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Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service

The Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service was the United States government's radio monitoring and analysis service, created inside the Federal Communications Commission in 1941 and whose expertise was carried into the Open Source Center in 2005.

Also known as
Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, Foreign Broadcast Information Branch, Federal Broadcast Intelligence Service, FBIS, FBMS, FBIB
Dates
1941
Location
Washington, D.C.
Mentioned on
24 pages
Last edited

The Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS) was the United States government's service for monitoring, translating and analyzing foreign radio broadcasts. It began as the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service inside the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1941, passed to the War Department at the end of 1945, came under the Central Intelligence Group in 1946 and the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, and in November 2005 was named as the base of expertise for the Open Source Center.1

Creation in the Federal Communications Commission

The proposal for a government monitoring service reached the Defense Communications Board in January 1941. The Princeton Listening Center had been running since November 1939, and the State Department official Breckinridge Long, the Board's State Department representative, introduced the resolution calling on the FCC to establish a monitoring service.2 Helena Huntington Smith wrote in Collier's in January 1943 that the service's "godfather was Breckinridge Long of the State Department," who took the idea to FCC chairman James L. Fly. Stephen C. Mercado, who serves in the Directorate of Science and Technology, uses the same word for Long and quotes his letter of September 10, 1941 congratulating Fly.3 The FCC's annual report for fiscal 1941 states that the service was created in cooperation with the Defense Communications Board.4

On February 25, 1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt allotted $150,000 from his emergency fund, and the money was transferred the next day, so that the birth date of the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service (FBMS) was February 26, 1941.5 Daniel Bessner's dissertation on Hans Speier dates the origin to a late 1940 meeting between Roosevelt and Henry L. Stimson, then Secretary of War, at which Stimson suggested a unit to monitor foreign propaganda aimed at the United States.6 A 1969 CIA history of the service has the idea raised in an informal late 1940 discussion between the Secretary of State and Roosevelt.7 The FCC's Radio Intelligence Division had been running the National Defense Activities that recorded foreign broadcasts, and the FCC was "the only group staffed and equipped" for the monitoring work.8

The service began in an old garage at 316 F Street Northeast in Washington, and in April 1942 moved to 1424 K Street NW, where four floors were assigned to it.9

Robert D. Leigh, who took over as director on July 15, 1942, recommended renaming the service the Broadcast Intelligence Service, on the reasoning that the name was "less unwieldy and more accurately reflected the duties of the organization." The FCC insisted on keeping the word "foreign," and on July 26, 1942 the FBMS became the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service.10 An FCC order of July 28, 1942 is recorded for the same change.11 The name was raised again in 1945. In a memorandum for the FCC of March 2, 1945, Charles S. Hyneman proposed a change to end confusion with the FBI, which reported trouble from misdirected mail, and suggested International Broadcast Intelligence Service, Broadcast Intelligence Service, Foreign Broadcast Reporting Service and Broadcast Reporting Service, explaining that "intelligence" and "reporting" described its operations better than "monitoring." The service's newsletter, On the Beam, reported on April 9, 1945 that the FCC had approved the change to Foreign Broadcast Reporting Service. The next month the newsletter announced that the FCC had reversed itself, and the new name was never formally adopted.12

Princeton and the Rockefeller Foundation

The Princeton Listening Center was the most visible American monitoring effort before the government service existed. Harold N. Graves Jr., who had directed it, wrote in 1941 that "The Center was established in November 1939 by the School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University, to study international broadcasting in wartime."13 The center's finding aid states that the project was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, was conceived by the Princeton professor John B. Whitton, and was administered by Graves with a committee that included Hadley Cantril, William S. Carpenter, Harwood L. Childs, O. W. Riegel and the engineer Brunson S. McCutchen, with quarters in a house on Alexander Street. It records the center's transcripts from November 1939 through May 1941, "until the operations of the Center were taken over by the Federal Communications Commission," and says the center continued its work until June 1941.14 Mercado likewise gives the center's funding as coming from the Rockefeller Foundation and its absorption by the service as occurring in June.15 Bessner's dissertation states that the service "had absorbed the Rockefeller-funded Princeton Listening Center, whose director, Harold Graves, became the FBIS's Senior Administrative Officer."16 Graves was hired to help organize the service as "the young man who had been acting as director of the Princeton Listening Post since its inception." Staff who had worked at Princeton and joined the new service included Jerome S. Bruner, Bennett Ferrell Ellington, Arthur Mathieu and Arthur Cantor.17

