The propaganda offensive led the US government into the book publishing business. Under a variety of arrangements with American and foreign publishers, distributors, literary agents and authors, the CIA and the United States Information Agency (USIA) produced, subsidized or sponsored well over a thousand books by 1967 which were deemed to serve a propaganda need.14 Many of the books were sold in the United Stares as well as abroad. None bore any indication of US government involvement. Of some, said the USIA, We control the things from the very idea down to the final edited manuscript. 15

Some books were published, and at times written, only after the USIA or the CIA agreed to purchase a large number of copies. There is no way of determining what effect this financial incentive had upon a publisher or author concerning a books tone and direction. In some cases, Washington released classified information to an author to assist him or her in writing the book. In 1967, following revelations about CIA domestic activities, this practice purportedly came to an end in the US although it continued abroad. A Senate committee in 1976 stated that during the preceding few years, the CIA had been connected with the publication of some 250 books, mostly in foreign languages.16 Some of these were most likely later reprinted in the United States.

The actual identity of most of the books, however, is still classified. Among those which have been revealed are: The Dynamics of Soviet Society by Walt Rostow, The New Class by Milovan Djilas, Concise History of the Communist Party by Robert A. Burton, The Foreign Aid Programs of the Soviet Bloc and Communist China by Kurt Mullet, In Pursuit of World Order by Richard N. Gardner, Peking and Peoples Wars by MajorGeneral Sam Griffith, The Yenan Way by Eudocio Ravines, Life and Death in Soviet Russia by Valentin Gonzalez, The Anthill by Suzanne Labin, The Politics of Struggle: The Communist Front and Political Warfare by James D. Atkinson, From Colonialism to Communism by Hoang Van Chi, Why Vietnam? by Frank Trager, and Terror in Vietnam by Jay Mallin. In addition, the CIA financed and distributed throughout the world the animated cartoon film of George Orwells Animal Farm.17-

The most pervasive propaganda penetration of the socialist bloc was by means of the airwaves: Numerous transmitters, tremendous wattage, and often round-the-clock programming brought Radio Liberty and Radio Free Russia to the Soviet Union, Radio Free Europe and Radio in the American Sector to Eastern Europe, and the Voice of America to all parts of the world. With the exception of the last, the stations were ostensibly private organizations financed by gifts from American corporations, nickel-and-dime donations from the American public, and other private sources. In actuality, the CIA covertly funded almost all of the costs until 1971; exposure of the Agencys role in 1967 (although it had been widely assumed long before then) led to Congress eventually instituting open governmental financing of the stations.

The stations served the purpose of filling in some of the gaps and correcting the falsehoods of the Communist media, but could not escape presenting a picture of the world, both East and West, shot through with their own omissions and distortions. Their mission in life was to emphasize whatever could make the Communist regimes look bad. To many in the CIA, wrote Victor Marchetti, former senior official of the Agency, the primary value of the radios was to sow discontent in Eastern Europe and, in the process, to weaken the communist governments .18

Many of the Russians who worked for the various stations, which broadcast at length about freedom, democracy and other humanitarian concerns, were later identified by the US Justice Department as members of Hitlers notorious Einsatzgruppen, which rounded up and killed numerous jews in the Soviet Union. One of these worthies was Stanislaw Stankievich, under whose command a mass murder of Jews in Byelorussia

was carried out in which babies were buried alive with the dead, presumably to save ammunition. Stankievich wound up working for Radio Liberty. German war criminals as well were employed by the CIA in a variety of anti-Soviet operations.19

By every account, the sundry programs to collect strategic information about the Soviet Union, particularly via infiltration into the country and encountering Soviet nationals in the West, were a singular flop. The information reported was usually trivial, spotty, garbled, or out-of-date. Worse, it was often embellished, if not out-and-out fabricated. Many post-war emigres in Western Europe made their living in the information business. It was their most saleable commodity. From a real or fictitious meeting with a Soviet citizen they would prepare a report which was often just ordinary facts with a bit of political color added on. At times, as many as four versions of the report would be produced, differing in style and quantity of facts ; written by four different people, the reports would then be sold separately to US, British, French and West German intelligence agencies. The CIAs version contained everything in the other three versions, which were eventually transmitted to the Agency by the other countries without their source being revealed. Analysis of all the reports tended to bring the CIA to the conclusion that the NTS was giving them the fullest picture of all, and chat the information all tallied. NTS looked good, and the files grew thick.20

