CIA official Thomas Braden assures the State Department that RFE broadcasts which took sides in Czechoslovak factory council elections, as envisaged in FEC Czechoslovak Guidance No. 13, have ended. (The Guidance and the cited FEC telegram are available in the Hoover Archives and the Blinken Open Society Archives as FEC teletype NYC 29, June 8, 1954.)

CIA official Fred Valtin conveys to FEC President William Durkee requested guidance from the State Department that RFE should not broadcast calls for active resistance to the Soviet occupiers even if from high-level Czechoslovak officials.

Observations of BBC managers two months after the start of RFE broadcasting from Munich on May 1, 1951. It includes their analysis of the Czechoslovak Service broadcasts on May 26th, 1951, and of the network of field bureaus to gather information from refugees. They lauded the enthusiasm of RFE broadcasters but criticized their programs for mixing opinion with fact in newscast.

A report from KGB Chairman Andropov to the Central Committee of the CPSU assessing the status of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe in their “transition” period and measures that might be taken to weaken them. It alleges that RFE and RL are planning subversive actions against the USSR at the Munich Olympics. It credits the Soviet bloc intelligence services with increasing the problems of the Radios. The document indicates timely KGB knowledge of internal RL documents such as the March 15, 1971 revision of the Radio Liberty Policy Manual.

This document indicates the continuing influence of German-language and other Western media in Czechoslovakia nine months after the Soviet invasion of August 1968. Czechoslovak officials criticized the heavy-handed Soviet broadcasts of Radio Vltava, and viewed other Soviet proposals to counter Western influence as counterproductive.

Pavel Minarik worked at RFE from 1968 to 1976 as an agent of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service. During these years he provided many documents and analyses to the Service. This document contains Interior Minister Obzina’s approval of an Intelligence Service plan to recall and publicize Minarik’s activities. Minarik was recalled to Prague and surfaced at a staged press conference in 1976.

In the statement by the Czechoslovak Interior Minister at the Bloc Meeting held on 23 April 1980 to discuss foreign “hostile actions,” including Western radio broadcasting, special attention is given to attempts to form a political opposition in the socialist countries.

This document details a plan for cooperation between the 6th Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria and the 10th Directorate of the Federal Ministry of the Interior of the Czecho-Slovak Socialist Republic during the period 1979-1981 against foreign propaganda operations. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty are singled out.

This GDR document is a German translation of the draft Action Program of Countermeasures against RFE and RL which was discussed at a multilateral meeting of Bloc intelligence services (minus Romania) in Prague in February 1976. The Prague meeting was suggested by the Czechoslovak interior ministry but dominated by the Soviet Union. Oleg Kalugin, then in charge of KGB counterintelligence, gave the opening speech (no copy of which could be located). Some of the measures listed in the Action Program, such as disinformation, were implemented. Others, such as a public tribunal to condemn the Radios, were never pursued.

The IOD officer responsible for RFE informs Cord Meyer of the turmoil in the RFE Czechoslovak Service. He opines that resignation of the RFE Munich leadership [European Director Erik Hazelhoff and his deputies David Penn and Charles J. McNeill] “would be an extremely healthy thing.”