OPINION AND ANALYSIS Cold War Radio Museum By Ted Lipien Note: The article has been updated to include information that Heda Margolius Kovály had worked in the 1970s as a freelance reporter for the Voice of America Czechoslovak Service under a radio name Kaca Kralova. A declassified CIA report from 1953 featured a claim by a still unidentified Slovak source…
Cold War Radio Museum Jan Ciechanowski, Polish Ambassador in Washington during World War II, helped to expose Soviet propaganda and U.S. government propagandists who in domestic media and in “Voice of America” shortwave radio broadcasts for foreign audiences spread disinformation originating in Soviet Russia. Photo: Jan Ciechanowski, Polish Minister, 11/30/25, LC-DIG-npcc-15231 (digital file from original), Library of Congress Prints…
This ad for Radio Free Europe was placed in American magazines in 1969 toward the end of the CIA’s involvement with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Such advertising by Radio Free Europe in American media would also soon end. This particular ad, as opposed to previous Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Europe Fund ads,…
Cold War Radio Museum Updated: January 2024 A State Secret Polish children from World War II Santa Rosa refugee camp, Guanajuato, Mexico. Source: Embajada de Polonia en México, Wikipedia. The date and photographer are unknown. CC BY 3.0. How the Roosevelt Administration Shipped Polish Refugee Orphans to Mexico In Locked Trains and Lied About It to Protect Stalin The Untold…
Cold War Radio Museum Former Polish President Lech Wałęsa said last year that in 1987 the then Vice President George H.W. Bush showed “he was a friend of Poland” and convinced him that Poland can get rid of communism. Former Polish Solidarity leader made that remark in reference to George H.W. Bush’s visit to Poland in 1987 at the…
Cold War Radio Museum Voice of America Then and Now Historically, partisanship at the Voice of America has been most often associated with Left-wing bias of some of its officials and central English newsroom reporters. By Ted Lipien After leaving the White House in 1961, former President Dwight D Eisenhower condemned a biased Voice of America (VOA) reporter who…
Cold War Radio Museum Patricia Gates Lynch Ewell, U.S. ambassador and broadcaster at the Voice of America (VOA), a tax-funded U.S. government media outlet for foreign audiences where she was known as Pat Gates, was a remarkable radio personality. She may have had more listeners to her English-language programs than Willis Conover’s VOA jazz programs in English, although various…
U.S. Government Propaganda Photo, 1943 By Ted Lipien Support Silenced Refugees A U.S. Government propaganda photo showing an unidentified Polish woman and other Polish women making their own clothing at a Red Cross refugee camp in Iran was taken by the Office of War Information (OWI) photographer in 1943. A few months earlier, the women were prisoners and slave laborers…
Cold War Radio Museum During the Cold War, it would have been unthinkable for the United States government to put in charge of U.S. international broadcasting through the Voice of America (VOA) an American businessman like Armand Hammer who had made millions for his company in various business deals with Soviet Russia. U.S. international broadcasting and business activities behind the…
By Ted Lipien Voice of America Polish Service Program “All About America” (Ameryka w Przekroju), July 9, 1983 Irena Radwańska Broni: Returning to the U.S. citizenship oath ceremony at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson would certainly approve of using his home for this purpose. … Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws…
Cold War Radio Museum 1990 VOA Polish Service Bilingual Polish-English Newscast [ss_player] The Cold War was almost over in 1989-1990. The Voice of America was looking for new ways to deliver news to Eastern Europe. The bilingual VOA Polish-English newscast was one of several projects initiated in the VOA Polish Service. The ten-minute bilingual newscast was…
Cold War Radio Museum Thanks to generous donations from Voice of America employees, the online Cold War Radio Museum acquired an original photograph of VOA broadcaster Willis Conover interviewing jazz musician Louis Armstrong autographed by both for Croatian musician Miljenko Prohaska. The back of the photograph has the following text: AMERICAN JAZZ STARS INTERVIEWED ON VOICE OF AMERICA “MUSIC,…
Cold War Radio Museum New York, New York. 1943 “United Nations” exhibition of photographs presented by the United States Office of War Information (OWI) on Rockefeller Plaza. Listening to broadcasts of President Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang Kai-shek, heard every half-hour from a loudspeaker at one end of the frame containing the Atlantic Charter. This frame is surrounded by four…
Cold War Radio Museum Support Cold War Radio Museum By Buying Our Books on Amazon VOA’s 15th director from March 1980 to January 1981 during President Jimmy Carter administration, Mary Bitterman presided over VOA in a period of turmoil in Afghanistan, Liberia, and Poland – which brought a resurgence of jamming against VOA and other international broadcasters.…
Cold War Radio Museum After leaving the White House in 1961, former President Dwight D Eisenhower briefly alluded in his memoirs Waging Peace (1965) to the Voice of America’s (VOA) wartime record of propaganda collusion with Soviet Russia. As a military leader during World War II, he must have been still upset to have mentioned it years later during the…