USAGM Watch Commentary In his latest op-ed in The Hill, former Voice of America (VOA) acting associate director Ted Lipien, who also served briefly in 2020-2021 as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) president, quotes his former VOA Polish Service colleague, Jewish-American writer Henryk Grynberg: “the president of a leading American university cannot apologize for her lack of basic human values”…
1953 CIA Source: People Died in Czechoslovakia Because of Pro-Communist Propaganda from Voice of America
OPINION AND ANALYSIS Cold War Radio Museum By Ted Lipien Note: The article has been updated to include information that Heda Margolius Kovály had worked in the 1970s as a freelance reporter for the Voice of America Czechoslovak Service under a radio name Kaca Kralova. A declassified CIA report from 1953 featured a claim by a still unidentified Slovak source…
1984 Interview With Czeslaw Miłosz on Polish-Jewish Relations (in Polish – po polsku)
Link to audio. The interview (in Polish – po polsku) with Czesław Miłosz was recorded in Oxford on September 19, 1984 at a conference on Polish-Jewish relations. Miłosz talks about Poland’s multicultural traditions, Polish-Jewish relations in the 19th century, during the interwar period, and under communism. He discusses anti-Semitism, Polish-Jewish relations in his home city of Wilno (Vilnius – now…
A New Book About Pope John Paul II and Feminism Also Deals with Cold War Spying at the Vatican and Attempts to Influence Reporting by RFE/RL and VOA
I included here more information about “Wojtyla’s Women,” my book on Pope John Paul II and feminism. In the book, I discuss at some length the attempts of the Polish communist secret police and the KGB to recruit agents among Pope John Paul II’s friends, as well as their attempts to influence the reporting of journalists working at Radio Free…
Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church was cited in a news story I wrote about the shutting down of the Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia just days before the Russian troops attacked Georgia. The Senate staff of Barak Obama’s vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joe Biden, was said…