Cold War Radio

[Story]

Stumbled upon this -

During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty broadcast uncensored news and commentary to people living in communist nations. As critical elements of the CIA’s early covert activities against communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Munich-based stations drew a large audience despite efforts to jam the broadcasts and ban citizens from listening to them. This history of the stations in the Cold War era reveals the perils their staff faced from the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania and other communist states. It recounts in detail the murder of writer Georgi Markov, the 1981 bombing of the stations by "Carlos the Jackal," infiltration by KGB agent Oleg Tumanov and other events. Appendices include security reports, letters between Carlos the Jackal and German terrorist Johannes Weinrich and other documents, many of which have never been published.

http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4138-9

 

[Steven180]

Nice tip Story, much appreciated on this much unrecognized aspect of the Cold War and cross border effect.

The book may be worth a good look.

M.

 

[Angus Forbes]

When I was a kid (1950's) I built several crystal radios with plug-in coils for the various shortwave bands. The stations were so powerful that I could hear a large number of broadcasts from a variety of European countries (I lived in Baltimore at the time) even with a relatively poor antenna. Some had stronger signals than the local AM broadcast stations. Jammers were a real nuisance -- very strong carriers modulated by something that sounded like a buzz saw. The programming from Radio Moscow, Radio whatever in Albania, and the like, was really wild, but the BBC was great in those days (and still is!).

 

[Haversack]

I became introduced to the joys of international shortwave radio broadcasts while stationed in Germany in the early '80s. The BBC was my primary listening both for news and pleasure. I was amused by Radio Moscow in that they broadcast in both American English and British English and their reporting would be different on the same news event. It was hard to miss hearing Radio Tirana out of Enver Hoxha's Albania. It always came in loud and clear. In its own way, it was an unbiased source: It was anti-US. It was anti-USSR. It was anti-PRC. It was anti-Yugoslavia. It was anti-Italy...

 

[Mark D]

Though not what it once was there is still a lot of shortwave to be had. Radio Havana is active and strong up and down the east coast; Chinese, Eastern European, etc...and lots of other odd ball broadcasts. As recently as last spring I picked up a numbers station [a station broadcasting sequences of alpha-numeric code historically used in international espionage].

I encourage anyone who doesn't have a shortwave radio to get one and check it. It's like taking a trip into another world at another time.