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Radio Free Europe and the CIA Partnership

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty became successful substitutes for free media in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. This seminar talk will draw on CIA and Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty archives to trace the history of their first two decades. It will address three questions: What was the evolving reason for CIA covert funding? What was the relationship between CIA and the Radios? Why did the Radios prove to be one of the most important and successful policy instruments of the United States during the Cold War?

Date & Time

Monday
Nov. 5, 2012
4:00pm – 5:30pm ET

Location

6th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center
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Overview

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty became successful substitutes for free media in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. This seminar talk will draw on CIA and Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty archives to trace the history of their first two decades. It will address three questions: What was the evolving reason for CIA covert funding? What was the relationship between CIA and the Radios? Why did the Radios prove to be one of the most important and successful policy instruments of the United States during the Cold War?

A. Ross Johnson is Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was a senior executive of Radio Free Europe from 1988 to 2002. Previously he was a senior staff member of the RAND Corporation specializing in Eurasian and security issues. He is the author of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: the CIA Years and Beyond (2010) and co-editor of Cold War Broadcasting (2010). He is a graduate of Stanford, the Fletcher School, and Columbia.

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Speaker

A. Ross Johnson

A. Ross Johnson

History and Public Policy Program Fellow;
Senior Adviser, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; former Director, Radio Free Europe

Before his passing in February 2021, A. Ross Johnson was a Wilson Center History and Public Policy Fellow and Senior Advisor for Archives at RFE/RL. He was a former director of Radio Free Europe. 

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Hosted By

History and Public Policy Program

The History and Public Policy Program makes public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, facilitates scholarship based on those records, and uses these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs.  Read more

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