May 1, 1950, and the Battle for Men's Minds

Lucius D. Clay

On 20 April 1950, President Harry S. Truman spoke at a luncheon of the American Society of Newspaper Editors on American foreign policy. President Truman called for a “campaign of truth” in the United States information programs:

The cause of freedom is being challenged throughout the world today by the forces of imperialistic communism. This is a struggle, above all else, for the minds of men. Propaganda is one of the most powerful weapons the Communists have in this struggle. Deceit, distortion, and lies are systematically used by them as a matter of deliberate policy.

We must make ourselves heard round the world in a great campaign of truth.

On 26 April 1950, DeWitt C. Poole, president of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), announced that Retired Army General Lucius D. Clay accepted the chairmanship of the Crusade for Freedom, which “has been in a developmental stages since 1 February.”

In Clay’s name, an emotional “statement of purpose” of the Crusade for Freedom was issued to the press, which, in part, read:

·      The soul of the world is sick, and the peoples of the world are looking to the United States for leadership and hope.

·      They are looking to us for leadership in a great moral crusade—a crusade for freedom, friendship and faith throughout the earth

·      If we to prove equal to this desperate need, each U.S. citizen must feel a personal responsibility. We cannot leave the job to government alone.

·      We have suffered serious setbacks in the contest of ideas between our way of life and totalitarianism. 

·      It is with a great deal of humility that I have accepted responsibility as national chairman of this Crusade, for I am convinced that upon its success could very well depend the prevention of World War III.

On 1 May 1950, President Truman sent a telegram to the NCFE, which, in part read: “I hope that all Americans will join with you in dedicating themselves to this critical struggle for men's minds.” The telegram was released to and printed by newspapers in the United States. President Truman did not, of course, reveal that the true sponsor of both the NCFE and Crusade for Freedom was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Also on 1 May 1950, the Crusade for Freedom’s Campaign Letter Number One was sent to the newly appointed Regional and State Crusade Chairmen in the United States, also under General Clay’s name, with details of the Freedom Bell and the outline for future fund raising efforts:

·      The long range, broad-gauge objectives of the Crusade for Freedom are to enlist several million Americans in a Crusade for Freedom and Friendship to put the lie to Kremlin propaganda that our goal is world domino and war to affirm our resolution that America is in the Crusade to stay.

·      The ideal of the Crusade for Freedom is to feed human souls.

·      Compelling symbol of the Crusade will be a great new Freedom Bell … Throughout history the struggle toward human freedom has been one of the noblest achievements of man. The Freedom Bell will become a permanent memorial to all the men and women, of all periods, who gave their lives to the cause of freedom.

·      The first clap of the Freedom Bell will be carried to the peoples of the earth by the most extensive network of radio power ever assembled -- spearheaded by Radio Free Europe. Simultaneously, bells will ring out all over America: church bells, city hall bells, school bells.

·      Contributions on a broad basis – from nickels and dimes from school children on up will be sought to underwrite the Bell and the rest of the Crusade program, via radio and newspaper publicity. The assistance of the Advertising Council will be very helpful in this regard.

The letter went on to list the various functions of the Regional and State Chairmen regarding city and state activities. Among them were:

·      Appoint bell-ringing committees in every community.

·      Stimulate and organize the sending of printed matter overseas – to show how we live in America.

·      Develop contests among both groups and individuals for the best ideas on how to get our message and freedom and friendship to people abroad.

The Crusade for Freedom and the battle for men’s minds in Eastern Europe had begun.

When Radio Free Europe Supported the Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston with BSO

On April 28, 1952, the “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century” festival opened in Paris, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing Igor Stravinsky’s ballet suite The Rite of Spring.

The little known role of Radio Free Europe in support of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's first performance outside the United States is explained below.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), one of America’s prestigious orchestras, was scheduled to tour Europe April-May 1952, including performing at the Paris cultural festival “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century.” 

