ABSTRACT
The history of Radio Free Europe (and, by extension, Radio Liberty) as an intelligence-gathering service is bound in the needs and goals of the U.S. Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency at the beginning of the Cold War. While on-face Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) operated as privately funded mouthpieces drawing stark contrasts between the communist and capitalist worlds, both “Radios” also fulfilled an intelligence agenda by monitoring, transcribing, and archiving information and broadcasts from behind the Iron Curtain. The Radios also pioneered the use of audience research, taken from Soviet and Eastern European nationals traveling in Western Europe to gain a sense of the impact of the services. To understand the complexity behind RFE/RL, one must trace the post-World War II and early Cold War global situation as it developed into long-standing United States–Soviet competition. Finaly, this entry highlights several key events and watershed moments that necessitated a reconceptualization of RFE/RL from an intelligence standpoint.
