511.00/8–1751
Memorandum by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs (Sargeant) to the Under Secretary of State (Webb)
Subject: Information on Propaganda Balloon Projects
In your conversation with Mr. Antoine Gazda about balloons at 3:30 p.m. Monday, I suggest you take substantially the following line:
For several months the Department has been following with interest certain privately-sponsored plans to use balloons as vehicles for the delivery of propaganda. The Department felt that such projects had sufficient merit to warrant experimentation on a test basis, and consequently encouraged the private interests involved to proceed.
The first result of this experimentation was a series of launchings from the vicinity of Munich, which began a week ago. The balloons used in this project, according to the private source which helped carry it out, were of two types—a rubber balloon carrying a load of three and one half pounds or 2,200 leaflets; and a pillow type plastic balloon manufactured by General Mills. The latter type is especially designed to come to earth after a given period of [Page 1271] time, where it bounces along the ground exciting considerable curiosity.1
Although the project described was privately sponsored, the decision to implement it was made after consultation with the Department. It is too early to evaluate the results.
Mr. Abbot Washburn, Executive Director of the Crusade for Freedom in New York, is in a position to give further information about this type of project to manufacturers or other interested private groups. His address is Empire State Building, New York City. The Crusade is the fund raising organization of the Committee for Free Europe, which has taken … leadership in getting up the project. So far, as you know, most of the publicity has emphasized the participation of United States organizations. I think the international nature of the sponsorship should be stressed. The sponsors include the Inter-American Federation of Free Trade Unions which has a large Latin American membership; the General Federation of Women’s Clubs with a claimed membership of 5,500,000 plus another five and a half million in the United States; the AFL Trades and Labor Congress of Canada; the CIO Canadian Congress of Labor; and the International Federation of Free Journalists which claims a membership of one thousand newsmen most of whom are exiles from Soviet countries.
According to press reports, the initial balloon launching was attended by several European anti-Communist leaders including Boleslaw Wierzbinaski of Poland; Jorge Jonescu of the Rumanian Federation of Free Journalists; and Frau Lotte Stoehr of Germany.
. . . . . . .
- According to information in Department of State files, the balloon launchings under reference here, sponsored by the Committee for a Free Europe and sometimes referred to as the “Winds of Freedom” operation, began on August 13, and continued for some weeks. Over 15,000 balloons were launched, mostly over Czechoslovakia but some also over Poland. Regarding one of the launchings in the operation, see telegram 189 to Praha, Document 710. For a brief account of the operation in 1951, see Allan A. Michie, Voices Through the Iron Curtain: The Radio Free Europe Story (New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1963), pp. 136–138. The operation is also mentioned in Barrett, Truth Is Our Weapon, p. 96.↩