The Rockefeller connection was also a public relations problem. A Baltimore Sun article described the service as a joint project of the FCC, Princeton and the Rockefeller Foundation, and as the "brain child" of Whitton. Graves wrote a memo for Lloyd Free on July 9, 1941 about his "embarrassment" at inaccuracies in the article, among them the "dragging in" of the Princeton Listening Post and the joint-project claim. On September 8, 1941 a syndicated column by Eleanor Ragsdale said the service was "inaugurated and pushed through by Chairman Fly of FCC."18

On July 29, 1942 Nelson Rockefeller, the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, wrote to FCC chairman James L. Fly that his office had "been able thus far to make good use of the material provided by teletype from the Kingsville Field Bureau," and asked for a larger volume of verbatim transcripts for hemispheric propaganda work.19

An administrative memorandum to FBIS officers dated January 22, 1943 recorded an exchange of correspondence with Rockefeller, the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, under which FBIS would have with his office the same relationship it had with OWI. Under the same memorandum, FBIS material reached non-government users only through one of two OWI officials, one of them Leo Rosten, deputy director in charge of enemy sources, and requests for Latin American material went to officers of the Coordinator's office.20

Directors and the Analysis Division

Free, editor of the Public Opinion Quarterly and a Princeton man, assumed office as director on June 16, 1941. He established contacts with the BBC very soon after taking office, with the idea of attaching a staff to the BBC, and in December 1941 he was still in London when the Pearl Harbor attack came.21 Harold Graves and Tom Grandin took over the Washington office on December 7, 1941.22 Free resigned in April 1942 to accept an Army commission, and he was military attaché at the United States Embassy in Switzerland for most of the war years.23

Leigh, for fourteen years president of Bennington College, took over on July 15, 1942, with Graves as acting director in the intervening months. He was paid $1,000 more than the $8,000 Free had received, and the appropriation bill had to be amended to legalize the salary.23

The Analysis Division was the service's research core. In November 1941 Goodwin Watson of Columbia University entered on duty to head the Analysis Section, which Free and Graves had recruited him to lead.24 Watson testified in April 1943 that his connection with the commission dated from November 15, 1941.25 The section became the Analysis Division in 1942.26 A records description of the service gives November 15, 1941 as the start of Watson's directorship of the division and November 15, 1943 as the day Theodore Newcomb succeeded him; Newcomb was second only to Watson in the division by February 1943.2728 In March 1942 the table of organization of the Analysis Division called for 37 analysts, assistants and trainees, with 17 of the positions filled, and the planned table was never reached.29 In September 1942 Watson and Nathan Leites went to London to set up an analysis operation working with the Office of War Information, and a two-man staff remained there through the war.30 The division's German Section began the weekly Central European Radio Analysis in January 1943, and the Radio Report on the Far East first appeared on August 24, 1942.31

On April 19, 1943 Robert D. Leigh announced an agreement under which the Bureau of Research and Analysis of the Overseas Operations Branch of the Office of War Information would use the Analysis Division exclusively for reporting and analyzing radio broadcasts, and the division would move to the Social Security Building. On May 13 Harold N. Graves Jr. said that the division would "function as an integral part of OWI" while continuing its other duties. In a letter to Leigh of June 18, 1943, Eugene Katz, identified as the head of the OWI division, wrote that relations with the Analysis Division were "so friendly" that nothing warranted a formal reappraisal of the agreement.32

Hans Speier and the Central European Section

Hans Speier reached the service through the research project he ran with Ernst Kris at the New School for Social Research. Speier sent the project's first report a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Free and Watson read his work "with the greatest of interest." In February 1942 Watson offered him a post as Senior Political Analyst and head of the Central European Section, and the Analysis Division was the "heart" of the service.33 Graves had written to Speier and Kris on December 23, 1941 about their reports and encouraged them to send more, and Free wrote to Speier on January 31, 1942.34 The Civil Service Commission informed Speier on May 26, 1942, two months after he entered the division, that he had been rated eligible for the post of Senior Political Analyst.35

Speier brought colleagues into the division, including Alexander L. George, Leites and the psychologist Henry Kellermann.36 Watson praised Speier's "extraordinarily good job of analysis," and wrote that he knew "nobody in the United States whom I would willingly trade for him."36 Watson left under pressure from opponents of the New Deal, after which Speier became acting chief analyst with thirty people under him.37 Bessner cites a letter from Newcomb to Colonel S. A. Greenwell of December 4, 1943 for Speier's replacing Watson as Acting Chief Analyst.38 Speier moved from the service to the Office of War Information on May 22, 1944, under Wallace Carroll.39

