TRANSCRIPT OF BROADCAST BY FULTON LEWIS, JR.

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP63T00245R000100220143-8
Release Decision: 
RIFPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
3
Document Creation Date: 
December 19, 2016
Document Release Date: 
October 3, 2006
Sequence Number: 
143
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
January 22, 1958
Content Type: 
TRANS
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PDF icon CIA-RDP63T00245R000100220143-8.pdf180.84 KB
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Approved For Release 2006/10/03: CIA-RDP63TO0245RO00100220143-8LieJ TRANSCRIPT OF BROADCAST By Fulton Lewis, Jr. Station WGMS at 7-7:15 P.M. 22 January 1958 Now let's get around once again to the Crusade for Free- dom and Radio Free Europe and I want to get down to the grass roots operating level tonight and give you a look at what is happening there. It's all very well for big corporation execu- tives to lend their names and their time and to give big con- tributions for the support of these operations out of their stockholders earnings, and it is all very well for them to give out with a lot of platitudes to the effect that they are confident that Radio Free Europe is doing great work. Actually they can not be confident of any such thing, un- less they know what the broadcast material is that Radio Free Europe is beaming behind the Iron Curtain; the tenor of it; the ideology which it bespeaks. And all of this is dependent in very large measure on the individuals who do the policy-making and the editing and the broadcasting at the actual scene of operations in Munich, Germany, and at its affiliated broadcast transmitter and relay points. The Crusade for Freedom denies very bitterly that it has any pinkos or socialists in its organization and it has distributed this denial far and wide. I propose to demonstrate to you tonight that this denial is a categori- cal falsehood and will name some names and some dates and some places to prove the point. In the first place, I al- ready have reported to you that Ferdinand Perutka himself, a collaborator with the Russian Communists in Czechoslovakia until the Russians threw him out, is in charge of the Czecho- slovakian desk of Radio Free Europe. As his economic adviser, he has Milos Vanek (sic), one of the original co-signers of the Second Comintern Manifesto of 1921 along with Lenin and Trotsky, with several others too. You know the picture of the revolutionists, the raid at the table with all the beards. Also in the Radio Free Europe family was Hubert Ripka one of the great mass murderers of the present day, a man who was responsible for the slaughter of 300,000 Sudeten Germans and who said afterwards that he had no regrets about it, that he would do it again. Now let's see who some of the lesser figures are in the operation, or who they have been in the past. There was a young man named Bruno Volta (sic), an escapee from Czecho- slovakia who was employed in the youth program propaganda in Approved For Release 2006/10/03: CIA-RDP63T00245R000100220143-8 Approved For Release 2006/10/03: CIA-RDP63T00245R000100220143-8 Munich until 1954. In that year he suddenly defected and went back behind the Iron Curtain where he showed up saying that he had voluntarily defected so that he could work against the West. What he told about conditions among refugees in the free West was exploited at great length by the Communist propaganda broad- casts for a period of many weeks. He said over the Prague radio that he had lived in a state of semistarvation in the West and that after accepting a job as an announcer for Radio Free Eu- rope, they sent him to Czechoslovakia equipped with weapons and with false papers. On seeing how prosperous the Communist home- land was, he said, he realized how he had been misused by the West and voluntarily surrendered to the Czech authortities. He described in considerable detail the aims and the methods of Radio Free Europe. Also there was a man by the name of Bohumil Louseman, a high official of Radio Free Europe in Munich, but let me read you a United Press dispatch on this one, dateline Vienna. "A former leading Czechoslovak "anti-Communist" who fled to the West four years ago turned up back in his red ruled homeland today in time to harangue Czech voters against America on a day set for local elections. All Czech radio stations carried a broadcast by former Deputy Premier Louseman who fled to the West on New Year's Day 1950, and voters went to the one-party polls under a rain of freedom ballots, sent by balloons from the West by the Crusade for Freedom of Munich, Germany. When Louseman, the Social Democratic party's leader before the Com- munists took over in Czechoslovakia, fled his post in Prague, he left behind his wife and daughter. He took up residence in Salzburg, headquarters of the American forces in Austria; last December 23rd he vanished. The Prague radio today broad- cast a recording of what Louseman said at a so-called press conference yesterday at Prague. He said that he returned voluntarily to Czechoslovakia on Christmas Day because his conscience was burdened with heavy crimes he had committed against his country." Here's another one, and I have a long list of these, but a few are enough to give the lie to the Radio Free Europe's statement about no pinkos. This a direct quotation, a direct translation from a Munich newspaper of about a year ago: "Radio Prague has announced the return of the refugee Carol Casal (sic) and his wife Helena Vushova Catsolova who before the war was among the most well-known movie actresses. Carol Casal served during the Second World War as a major in the British air force. He had obtained British citizenship. Helena Vushova until the middle of last year was employed in the Czech division Approved For Release 2006/10/03: CIA-RDP63T00245R000100220143-8 Approved For Release 2006/10/03: CIA-RDP63T00245R000100220143-8 of the Munich Radio Free Europe as was Casal, until May of this year. When he submitted his resignation, he declared that he would return to England. In a statement published by one of the Czech press bureaus, he speaks of homesickness as the chief reason for his return. In addition he maintained that in the West hostile actions against Czechoslovakia were being planned, which further strengthened his decision." That's sufficient to paint the general picture, and as I say there are a lot more, but why burden you with them. These are the people who were on the Radio Free Europe payroll at the actual operating level who defected to the Communists, went back home to be used by the Communists, in propaganda designed to discredit the West. It is for these that the Crusade for Freedom collects truth dollars, to beam what they call the mes- sage of hope and freedom behind the Iron Curtain. Approved--For-Release 2006/'0103--: CIA-- RD-PB3T00245R000100220143-8