Art Details
From CIA’s Intelligence Art Collection, this painting depicts the monitoring and translation of a message broadcast in Russian over Radio Moscow on 28 October 1962, in which the Soviets agreed to remove their missiles from Cuba.
by Deborah Dismuke
Oil on Canvas, 2010
Commissioned by the CIA Museum
Radio broadcasting technology developed rapidly during the 1930s. Shortwave transmissions from powerful new stations could be heard over great distances. As Nazi ideologues and Japanese propagandists were quick to exploit radio as a new wartime tool, President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the need to monitor shortwave radio broadcasts of the Axis powers and established the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service (FBMS) in February 1941. Initially operating under the Federal Communications Commission, FBMS became the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) in 1942. During the war, FBIS recorded, translated, transcribed, and analyzed valuable information from the radio airwaves for the Office of Strategic Services and US Departments of State, War, and Navy. At war’s end, FBIS moved to the US Department of the Army, and the National Security Act of 1947 reassigned it to the newly created Central Intelligence Agency. In 2005, FBIS became the Open Source Center (OSC), and in 2015, the Open Source Enterprise (OSE) when it joined the Directorate of Digital Innovation. The value of open-source intelligence continues unabated with the expansion of openly available information and communication media centered on computer technology and the Internet.
Formed in 1939, the British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring (BBCM) Service pioneered the monitoring of foreign broadcasting stations as European governments increasingly used radio to publicize official communiqués, policy statements, and propaganda. After supporting Allied operations during World War II, BBCM resumed its role as a peace-time arm of the BBC news service and continues as such today. FBMS and its FBIS successor established and maintained a close working relationship with BBCM personnel, learning from their experiences, sharing information, and stationing a small staff at their headquarters. Over the years, CIA’s open-source partnership with BBCM has steadily strengthened, initially through FBIS and now with OSE.
The painting depicts a significant example of FBIS work that occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis. When Central Intelligence Agency photointerpreters discovered Soviet nuclear-capable, medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) bases in Cuba—less than a hundred miles from US shores, President John F. Kennedy quarantined all Soviet ships carrying MRBM-related equipment to Cuba and demanded the removal of the existing MRBM bases from the island. Despite their claim that the missiles were strictly defensive and posed no threat to the US, on 28 October 1962 through diplomatic channels, the Soviets dispatched their decision to comply with Kennedy’s demand. To assure that this important message reached the White House as quickly as possible, Moscow Radio simultaneously broadcast it in Russian over the airwaves. FBIS, in cooperation with its BBCM partners in England, monitored and translated this message from Premier Nikita Khrushchev to President Kennedy and flashed it to the White House and other US government offices:
“The Soviet Government has ordered the dismantling of bases and the dispatch of equipment to the USSR… I wish to again state that the Soviet Government has offered only defensive weapons.”
The radio route—via FBIS—proved to be the fastest communication means, and President Kennedy responded immediately through a State Department telegram to Khrushchev:
“I am replying at once to your broadcast message…even though the official text has not yet reached me...I welcome this message and consider it an important contribution to peace.”
Message from Moscow earned the artist the distinction of being the first female and first Agency officer to have artwork displayed in the Headquarters Intelligence Art Gallery. During the painting’s unveiling at the Open Source Center in 2012, OSC Director Doug Naquin called her a “genius,” highlighting how even the time depicted on the subjects’ watches was researched to ensure accuracy.
Art Specs
38 in x 30½ in
(H x W)