POSSIBLE MATERIAL FOR DCI'S NOTES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85-00024R000300150003-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 9, 2007
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: February 26, 1981
• Content Type: MEMO

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001FILE 26 Februar}pa' REd.____
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Public Affairs
ATTENTION:
FROM:
Acting Director, Foreign Broadcast Information
Service
SUBJECT: Possible Material for DCI's Notes
REFERENCE: Your request of 25 February 1981
chuck:
1. Attached is a draft item which you might want to use for the
DCI's Notes, per your request.
The extra material attached is a xerox of material we are
including in the FBIS NEWSLETTER in the event you need additional or
different data.
3. Don't hesitate to call ig I can be of further help
Attachments:
A. Draft item for DCI Notes
B. Material. appearing in FBI'S NEWSLETTER
powngnaded to UNCLASSIFIED/
ADMINISTRATIVE-INTERNAL USE
ONLY when A taehmen.ta tcemoved
wi IF IUC14 I INL ~ cry ~~ /FBIS
C E&PS
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WW1DE1T1AL4
ANNIVERSARY OF FBIS
On 26 February FBIS will celebrate its 40th anniversary as the
U.S. Government monitoring service. This is an appropriate time to
glance back over the organization's history and recall some of the
milestones in the development of this "service of common concern."
from the Treasury the following day, and the Foreign Broadcast
monitoring foreign broadcasts. The money was transferred to FCC
$150,000 out of presidential emergency funds for the purpose of
later in the month, and on 25 February President Roosevelt allotted
a resolution calling on the Federal Communications Commission to
establish a radio monitoring service. The resolution was passed
At a meeting of the Defense Communications Board in January
1941, State Department representative Breckenridge Long introduced
Monitoring Service was born. Headquarters was established
CONFIDENTIAL
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The first DAILY REPORT OF FOREIGN RADIO BROAD ared
on 18 November 1941. At about the same time a
social psychologist at Columbia University was selected to serve
as the first head of the Analysis Section--forerunner of today's
Analysis Group. That section's first "Weekly Review" appeared on
6 December, the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor- Interest-
ingly enough, the first issue noted that Japanese radio had dropped
its tone of caution and was assuming a bellicose attitude. 'Subsequent
'
efforts of FBMS
fledgling analysis component were focused on the
study of Nazi German propaganda, pioneering some of the early tech-
niques that were later to be applied and refined in FBIS analysis
of the controlled media of the Soviet Union, China, and other
communist countries.
Other significant milestones in FBMS' first year of operations
included the agreement to trade monitored broadcast material with
the BBC monitoring service, with being selected in
October to head the FBMS office in Londo e first full-fledged
field began operations in October ]with
as chief. The Program In orma ion ni , orerunner
of the Field Coverage Staff, was established in September.
Headquarters Locations, Affiliations
In April,1942 the FBMS head uarters moved from it
location to , and the following July FBMS
was renamed the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service. At. the
end of the war it appeared that FBIS might be shut down as part of
general governmental cutbacks, and all operations formally ceased
on 10 December 1945. However, on 2 January 1946.FBIS was taken
over by the War Department. Later it became part of the Central
Intelligence Group, was placed in the Office of Collection Dissem-
ination, and renamed the Foreign Broadcast Information Service.
It was eventually placed in the Office of Operations (00) and
again renamed, this time as the Forei Broadcas format'
Branch. On 22 August 1947 FBIS moved to the
School near the CIA headquarters building on E Street, and on
May 1949 it moved into the South Building. It became the Foreign
Broadcast Information Division of 00 on 26 September 1949 but
continued to identify itself as FBIS overseas. On 30 November
1950 FBIS *was relocated to on Ohio rDriirA nnd rampinc.a
there until February 1956 when it moved to the
at The final move, to 'Key J3uliding,
occurred in early-May 1 5. n
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On 1 July 1965 the Office of Operations, which had been FBIS'
parent component for almost 19 years, was abolished and FBIS
became an office in the Directorate of Intelligence. FBID was
abandoned as the official name at this time and FBIS became the de
jure as well as the de facto name. FBIS was transferred from the
DDI to the Directorate of Science and Technology on 22 November
1976.
Field Bureau Locations
When FBIS was established under the Federal Communications
Commission in 194.