Charles Munch

The Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor was Charles Munch born in France (September 26, 1891 – November 6, 1968). Concerts were scheduled for Paris, The Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, Berlin, Strasbourg, Metz, Lyon, Bordeaux, and London.  

On October 2, 1951, the board of directors of the National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE) met in New York City. One of the items discussed was funding for the Boston Symphony Orchestra upcoming European tour.

NCFE president C.D. Jackson told the NCFE directors were told that the costs of the BSO European tour were expensive and full financial support was not readily forthcoming for the planned budget of $200,000. The NCFE directors were told that the Congress for Cultural Freedom (a CIA covert project) pledged $30,000 of support, $40,000 was expected from the European Tour, and $100,000 would come from the United States tour before traveling to Europe. Thus, $30,000 was lacking.

C. D. Jackson, Fortune magazine publisher was also on the board of directors of the BSO. He told the other NCFE directors that he “was very enthusiastic” about the participation of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Paris festival and “felt that the NCFE through Radio Free Europe could make a major contribution to its success,” if “NCFE would give the necessary pledge of approximately $30,000, for which in turn, Radio Free Europe would receive the rights for broadcasting the entire festival program and the recording rights of the orchestra’s European concert tour.”

The NCFE board of directors unanimously endorsed the support of the BSO project but would not approve the financial support without more information about the exact amount required, and if NCFE had the funds to do so.

At a special meeting held on January 16, 1952, the NCFE board of directors passed a resolution “that the sum of $30,000 is appropriated as a donation to the American Committee of Cultural Freedom, Inc, in return for which NCFE is secured the rights to broadcast and record the ‘Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century Exposition’ program in Europe, including all the performances of the BSO during its tour of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, Inc.

Pierre Monteux

The Boston Symphony Orchestra left its mark in Paris when it performed in May 1952, under Charles Munch and associate conductor Pierre Monteux, also born in France (April 4, 1875 – July 1, 1964. Life magazine, for example, wrote in its May 19, 1952, issue,

Since 1493 Europeans have had few kind words for American ventures into the arts, and since 1945 few kind words on any score. Last week, however, they had a great many. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, in Paris for an arts festival, gave two performances, which left listeners dazed with awe. Critics unanimously used the word “extraordinary,” and phrases like, “Is there another orchestra which could interpret modern music with such brilliance?” “Performance unparalleled in finesse and dynamism.”

Time magazine wrote on May 19, 1952,

In their first appearance at Paris' international Festival of the Arts ... they left the audience (including President Auriol) shouting itself hoarse. In courtly appreciation, the orchestra and Conductor Munch broke a long-standing symphonic rule and played an encore. Two nights later came the success of Monteux, Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring.

Paris' critics came out gasping superlatives. Said Le Figaro: "An extraordinary ensemble, playing with an assurance and ardor that bordered on fanaticism." L'Aurore's critic said, "Never before have we heard anything comparable to the sumptuous sonority of the strings and mordant quality of the trumpets." Said one Boston musician: "We did our best because we realized what it meant to Munch and Monteux to play in Paris."

John Roderick of the Associated Press (AP) wrote in his article on June 1, 1952, “America has Achieved Cultural Maturity...By the time the 110-piece orchestra had finished playing Ravel’s ‘Daphnis and Chloe, the diamond-studded audience was on its feet, shouting, yelling and applauding as never before.” The Los Angeles Times proclaimed “Free World Shows Europe She Has Come of Age, Culturally Speaking.”

(In 1956, the Boston Symphony Orchestra was the first American orchestra to perform in the Soviet Union.)

For more information on the Congress of Cultural Freedom, see

Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New York: The New Press, 1999.

Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America. London, England: Harvard University Press, 2008.

"Silenced: The Writer Georgi Markov and the Umbrella Murder" -- Film Premiere In Munich

Munich, Saturday 11 May 2013

The Germany premiere of the film Silenced: The Writer Georgi Markov and the Umbrella Murder was at the ARRI KINO at 20:00

Film synopsis:

London 1978: Bulgarian writer and dissident, Georgi Markov, is poisoned to death.The assassination plot reads like a James Bond film: an umbrella is supposed to be the murder weapon. For years the British and Russian secret services blame each other. Still one of the biggest murder cases in history remains unexplained. 35 years later the director sets out to solve the mystery. 

