FULTON LEWIS, JR., AT 7:00PM OVER WOL (WASHINGTON) AND THE MBC NETWORK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74-00297R000900080003-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 28, 2013
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: November 11, 1958
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified and Approved For Release @ 50-Yr 2013/10/28: CIA-RDP74-00297R000900080003-5
RADIO REPORTS, INC.' Nov 11 1958/ 412?"0'.? ee,
'V _2
Fulton Lewis Jr* at 7:00 P.M. over WOL (Washington) and the
MBC Network:
Mr. Lewis discussed economic aid to Poland, and the following was
heard, in part:
"What becomes of the two years of propaganda broadcasting by
RADIO FREE EUROPE, which has been holding Poland up as a model for
the peoples of other countries to follow in weaning themselves away
from Moscow Communism in the direction of freedom? All that is
now just a lot .of wasted words unless the State Department is going
to try to pretend that Gomolka didet mean what he said in this
statement at all today, and that in spite of this, Poland is still
different.
"Incidentally, speaking of Radio Free Europe, our old friends,
the CRUSADE FOR FREEDOM, which raises the funds to fiance Radio
Free Europe, just finished putting on another junket to Europe for
selected leaders of puglic opinion, as they call them, the junket?
ers having been flown to Munich with a side trip to Berlin, and
stops in Paris and Lisbon, Portugal, on the way home, in what they
call an inspection tour. Actually, its a ten day free trip which
the Crusade for Freedom says is not paid for out of Crusade funds,
although the trip a year ago, which was handled by Pan American
Airways, was paid for by a check on the Crusade for Freedom in the
0 amount of $28,055. As far as I can see, this is just flat mis?
representation. This time the trip was handled by Dutch KLM.
"When I was in Munich recently, I went to Radio Free Europels
headquarters there and was given the spiel that is fed to visitors
on these junkets, and it is probably the most juvenile performance
I have ever witnessed* And this is what happened to these 60
individuals, men and women, who went on this inspection tour.
There is an original briefing in a special briefing room, complete
with a lot of Madison Avenue visual charts and maps and what?not,
and a scale model of a section of the Iron Curtain, with row after
row of barbed wires, which they say is charged in places with as
much as 10,000 volts of electricity.
"After this treatment and an explanation of what Radio is and
where the Radio Free Europe towers are located, and the standard
cliches about the money that Russia spends every year jamming its
broadcasts, all this being standard stuff, which I have exposed
repeatedly over this microphone as being totally phony, but they
just go on with it all the same.
?
"1 have some newspaper clippings here from various parts of
the country of interviews with people who went along on this par?
ticular junket after they got back, which provides some idea of
just how irresponsible this whole thing is, and just how pathetically
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these junketeers get brain?washed. Here is one from the Milwaukee
Sentinel, interviewing a man named Arthur S. Ehrmann, E?H?R?M?A?N?N,
the editor of the Eagle which is the national magazine of the Fraternal
Order of the Eagles, Ilm sure the gentlemen is very sincere, his
heart is in the right place; his organization is listed as one of
the sponsors of the Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Europe, so he
went on the junket. But if he is correctly quoted, he got one of
the greatest brain-washings any man ever had during the course
of this trip*
"I quote from his article, tEhrmann said Radio Free Europe
has 3,000 employees of various nationalities in Europe alone. A
key to the job they are doing lies in the fact that monitoring
stations pick up thousands of blasts from the Reds against the
station almost daily,,t
"Just what any such operation could possibly do with 3,000
employees in Europe alone is considerable of a mystery, and the
fact is that the New York headquarters of Radio Free Europe states
officially that thdr total payroll in Munich, Portugal, New York and
everywhere else is approximately 2,000, which I can tell you
from personal observation as a professional in the business of
radio and a metropolitan newspaper editor as far back as 35 years
is a grotesque, ridiculous figure.
"The Munich operation is about the equivalent of a small town
newspaper, perhaps the Washington bureau of some leading nationally
known newspaper such as the Chicago Tribune. It subscribes to the
various press associations, has a monitoring operation which
listens in and records the news programs of various stations behind
the Iron Curtain, of which there are only a few. It has a so?called
morgue, like any newspaper would, a reference library with a card
system for checking out names of people involved in the news. The
whole thing could be run with 200 people instead of 3,000 and it
would still be two to one overstaffed.
"But Mr. Ehrmann was very much impressed, as most anybody
would be on a superficial sightseeing tour through a radio station
operation, particularly if he hadet seen one before. There are
tape machines and people transcribing some of the material that
has been taken off the air. Therets a total force of 28 people,
including stenographers, various kinds of clerical workers and so
forth. The make up the newsroom, a staff of 28 all told in the
newsroom. Itts a small newsroom; if I remember correctly, they
said that eight of the 28--they said that eight employees are
actual editors and writers. That then is the heart of the Radio
Free Europe operation, but according to the information they fed
Me. Ehrmann, it takes 3,000 employees in Europe alone to support
those eight writers.
"Another person who made the trip was Carl Schimmel, who was
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interviewed in the Lincoln, Nebraska State Journal. He says that
the number of employees in Munich alone is 2,000,. He too was mu%
impressed, which is fortunate, because he is Nebraska head of the
Crusade for Freedom."
Declassified and Approved For Release @ 50-Yr 2013/10/28: CIA-RDP74-00297R000900080003-5