1 FC 's Radio Intelligence Division had shortwave
and others flew to Guam in January 1945 to open a new
Pacific Bureau. At the time of the Japanese surrender, FBIS
Pacific posts were the sole source of Emperor Hirohito's speech
ending the war. By 17 May 1946 FBIS had taken over operation of
a British monitoring post in Cairo, Egypt, and the Algiers operation
closed down. By the end of 1946 FBIS had bureaus functionin
Guam Kauai Cairo and Londo
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The year 194 saw the opening of Okinawa Ri eau. Cruising
monitor arrived in Okinawa on 6 July 1949 to
help se e-c t e site. serve as the first bureau chief
and was named bureau bet 1949 when
Blake moved The first
Chinese mon zor on inawa was
The s tin of 1949 also saw the be innin of East coast Bureau
opera tions
was named the first chief of ECB whi
h
In October 1949 arrived in
Europe to set up ope ions in ermany and Bad Nauheim and
Salzburg served as initial sites for what soon became the Frankfurt
Vienna bureaus. The German Bureau in Frankfurt was closed in December
1968. A Cologne Coordination Unit was in existence from March 1969
to Janua 1974, and the subsequent Cologne Unit reopened in July
1979.
c
o ficially activated on 1 April 1950. waste
a senior editor serving on Okinawa_ was cent in
th ring of 1952 to establish a monitoring operation in
different sites
June 1975.
The East Coast Bureau was formally closed in
April 1968 after of its coverage was transferred to the Caribbean
Bureau in November 1965. The Caribbean Bureau, in
turn , was c ose in my 1973, with coverage dispersed to Panama and
Paraguay. Among other bureaus, was set up in 1960 to cover
Cuba, Panama Bureau was established in 1962, Paraguay in 1973, and
Seoul and Hong Kong in 1976. The African Bureau in Kaduna, Nigeria
was established in 1960 and closed in April 1976. Abidjan Bureau
was opened in April 1979. A monitoring. unit was established in
A Gulf Bureau was opened in Bahrain in. September 1979.
The Middle East Bureaus have .undergone many changes throughout-...
FBIS' 40-year history. FBIS was--engaged in monitoring from Algiers
as early as 1942, and by 1946 the Cairo Bureau was in operation.
The Mediterranean Bureau in Cyprus was activated on 15 April 1949,
and the Cairo Bureau closed 5 days later. Medburo was abandoned
during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974, with TDY opera-
tions opening in Athens., Beirut and Tel Aviv to pick up the lost
coverage. Tel Aviv became a full-fledged bureau in March 1975 and
the Beirut operation was moved to Amman, Jordan, in February of the
same year. Nicosia Bureau was also opened in 1975.. The Athens Unit
continued as a TDY operation until its closure on 16 January 1981.
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CONFIDENTIAL 9
One of the most significant milestones in the history of FBIS
was the merger with the Foreign Documents Division of OCR on 8 March
1947. FDD's predecessor organization, the Washington Document Center,
was set up in February 1945 as a joint Army-Navy clearing station and
evaluation board for captured enemy documents received from the Far
Eastern theaters. It was one of three agencies engaged in handling
captured enemy documents, the other two being the Pacific Military
Intelligence Research Service (PACMIRS) and OP-32F141, established by
the Office of Naval Intelligence. On 17 April 1946 the three were
combined in the Washington Document Center under the Office of Naval
Operations, located in the Steuart Building at 5th and K Streets
Northwest. The first head of WDC was Navy Capt Ranson Fullinwider,
succeeded in 3_months by Commander Mark T. Little.
In late 1946 FDD became part of the Central Intelligence Group,
first under the Office of Reports and Estimates and then under the
Office of Operations. Renamed Documents Branch, it was moved to the
Documents Branch on 29 July 1947.
It became the Foreign
Joint Publications Research Service
In February 1951 FDD began Project UT (Unclassified Transla-
tions), which ultimately became the Joint Publications Research
Service. Project UT set up a company known as Transworld Language
Services (.TWLS) It was converted to
corporate status in October of 1952, with a foreign documents officer
using a pseudonym as its president. Largely because of management
difficulties and threats to its cover, the company was dissolved in
November 1957 and all unclassified translation work was shifted to
the newly created Joint Publications Research Service.
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