Francisco Gulllino 2012

Through his lengthy enquiries he succeeds in getting the prime suspect, the Bulgarian agent Francesco “Piccadilly” Guillino to appear in front of the camera. A gripping documentary crime thriller that deals with the history of the Cold War and reveals the current intrigues within our secret services.

During the filmed interview, Gullino gives this interesting answer:

Q. Were you the murderer of Georgi Markov, or not?

A. I have nothing to do with this story. I am sorry; I wish I could give you a straight answer. But, think for a moment. If I were the murderer, do you think I should just say it?  The real truth, you don’t throw it away because it is so important. But for your broadcasting, you can just say what you want, just like all the others … But in general, why should one say the truth?  What for? You live so well with lies. Isn’t it? Or say nothing.

More excerpts of the interview with Gullino can be read here  

JFK and RFE

On November 8, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy was elected as the 35th President of the United States. He officially took office on January 20, 1961. The Democratic party had replaced the Eisenhower Republicans in the White House. Cord Meyer, the CIA's liaison officer with RFE then, has written in his memoirs (Facing Reality) that because of alleged improprieties on the part of RFE in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, "When President Kennedy took office in Washington, I found that some of his key advisors were initially hostile to the radios for this reason."

A letter under President Kennedy's name was sent to W. B. Murphy, Chairman of the Board, Radio Free Europe Fund, on January 31, 1961, possibly to assuage any fears about the negative effect of a Democratic administration on Radio Free Europe. The letter read, in part:

For many years I have been convinced that Radio Free Europe is a most valuable undertaking and that it is important that the American people should contribute to its financial support.

The very fact that so many people here in the United States have been willing to give voluntarily to support RFE is proof to those on the other side of the Iron Curtain that they have not been forgotten and that they have here a reservoir of good will and of deep concern for their plight.

I congratulate you and your associates on the devotion and energy that you are private citizens have given to this endeavor and wish you success in your current fund-raising effort.

In July 1960, Crusade for Freedom chairman W.B. Murphy had announced that, starting with 1960-1961, all fund-raising activities would take place in name of the Radio Free Europe Fund: “The new campaign name has been adopted to make it easier for the public to associate the fund with the important work it supports."

President Kennedy opened his press conference on March 8, 1961, with a prepared statement about Radio Free Europe:

First, I want to say a word on behalf of Radio Free Europe, which is now making its annual appeal for support from all of our citizens. For more than ten years this enterprise has been reaching out topeople in Europe, Eastern Europe, with truth and devotion to liberty as its message. While this radio is at work, with listeners numbering in the millions, the competition of ideas in these countries is kept alive.

The individual Americans, by giving to Radio Free Europe, may be sure that they are bringing a beacon of light into countries to which millions of us are tied by kinship, and whose hope for freedom all of us must share. This is a peaceful concern but a firm one. Radio Free Europe needs and deserves our generous help.

West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt visited the White House on March 13, 1961, and presented President Kennedy with a silver model of the Freedom Bell, with the inscription: "The President of the United States of America John Fitzgerald Kennedy as a sign of cordial ties March 1961 Willy Brandt Ruling Burgermeister from Berlin."

The photograph above, courtesy of Hoover Institution, Stanford University, RFE/RL Collection, shows then President-elect Kennedy sending Christmas wishes to Eastern Europe via Radio Free Europe in December 1960.

Operation STONES (Akce KAMENY): The Tragic Theater of Communism

On August 31, 1951, Radio Free Europe's Czechoslovak broadcast service, known as the  "Voice of Free Czechoslovakia," aired a program in the hard-hitting series "All This We Know." 

