58. Memorandum From the President’s Military Aide (Clifton) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)1
SUBJECT
- Radio Free Europe
The President gave me a personal mission to accomplish with the Director of Radio Free Europe which I took up and resolved with Mr. John Richardson, the recently-appointed (May 1) Director.
In resolving this small problem, I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Richardson at length. He has also briefed General Taylor a bit on their activities. This much background might be helpful:
Radio Free Europe is doing a very fine job broadcasting into the satellite areas especially. For a while, their reduction in personnel and other problems caused considerable trouble, and the European operation was going downhill. However, Mr. Richardson reports that he now has Major General C. Rodney Smith, United States Army, Retired, [Page 157] as the Operational Chief in Munich and, at latest report, things are smoothed out, there are no troubles with the West German labor unions, and the morale is high—this latter in spite of the fact that since July, General Smith has had to reduce his force by over a hundred employees.
The critical problem is the budget. For the past five years, there has been a steady decline in the budget of RFE. The public fund-raising has contributed about the same amount each year—I believe around $2 million. And the rest is budgeted directly from the Bureau of the Budget through a Government agency. It is this part which has been reduced, consequently reducing the effectiveness of the RFE job.
The total—public fund-raising plus the Government contribution—should change direction upwards. For a couple of million dollars more, we could hold this staff together and really do a job. It’s the most effective counter-Soviet propaganda in Europe. But with increased labor costs and increased production costs, if the budget remained the same, we would have to diminish somewhat our activities. And when the budget declines, it hurts doubly.
[1 paragraph (11 lines) not declassified]
The kind of aggressive, pragmatic, political intellectual that RFE employs is ideally suited to plan and execute these counter-political and counter-propaganda activities. Most of them are not dreamers, but are sophisticated, experienced politicians who know how to come to grips with this problem. I believe they should be encouraged with a little more money.
Meanwhile, there is some dissension—as always in these activities—between the “outs” and the “ins”. When they have these governments-in-exile and these peoples in exile, they don’t always agree with the man who is hired by RFE, and is doing the job. This carping criticism is especially true on the Polish desk because very few Poles can agree on how we should approach the Polish problem.
This is not an important difficulty, but just an example. My feeling is that if John Richardson is given full support and a pretty free hand, he is the kind of director that can bring these warring factions closer together.
[1 paragraph (1 line) not declassified]
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, Box 306, Radio Free Europe. Secret. A notation on the memorandum in an unknown hand reads: “(Taken from Pres’ week-end reading book 11/12/61).”↩