U.S. Government Propaganda Photo (1943) By Ted Lipien U.S. government propaganda pictures taken in 1943 by the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) photographer in Iran showed Polish children and women several months after they had come out of Soviet Russia in a mass exodus of former Gulag prisoners and their families. The OWI photographs were carefully staged and their…
U.S. Government Propaganda Photo By Ted Lipien Almost no one knows today that one of the targets of misleading Soviet and American propaganda during World War II were Polish refugees fleeing from Russia. Before they were refugees, they were Stalin’s prisoners. The Red Army and the NKVD Soviet secret police occupied their cities, towns and villages in pre-war eastern Poland…
U.S. Government Propaganda Photo (1943) By Ted Lipien Support Silenced Refugees The extent of the damage the initial propaganda from the Roosevelt administration had on the handling of the Polish World War II refugees story is not always easy to document, but some of the false information has kept reappearing in new forms for many years. After the arrival of…
U.S. Government Propaganda Photo By Ted Lipien Time Magazine Story In addition to misleading foreign audiences through Voice of America (VOA) shortwave radio broadcasts and domestic “news” outreach by the wartime Office of War Information (OWI), U.S. government propagandists had a definite impact on independent U.S. media. A short Time magazine entry on November 15, 1943 described a group of…
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…
Cold War Radio Museum Jan Ciechanowski, Polish Ambassador in Washington during World War II, helped to expose Soviet propaganda and U.S. government propagandists who in domestic media and in “Voice of America” shortwave radio broadcasts for foreign audiences spread disinformation originating in Soviet Russia. Photo: Jan Ciechanowski, Polish Minister, 11/30/25, LC-DIG-npcc-15231 (digital file from original), Library of Congress Prints…
This ad for Radio Free Europe was placed in American magazines in 1969 toward the end of the CIA’s involvement with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Such advertising by Radio Free Europe in American media would also soon end. This particular ad, as opposed to previous Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Europe Fund ads,…
Cold War Radio Museum Updated: January 2024 A State Secret Polish children from World War II Santa Rosa refugee camp, Guanajuato, Mexico. Source: Embajada de Polonia en México, Wikipedia. The date and photographer are unknown. CC BY 3.0. How the Roosevelt Administration Shipped Polish Refugee Orphans to Mexico In Locked Trains and Lied About It to Protect Stalin The Untold…
Cold War Radio Museum Former Polish President Lech Wałęsa said last year that in 1987 the then Vice President George H.W. Bush showed “he was a friend of Poland” and convinced him that Poland can get rid of communism. Former Polish Solidarity leader made that remark in reference to George H.W. Bush’s visit to Poland in 1987 at the…
Cold War Radio Museum Voice of America Then and Now Historically, partisanship at the Voice of America has been most often associated with Left-wing bias of some of its officials and central English newsroom reporters. By Ted Lipien After leaving the White House in 1961, former President Dwight D Eisenhower condemned a biased Voice of America (VOA) reporter who…