This program series identified agents and "known blackmailers, informers and quislings" in countries behind the Iron Curtain. This particular radio drama identified "Dr. Evzen" and went into details of a Czechoslovak intelligence service (StB -- Státní bezpečnost) scheme known as Operation STONES (Akce KAMENY), which used agent provocateurs to not only arrest, try, imprison or execute potential escapees from Czechoslovakia, but also steal anything or "wealth" from the victims. STONES referred to the large stone markers used to identify the German-Czech border. 

The criminal scheme involved a false German-Czechoslovak border post, in which, according to an official U.S. State Department protest note in July 1948, 

Representatives of the Czechoslovak State Security Police (S.N.B.), dressed in full uniform with insignia of officers of the United States Army, have been conducting an office in a house on Czechoslovak territory in the western outskirts of the village of Vseruby. In the conduct of their business, these representatives are seated behind a desk on which there is conspicuously displayed a bottle of American whiskey, packages of American cigarettes and a small American flag. On the wall behind their desk is a large American flag and pictures of Presidents Truman and Roosevelt.

These S.N.B. representatives, dressed in uniforms of the United States Army, are assisted by other S.N.B. representatives who are dressed in uniforms of the German border police. 

The Czech government not only denied the allegations but also "hinted that the Americans were being somewhat paranoid." Researchers into Communist Czechoslovakia crimes have convincingly proved that the Americans were not paranoid. Scores of Czechoslovak citizens were victimized. Information about the scheme and the false border station that were detailed in the 1948 protest note were revealed to the United States through an American double agent, who was later arrested but eventually released for lack of evidence. He eventually escaped to West Germany and possibly resettled in Canada.

This is one variation of how the scheme worked in general: previously identified wealthy persons were approached by agent provocateurs and told they were about to be arrested by the secret police. To avoid this, the should leave Czechoslovakia immediately and take all their possessions of worth. They were driven at night to a "border" with stone markings. Believing they were at the border, the victims would then cross on foot, when they would be met by StB agents acting as West German border guards. From there, the victims would be brought to the house described in the U.S. protest note. Believing they were then in the care of the American military. 

Another StB agent speaking fluent English and Czech named Amon Tomasoff (Code name "Tony") would greet them, offer them a glass of whisky, and then proceed to ask them who they were and why they wanted to leave Czechoslovakia. The victims would answer questions about their past, their associates and contacts, and other information. This would be reduced in writing in the form of an official protocol and signed by the victims.

The photo caption reads: In the only known photo of KAMEN in action, an agent in US Army uniform is shown interviewing a victim, a man named Jaroslav Hakr. A notation on the photo reads “Compromising photograph of Hakr with a CIC officer”—a pretender serving as “proof ” of Hakr’s disloyalty and as evidence for others considering flight that Hakr had been successfully led to safety

After a certain period of time, the victims would be told that their asylum request would be further processed at a nearby refugee camp. They left the border point with the protocol and headed to what they thought would be the refugee camp, accompanied by a guide who somehow managed to get lost. Their personal items and valuables were left behind. But this time, instead of meeting West German border guards, the victims were met by Czech border guards who arrested them. The victims returned to Prague to face trial, imprisonment or death. The evidence was the protocol they had signed. Some of the victims were sent to work in the uranium mines and certain death.

Some victims' request for political asylum were denied and they were handed over to the Czech border guards. The news that the United States had turned down some asylum requests leaked out of prisons and labor camps and thus potential escapees thought twice about attempting to leave Czechoslovakia.

An internal StB investigation in 1963 revealed that most of the personal wealth of the victims remained it the hands of the perpetrators.

It would appear that the operation finally stopped after the 1951 RFE program. "Dr. Evzen" in RFE's program was StB agent Evzen Abrahamovic, code-named "Dr. Breza" and "Evzen." He was born on July 7, 1921 and was one of the main players in the STONES activities. According to an article by Boston University history professor Dr. Igor Lukes, 

Abrahamovic ultimately continued on to a long and happy life as a director of a large department store. He was still alive as of October 2010, at the age of 89, living in the Czech Republic. Until some two or three years ago, undisturbed by any of the geopolitical upheavals that beset his country after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, he could be seen lunching regularly at the same place as the notorious traitor Karel Köcher.