On October 29, 1943 Speier wrote a memorandum predicting much of Hitler's speech for the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Seventeen of twenty-five predictions were correct. Speier gave the memo to an OWI contact, Mark Abrams, who brought it to the attention of Representative Joseph Martin and Senator Alexander Wiley, and they used most of its content in a radio broadcast.40

The Dies Committee and the 1943 Rider

The first congressional attack came from Martin Dies, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee. On November 18, 1941, the day after Watson entered on duty, Dies wrote to James L. Fly expressing "deep concern" over the selection of a man who had written in favor of the Soviet Union, and naming thirteen organizations he called communist fronts.41 Fly replied that Watson belonged to only one of them, Consumers Union. The House passed an appropriation bill with a rider denying salary to the named employees, including Frederick L. Schuman and William E. Dodd Jr., who had been hired as an editor in December 1941. The Senate Appropriations Committee deleted the rider, and Watson testified before that committee on February 4, 1942.42

In a House speech on February 1, 1943, Dies listed 39 "communists" holding government posts, with Dodd, Watson and Schuman at the head of the list.43 On February 4, 1943 Joe Hendricks of Florida gave notice of an amendment to the House Post Office and Treasury appropriations bill forbidding payment of the thirty-nine named employees, among them Watson, Schuman and Dodd. On February 5 the House, in the Committee of the Whole, rejected it, 130 to 137 on a division and 146 to 153 on tellers, and then agreed, 163 to 111 on tellers, to a separate amendment naming only William Pickens.44 Dies accused the employees of "un-American beliefs."45 Mercado writes that Dies may have been provoked by FBIS reports that his statements were being praised in Nazi Germany, and that Vice President Henry A. Wallace had said Dies's statements "might as well come from Goebbels himself as far as their practical effect is concerned."46 House Resolution 105, adopted February 9, 1943, authorized the Committee on Appropriations, "acting through a special subcommittee," to examine charges of unfitness based on association with organizations whose aims were subversive. The subcommittee was Congressman John H. Kerr (chairman), Albert Gore, Clinton P. Anderson, D. Lane Powers and Frank B. Keefe, with Major Matt H. Allen as counsel, and Watson's testimony opens at its sitting of Friday, April 9, 1943.47 On March 31, 1943 Dies told the House that a subcommittee headed by Joe Starnes of Alabama, whom he called his "distinguished and able colleague," would make a report.48 On April 7 Kerr told the House that the committee had been asking for six weeks for the full evidence and had been able to get it for only "3 of the 38 men who are charged in this resolution." Dies replied, "You have evidence on 10."49 The subcommittee took testimony in executive session from the three men. Its report of April 21, 1943 found Watson and Dodd unfit for government employment and stated that it "does not find sufficient evidence to support a recommendation of unfitness" as to Schuman; Roop's history names the three men found guilty of "subversive activity" and "unfit" as Dodd, Watson and the Interior Department official Robert Morss Lovett. The subcommittee's hearings and H. Rept. No. 448 of May 14, 1943 were printed by the Government Printing Office.5051 The subcommittee was later accused of having prepared its final report before the men were called to testify.50

On May 17, 1943 Frank B. Keefe of Wisconsin read excerpts of Watson's testimony to the House. Keefe quoted Watson's 1934 article "The Great Choice, Reformation or Transformation," and said that, asked about it, Watson answered "I just do not believe in that any more. That was the effusion of an academic mind written in 1934," and "I disavow myself of that sort of philosophy."52 The printed hearings record Watson's answer on the article as that it was an academic idea that had appealed to him at the time and that "I do not now believe it to be true," and record Keefe's question whether he had ever published an article disavowing it, to which Watson answered "That is true" (that he had not).53 Kerr told the House on May 18 that the employees "have no property rights in their offices" and that "One Congress can take away their rights given them by another."54

The House approved the rider a second time. The Senate rejected it four times before accepting it, 48 to 32. The President signed the appropriation bill while denouncing the rider and declaring it unconstitutional.55 The rider became Section 304 of the Urgent Deficiency Appropriation Act of 1943, which halted pay for the three men after November 15, 1943 unless the President reappointed them with the advice and consent of the Senate.56

In United States v. Lovett, decided June 3, 1946, the Supreme Court held Section 304 unconstitutional. Justice Black wrote that "legislative trials and punishments were too dangerous to liberty to exist in the nation of free men they envisioned." He continued: "And so they proscribed bills of attainder. Section 304 is one."57 The judgment ran for Lovett, Watson and Dodd.