The CIAs Russian files in Washington, meanwhile, approached mountainous proportions with the data acquired from opening mail between the Soviet Union and the United States, a practice begun in the early 1950s and continued at least into the 1970s.21 (Said a Post Office counsel in 1979: If there was no national security mail cover program, the FBI might be inhibited in finding out if a nation was planning war against us. )22

Former CIA officer Harry Rositzke, who was closely involved with anti-Soviet operations after the war, later wrote that the primary task of the emigres infiltrated into the Soviet Union during the early years-and the same could probably be said of the spy-planes-was to provide early warning of a Soviet military offensive against the West, an invasion which, in the minds of cold-warriors in the American government, appeared perpetually imminent . This apprehension was reminiscent of the alarms sounded following the Russian Revolution (see Introduction to the Original Edition) and similarly flourished despite the fact of a Russia recently devastated by a major war and hardly in a position to undertake a military operation of any such magnitude. Nevertheless, wrote Rositzke, It was officially estimated that Soviet forces were capable of reaching the English Channel in a matter of weeks. ... It was an axiom in Washington that Stalin was plotting war. When would it come? He pointed out, however, that The mere existence of radio-equipped agents on Soviet terrain with no early warnings to report had some cautionary value in tempering the war scare among the military estimators at the height of the Cold War. 23

A secret report of the National Security Resources Board of January 1951 warned: As things are now going, by 1953 if not 1952, the Soviet aggressors will assume complete control of the world situation. 24

Rositzke, although a committed anti-Communist, recognized the unreality of such thinking. But, as he explained, his was a minority opinion in official Washington:

The facts available even at the time suggested the far greater likelihood that Moscows postwar strategy, including the conversion of Eastern Europe into a western buffer, was basically defensive. I argued this thesis with some of the CIA analysts working on Soviet estimates and with some Pentagon audiences, but it was not a popular view at the time. It is nonetheless a simple fact that no scenario was written then, nor has it been written since, to explain why the Russians would

want to conquer Western Europe by force or to bomb the United States. Neither action would have contributed in any tangible way to the Soviet national interest and would have hazarded the destruction of the Soviet state. This basic question was never raised, for the Cold War prism created in the minds of the diplomatic and military strategists a clear-cut world of black and white; there were no grays.25

Several years were to pass, Rositzke pointed out, before it became clear to Washington that there were no warnings, early or otherwise, to report. This, however, had no noticeable effect upon the United States military build-up or cold-war propaganda.

18. Italy 1950s to 1970s

Supporting the Cardinals orphans and techno-fascism

After the multifarious extravaganza staged by the United States in 1948 to exorcise the spectre of Communism that was haunting Italy, the CIA settled in place for the long haul with a less flamboyant but more insidious operation.

A White House memorandum, prepared after the 1953 election, reported that Neither the Moscow war stick nor the American economic carrot was being visibly brandished overthe voters in this election. 1 Covert funding was the name of the game. Victor Marchetti, former executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA, has revealed that in the 1950s the Agency spent some $20 to $30 million a year, or maybe more, to finance its programs in Italy. Expenditures in the 1960s, he added, came to about $10 million annually.2

The CIA itself has admitted that between 1948 and 1968, it paid a total of $65,150,000 to the Christian Democrats and other parties, to labor groups, and to a wide variety of other organizations in Italy.3 It also spent an undisclosed amount in support of magazines and book publishers and other means of news and opinion manipulation, such as planting news items in non-American media around the world which cast unfavorable light upon communism, then arranging for these stories to be reprinted in friendly Italian publications.4

It is not known when, if ever, the CIA ended its practice of funding anti-Communist groups in Italy. Internal Agency documents of 1972 reveal contributions of some $10 million to political patties, affiliated organizations, and 2t individual candidates in the parliamentary elections of that year.5 At least $6 million was passed to political leaders for the June 1976 elections.6 And in the 1980s, CIA Director William Casey arranged for Saudi Arabia to pay $2 million to prevent the Communists from achieving electoral gains in Italy.7

Moreover, the largest oil company in the United States, Exxon Corp., admitted that between 1963 and 1972 it had made political contributions to the Christian Democrats and several other Italian political parties totaling $46 million to $49 million. Mobil Oil Corp. also contributed to the Italian electoral process to the tune of an average $500,000 a year from 1970 through 1973. There is no report that these corporate payments derived from persuasion by the CIA or the State Department, but it