Amon Tomasoff died of brain cancer in 1953.

Was Operation STONES (KAMEN) a success intelligence operation?  According to Dr. Lukes, no: 

Operation KAMEN was a fiendishly clever scheme with real counter-intelligence potential. However, the StB bosses failed to exploit it because they were focused on destroying the “class enemy” and not on gathering intelligence and learning the truth about US activities in Czechoslovakia. Indeed, their victims could reveal little, and while KAMEN did serve the interests of the StB and its CPC bosses by heightening distrust and insecurity among democrats, its real impact was the destruction of the lives of innocent victims and the corrupt enrichment of Communist thugs.

For more information: 

In English, for a detailed look at how the scheme worked, and by whom, along with case studies of the victims, Dr. Igor Lukes, "KAMEN: A Cold War Dangle Operation with an American Dimension, 1948–52,"  Studies in Intelligence Vol.55, No. 1 The map and photograph above above are taken from this article.

In Czech, military historian Dr. Prokop Tomek has written a detailed article about KAMEN and Amon Tomasoff in SECURITAS IMPERII 12, Sborník k problematice 50. let   

Peter Halasz

The newspaper The Telegraph has just published a detailed obituary notice for former Radio Free Europe staffer Peter Halasz, who died on January 7, 2013. I decided to re-print it below as if makes for fascinating reading:

Peter Halasz, who has died aged 90, was a Hungarian émigré writer and journalist who, through his novels and short stories, articles and radio broadcasts, gave voice to the great wave of Hungarians who fled their native country in the wake of the 1956 Revolution.

He spent his years of exile in New York until 1970, London until 1975, and then in Munich, winning a loyal following from the Hungarian diaspora. As a writer and broadcaster for Radio Free Europe from 1957 to 1987, he also retained a large audience in Hungary, whose citizens were thirsty for news and views not subject to censorship. His topical reports and interviews with famous Hungarian émigrés such as Arthur Koestler, Sir Georg Solti, Edward Teller and the Hollywood film director George Cukor gave his compatriots a window to the outside world. But such work made him persona non grata in Hungary, and it was not until the fall of communism in 1990 that Halasz finally visited Budapest again.

Peter Halasz was born to Jewish parents on April 10 1922 in Budapest, where his father Antal was co-owner of a textile business. In the 1930s, with anti-Semitic sentiment increasing , Antal and his young son converted to the Hungarian Reformed Church. By then Antal and his wife had separated and Peter, an only child, endured an often lonely boyhood. He sought consolation in writing, and in 1942 wrote his first full-length, semi-autobiographical work, Szulei Elvaltak (His Parents Are Divorced).

Two more novels followed, but in 1944 he was conscripted into a labour battalion attached to the Hungarian Army and sent to the Eastern Front. As a Christian convert he wore a white armband instead of the yellow star, but the treatment he received was still harsh. He escaped from his battalion in Galicia, only to be captured by the Russians and placed in a PoW camp at Sambor (now Sambir), Ukraine, then in the throes of a typhus epidemic. Offered the chance to fight against the Germans, he joined a unit of volunteers, but fell critically ill with jaundice and spent a month in hospital before making his way back to Budapest. He arrived there on April 4 1945, the day the war ended in Hungary.

After the war Peter Halasz wrote stage and radio plays and began his career in journalism. But following the Soviet-sponsored communist takeover in 1948, all non-Party publications were closed down, so in 1950 he applied for a job as a dramatist with Budapest’s Lilliput Theatre (where the entire company of actors were dwarves). Having failed to join the Communist Party, he was viewed with suspicion and in 1951 was sent for six months to a residential school of Marxist-Leninist indoctrination.

