Reluctant Chieftains

Abstract

Chapter 6 examines the transformation of CIA propaganda operations involving Amcomlib and Russian exiles. In the mid-1950s, after negotiations to create an exile united front had fallen apart, the American Committee stepped in as a sponsor of the anti-communist operations that were supposed to come under the émigrés’ leadership, the most important of which was the Munich-based Radio Liberation that broadcast to the USSR. The chapter corrects scholarship that presents Amcomlib’s assertion of control as a natural consequence of the dysfunctional politics of the exiles. For several years after the united front dissipated, Amcomlib remained committed to its original position that its radio operation could only be effective if it was sponsored by an émigré body, and even resisted pressure from Washington to shift its strategy. Instead, Amcomlib’s decisive turn away from exile anti-communism occurred later in the decade as part of a wider delegitimizing of US policies of liberation and rollback toward the Soviet bloc. The extended confusion surrounding the course of Amcomlib, the chapter argues, illustrated the unintended consequence of CIA strategies that vested power in non-state “public-private committees.”