Richard Helms forwards to Allen Dulles a memorandum from the Psychological and Paramilitary Operations staff and the International Organizations Division taking issue with State Department recommendations to reorient and curtail RFE and RL broadcasts.

CIA official Laughlin Campbell recommends to Allen Dulles that he support the establishment of an interagency working group to include USIA officials (later named the Committee on Radio Broadcasting Policy, CRBP) to reappraise U.S. international broadcasting.

CIA official Thomas Braden assures the State Department that RFE broadcasts which took sides in Czechoslovak factory council elections, as envisaged in FEC Czechoslovak Guidance No. 13, have ended. (The Guidance and the cited FEC telegram are available in the Hoover Archives and the Blinken Open Society Archives as FEC teletype NYC 29, June 8, 1954.)

CIA official Cord Meyer reviews RFE and RL responses to program changes directed by the interagency Committee on Radio Broadcast Policy.

CIA official Fred Valtin conveys to FEC President William Durkee requested guidance from the State Department that RFE should not broadcast calls for active resistance to the Soviet occupiers even if from high-level Czechoslovak officials.

Frank Wisner, reflecting on the Hungarian Revolution, suggests that Soviet Communism is on the defensive and RFE broadcasts to Poland should discourage violence while supporting Party leader Gomulka’s efforts to gain more autonomy from the Soviet Union. IOD Chief Cord Meyer annotates the memorandum.

A report from KGB Chairman Andropov to the Central Committee of the CPSU assessing the status of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe in their “transition” period and measures that might be taken to weaken them. It alleges that RFE and RL are planning subversive actions against the USSR at the Munich Olympics. It credits the Soviet bloc intelligence services with increasing the problems of the Radios. The document indicates timely KGB knowledge of internal RL documents such as the March 15, 1971 revision of the Radio Liberty Policy Manual.

A Bulgarian Interior Ministry paper details coordinated actions against Western radio in the aftermath of the May 1977 Budapest meeting of Bloc security services. The paper identifies RFE, and notably several of its broadcasters who recently defected from Bulgaria, as a major threat. It accuses Western media of sensationalizing the murder of Georgi Markov (who was killed by the Zhivkov regime).

This document provides further details of joint KGB-Bulgarian measures to counter RFE and RL. It vaunts the effectiveness of Bulgarian regime counterpropaganda, claiming that it thwarted Western efforts to create internal strife in Bulgaria.

This note regarding the results of the visit of a group of Interior Ministry officials to the KGB in Moscow contains a proposal to develop a coordinated plan to discredit RFE and RL.