He later wrote about this episode in an article entitled “Sentenced to School” for the American magazine East Europe. Each day the 100 “students” – men and women who aspired to work in some cultural capacity – had to take notes on the articles in the Communist Party’s daily newspaper, Szabad Nep. Tests were later carried out. Halasz wrote: “All this must be known, inhaled, accepted, understood, remembered, and what’s more, even liked, so that it may become completely one’s own: one’s body, soul, food and drink. One must know how to apply all this, it was not enough to recite it back.” The day would continue with a lecture from a visiting Party functionary and conclude with a three-hour seminar.

Everyone was expected to contribute. “Nobody is called upon, you must volunteer,” Halasz wrote. “How many times you come forward and what political profile emerges from your interventions, this is decisive. There are tricky questions, seemingly innocent remarks, which trap the unsuspecting. The seminar leader observes sharply. The important thing is how you react to the traps. From this comes your profile: you are a right-wing deviationist or a left-wing deviationist, you are too nationalist or too internationalist, you do not recognise the leading role of the working class and consider the peasantry to be more decisive in the life of the nation . It is nearly impossible to avoid being classified into one or another category, and indeed this is desirable, because possibilities must be given for criticism and self-criticism.”

Halasz was deemed to have done well. At the end of the course he was promoted, returning home to a job with the State Film Studio. Even then, however, his relationship with the censors was far from perfect; he once had to rewrite a screenplay 10 times before it was approved by a succession of government ministers.

Peter Halasz had married Vali Racz, the glamorous wartime singer and film actress – known as the Hungarian Marlene Dietrich – in 1946 . After the 1956 uprising was brutally suppressed, the couple escaped to America. They settled in New York and before long Peter Halasz began working for Radio Free Europe. In 1970 he was sent to the station’s London office, where he ran the Hungarian desk for several years before transferring again to its headquarters in Munich.

Throughout that time he produced novels and short story collections about Hungarian émigré life, in particular the community based around Second Avenue in Yorkville – the area of Manhattan once nicknamed Little Hungary. Masodik Avenue (Second Avenue) is the title of his finest work – an epic, bittersweet novel about a refugee family putting down roots in the New World while mourning the loss of the old. First published in Canada in 1967, it found a new generation of readers when it was reissued by a major Budapest publisher in 2011.

In 2010 he was awarded the Hungarian Order of Merit.

Peter Halasz’s wife died in 1997. His is survived by a son and daughter

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/9967706/Peter-Halasz.html

Individual Menticide in Bulgaria: Mihail Shipkov, Part Two

Only in the contest of ideas can there be a final victory, which will yield us one world dedicated to peace with freedom. (Breakdown NCFE April 1950)

Part One of the Mihail (Michael) Shipkov story gives details of his arrest, trial, and conviction.

In this part, we will look at how the Shipkov story played out in the United States and its connection to Radio Free Europe.

In April 1950 broadcasting to Bulgaria and other countries behind the Iron Curtain over Radio Free Europe was yet to come. The National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE), almost as a harbinger of the future Crusade for Freedom written campaign, reprinted 100,000 copies of the Shipkov story in a 31-page pamphlet in the “public interest” with the long descriptive title Breakdown: how the Communist secret police are able to pry confessions of treason out of men and women who love their country, a story courageously laid bare for the first time in March, 1950. 

The first page contained this summary of the pamphlet:

 

Telling how the Communist secret police are able to pry confessions of treason out of men and women who love their country, a story courageously laid bare for the first time by Michael Shipkov.

In a April 25, 1950, cover letter to NCFE members, including future President Dwight D. Eisenhower and future CIA Director Allen Dulles, NCFE President DeWitt C. Poole wrote, “Our Committee III --the Committee on American Contacts -- has prepared ... pamphlets as part of our campaign to reach the American public ... I am sure you will agree that these pamphlets will prove useful in our struggle for victory in the contest of ideas.” 

The back cover of the pamphlet told the American public,

The Committee's members are convinced that the danger of the present crisis cannot be exaggerated. Freedom is at stake. At this very moment it is being decided what kind of world our grandchildren are going to live in.