Other staff were drawn into the same attacks. Peter Rhodes, Audrey Menefee and Speier were attacked on the House floor. Fly wrote to J. Edgar Hoover on April 28, 1942 that one informant had described the New York school where Speier taught as a "refuge for exiled European communists," and a counter-report called it "a nest of pro-Nazi activities."58

The Cox Committee

The most serious confrontation with Congress came from Eugene Cox, a Georgia congressman who had been an enthusiastic supporter of the FCC. The FCC referred a case about an Atlanta radio station's representation to the Justice Department and urged prosecution of Cox, and Cox retaliated by seeking an investigation of the FCC. In early 1943 the House named him chairman of a special committee, and he appointed Eugene Garey, a New York lawyer, as chief investigator.59

The committee requisitioned the FBIS personnel files. Leigh reported, in his January 1945 article in Harper's Magazine, that the truck took away "three-fourths of FBIS personnel files," which had no duplicates, and held them for more than a year.60 Ten FBIS employees were subpoenaed at 8:00 a.m. after working all night, and Leigh called the questioning that followed "Star Chamber testimony."60

The committee found one actual irregularity at FBIS, a night clerical shift in which a sick employee drew pay while coworkers marked her present. It publicized that case and also charged that FBIS was "masquerading" as a war agency, that it used "intelligence" in its name to misrepresent its operations, and that it was no more than a "glorified news gathering agency."61 Counsel for the committee also charged that Leigh changed the name of the service to "dignify its activities."62

The Washington Post ran a series of sixteen editorials critical of the committee. An FCC member who usually opposed Fly's views and was sympathetic to Cox agreed to petition the Speaker to dismiss him as chairman, and Cox resigned after an emotional speech. Clarence F. Lea of California took over the committee, fired Garey, and promised the FCC a fair hearing.63

FBIS officials testified in May 1944. Leigh made the principal statement, Stewart Hensley described the wire service, Ellis G. Porter described the publications, and Harold N. Graves Jr., who had left FBIS and was a naval officer by then, described the Analysis Division. The Lea committee's final report of January 2, 1945 cleared FBIS of wrongdoing and stated that it was rendering an efficient and worthwhile service. Two members, Louis E. Miller of Missouri and Richard B. Wigglesworth of Massachusetts, filed a dissenting minority report expressing "grave doubt" as to the value of FBIS materials. In his own minority report Wigglesworth, a member of the Appropriations Committee, charged that Fly and Leigh had violated the law by soliciting aid in congressional appropriations for the FCC, and stated that it was "but fair to assume" that the select committee's inquiry was "largely responsible" for a two-million-dollar cut in the FCC's appropriation for fiscal 1945.64 The majority report, quoted in On the Beam on February 3, 1945, stated that "Obviously the United States could not conduct an intelligent program for counteracting enemy propaganda without a reasonably accurate knowledge of that propaganda."65

Budget Cuts and Leigh's Departure

The budget was the next weapon. A newsletter by Leigh on February 15, 1944 reported that the House Appropriations Committee would eliminate 30 percent of the service's budget from July onward, and noted that the committee had given no reason. Leigh wrote that "[t]he obvious conclusion is that the proposed cut relates to the opposition on the part of Representative Cox to FCC for reasons well known and [to] the Dodd-Watson case." Leigh resigned that summer.66 The House Appropriations Committee recommended a cut of 25 percent for each FCC department. The Senate Appropriations Committee, under Senator Kenneth McKellar, demanded proof of the service's value, and then recommended a cut of $500,000 that both houses approved.67

Leigh wrote in Harper's that no congressional statement gave the real reason for the cut, and that Fly was ruled out of order when he tried to state it to the Senate Appropriations Committee. He quoted a member of Congress, speaking privately: "Surely it was a punitive cut. Larry Fly has been defiant of Congress for a long time. He has been openly defiant. Now his chickens have come home to roost." The CIA's history of the service describes the cut as made to punish Fly and the FCC for defiance of Congress and for Fly's request that the Department of Justice prosecute Cox.68 Hyneman became director on July 27, 1944 and served until August 7, 1945, when Russell M. Shepherd became the fourth director.69

In the second half of 1944 the service abandoned most of its analytical work. A liaison study of April 1944 found that State, War, the Foreign Economic Administration and the Office of Strategic Services were reluctant to give up the analytical publications but would drop them and keep the Daily Report if they had to choose, and the Special Reports Section of six analysts in the OWI office was abolished on December 31, 1944. Only the Far East Division under Audrey Menefee kept analytical work. Certain quarters protested in November 1944; Hyneman answered that State should set up a Russian analysis team to use the service's materials and recommended that it obtain the retiring Soviet expert Charles Prince. On January 17, 1945 Geroid T. Robinson of the OSS wrote to Hyneman to express regret that the analytical work had been discontinued, and added that he hoped the Daily Report would carry more Soviet radio material.70 The Soviet Embassy in Washington had asked for copies of the Daily Report as early as November 11, 1942, with State Department approval, and in London the service received the daily Soviet communique directly from TASS.71

