reads like a corporate audit of a ghost company. Anderson, the Director of Planning for the United States Information Agency (USIA), was tasked with assessing the output and policy of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe. What he produced was a ledger of carefully managed perceptions.
In the public record, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is described as a state-funded media organization. In 1962, however, the agency worked hard to hide that reality from its listeners. Anderson notes that while Radio Liberty spoke as an "avowed émigré-American organization," Radio Free Europe presented itself as a "non-émigré, private, free world enterprise."
1.8 Million Dollars
The distance between the image and the ledger was vast. Anderson provides the exact figures for the Crusade for Freedom in Fiscal Year 1961. The total income from contributions was $15,234,805.42. Of that sum, the amount coming from the general public was $1,839,571.66.
Less than two million dollars of a fifteen-million-dollar budget came from the people. The effort to maintain the illusion of a grassroots, public-funded venture was itself a line item: the public drive cost $439,835.44, and public information expenses added another $186,475.65.
Anderson observed that the "identification of the operation as a private venture is not played up," but rather the emphasis was placed on the fact that it was supported by contributions from the public. By highlighting the small slice of public money, the agency could obscure the massive state-backed engine driving the broadcasts. It was a calculation of "levelling" designed to provide a veneer of independence to a state operation.
"Demonological Affairs"
Beyond the money, Anderson scrutinized the tone of the broadcasts. He found the news coverage generally "objective, balanced, and as accurate as can be expected," especially when verified through back-translation. He described the general tone as "temperate."
However, the memorandum admits that when the commentary shifted toward what Anderson calls "demonological affairs," the discipline occasionally slipped. He points to two specific violations of the policy against inflammatory material. Radio Liberty described the Finnish War by claiming "Stalin began one of the dirtiest wars in history." Radio Free Europe, broadcasting to Poland regarding new land taxes, told its audience that "this party which is supposed not to talk in vain, will never learn anything."
These outbursts were dismissed by Anderson as "exceptions to the general rule," yet they reveal the underlying friction of the project: the struggle to maintain a facade of sober, objective journalism while simultaneously conducting a psychological campaign against a political adversary.
Selected Books and Selected Addressees
The operation extended beyond the airwaves into a physical pipeline of influence. The Free Europe Committee managed a mailing operation that, to date, had sent "809,412 selected books to selected addressees behind the Iron Curtain." These were sent exclusively to the satellites.
In the first eleven months of 1961 alone, 58,596 books were dispatched. The success of this targeting was evident in the response rate: 26,156 recipients wrote back. The agency also coordinated "tours" for East German refugees, sending four teams to eight Latin American countries and four Asian countries between October and December 1961. Anderson describes this work as "genuinely effective."
Despite these operational successes, Anderson closes his report with a note of skepticism regarding the long-term strategy. He writes that while the organizations seemed to be doing a "responsible job" within their charters, the "validity of their charters at the present juncture of history is another question."
The most opaque detail remains in the funding. Anderson notes that Radio Free Europe used about $10,000,000 of the Crusade for Freedom money, but the remaining balance—over five million dollars—was used to finance "unattributed activities of the Free Europe Committee."