The ultimate decision lies in the contest of ideas. Only a world relieved of totalitarian despotism and held together by the tested ideals of freedom and democracy can live in peace. In the struggle for this consummation the National Committee for Free Europe offers every single citizen the opportunity to throw in his weight.

        

Dulles

Allen Dulles sent a copy of the NCFE pamphlet to psychiatrist Dr. George Eaton Daniels, M.D., Columbia University, and asked him if he would review it in view of a possible “psychiatric appraisal of the effect of the procedures used by Iron Curtain countries to obtain confessions from their prisoners.” 

Dulles followed this up with a telephone conversation with Dr. Daniels, who turned down the appraisal possibility for professional reasons but supplied Dulles with names of other specialists who might be willing to help, including Dr. Iago Galdston. 

        

On April 27, 1950, Daniels sent a note to Dulles, with Galdston telephone number and address, with the comment: “As I mentioned, the Academy has a section on Neurology and Psychiatry from which I believe competent neurologists and psychiatrists could be selected for the study which you have in mind.” Dulles made wrote a note for the file on April 28, 1950:

                 

Dr. Daniels, after talking with Dr. Nolan D. C. Lewis, suggested that possibly the New York Academy of Medicine would be the best organ through which to work and that Dr. Galdston at the Academy would be the appropriate man to approach. The New York Academy could, of course, bring in any nation-wide organization that seemed desirable.

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was an ardent supporter of the NCFE and Crusade for Freedom. In 1950 she wrote about this pamphlet in her national syndicated column, My Day, which was published six days a week from 1935 to 1962. In her March 9, 1950, column she wrote:

I am sure many people were very much interested in the account given by Michael Shipkov, a Bulgarian, who explained how it was possible to make individuals confess treason in a Communist-dominated court, regardless of the truth. I am sorry to say that intimidation has been used in practically every country by some of its officials who felt it legitimate because they were trying to obtain some particular kind of testimony. I have heard with concern of methods used occasionally in some of our police courts. None of them, however, seems to have acquired quite the technique that brings about these mass confessions in the Soviet court-rooms. I was sorry this morning to read that Mr. Shipkov had been taken a prisoner and now has confessed to being a spy for the Americans!

In her June 2, 1950 column, she wrote:

A little booklet I have just read, published by The National Committee for Free Europe, Inc., called: "Breakdown"—"The story of Michael Shipkov in the hands of the secret police." This pamphlet will give you a picture of how, under authoritarian regimes, confessions are finally extorted. One shudders to think what horrors confront people where justice no longer exists; where they live under constant espionage and where freedom is something they may once have dreamed of but no longer know as a reality.

It seems impossible for people ever to free themselves under the circumstances described in this pamphlet. Neither is it conceivable for a nation to go forward and develop economically, spiritually or socially under this type of government. Living must become so utterly futile. Even under the lash of fear one must cease to work and produce because life is so completely valueless. No one could want to bring children into a world where people are no longer allowed any personal freedom and must face moral and mental domination.

On April 10, 1953, Allen Dulles, now CIA Director, made a speech entitled “Brain Warfare,” at the National Alumni Conference of Graduate Council of Princeton University. He referenced the Shipkov case: “The techniques employed in the case of Shipkov were somewhat crude but give the pattern of the later more refined methods.” 

Dulles then quoted from the Shipkov report:

Out of the jumbled memories, some impressions stand out vivid. One: they are not over interested in what you tell them. It would appear that the ultimate purpose of this treatment is to break you down completely, and deprive you and any will power or private thought or self-esteem, which they achieve remarkably quickly. And they seem to pursue a classic confession, well round off in the phraseology, explaining why you were induced by environment and education to enter the services of the enemies of Communism, how you placed your capacities in their services, what ultimate goad did your pursue – the overthrow of the people’s government through foreign intervention. And they appear to place importance on the parallel appearance of repentance and self-condemnation that come up with the breaking down of their prisoner.