War Department Custody, 1945 to 1946

A draft executive order survives among the service's files, undated and bearing the name of Harry S. Truman, to transfer its functions to the State Department and to the Interim Research and Intelligence Service. The draft was apparently prepared by Shepherd and perhaps by State Department representatives, and it was never approved by the Secretary of State.72

On September 19, 1945 the House Appropriations Committee voted to rescind part of the National Defense Activities appropriation. On 26 September the FCC announced that FBIS would go out of existence within thirty days, and sent thirty-day notices to employees. On 1 December a conference committee reported a compromise rescinding half the remaining money, $465,000, which both houses approved on 3 December. FBIS operations came to a close on December 10, 1945.73

Mercado writes that the last Daily Report appeared on December 4, 1945, and that the FCC terminated the service the following day.74 The FCC's annual report for fiscal 1946 says FBIS was "discontinued as a Commission activity on December 30, 1945."75

The War Department then stepped in. On December 13, 1945 Shepherd told the FCC that the War Department had requested an executive order transferring FBIS to the Military Intelligence Division effective January 1, 1946. On 21 December Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson wrote to Paul Porter, chairman of the FCC, asking that FBIS personnel transfer on 31 December. Porter accepted on 27 December, and the service resumed on January 2, 1946 under War Department sponsorship. Shepherd asked that operations continue until the transfer, and only token operations followed, with little monitoring and no publications. No document authorizing continued operations has been found, although "permission may have been given orally."76

Central Intelligence Group and the Name

In January 1946 President Harry S. Truman created the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) by executive order. In February Hoyt Vandenberg, then Assistant Chief of Staff for G-2, gave Sidney W. Souers a memorandum proposing that the CIG choose the agency to direct the service, and a committee of five, drawn from the CIG and the remaining Intelligence Advisory Board members, was formed to study it.7778

The ad hoc committee recommended that FBIS remain with the War Department, but that its operating organization be liquidated and rebuilt, because its publications circulated too widely and its personnel had not been screened for security. The War Department refused, arguing that operating a monitoring service was properly a CIG function, and proposed that the State Department take it over. State declined, and a State memorandum signed by William L. Langer on May 27, 1946 accepted CIG sponsorship.79

The Director of Central Intelligence "assumed control" of FBIS on July 31, 1946, and personnel were transferred to the CIG on 3 November.80 NARA gives August 5, 1946 as the date of transfer to the CIG, and November 1, 1946 as the date its agency was abolished, with "Foreign Broadcast Information Service, CIG, November-December, 1946" as the successor.81

The name shifted during this period. A March 1946 CIG memorandum still uses the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service name.82 Shepherd's notice of October 31, 1946 announcing the personnel transfer of 3 November stated that the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service would immediately become the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, with publications and letterheads changed accordingly.83 On December 31, 1946 Edwin L. Sibert, in charge of the CIG Office of Operations, informed the staff that the name had been changed to the Foreign Broadcast Information Branch, and in a wire of January 2, 1947 designated Shepherd Chief, FBIB.84 By May and June 1947 CIG papers refer to the branch by that name. Colonel Lawrence K. White, acting chief of the branch, met with Lloyd Stratton of the Associated Press in May 1947.85 A 1970 CIA history places a notice of July 28, 1947 telling field bureaus that they would no longer bear the "confusing name" of the branch, but would retain the name Foreign Broadcast Information Service, and that offices outside Washington were to camouflage their connection with CIG.86 A footnote in Mercado's article dates the name Foreign Broadcast Information Service to 1967.87

Central Intelligence Agency, 1947 onward

The National Security Act of 1947 transformed the CIG into the CIA, and the successor is recorded as "Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Central Intelligence Agency, 1947-."81 The service came to the agency "almost mature, trained and disciplined, and ready to plunge immediately into the tasks outlined for it."88

Within the agency the service sat under the Assistant Director for Operations, Sibert. Shepherd proposed in a memorandum of November 5, 1946 that the service take up propaganda analysis, estimating 35 employees at $150,000 a year. The Assistant Director presented a scaled-down project to the PRC on January 6, 1947, approving Shepherd's program but making clear that FBIS would not take over "interpretative analysis." The reduced request was for a staff of twelve at $61,000 a year. White was announced as deputy chief of FBIS on January 9, 1947. A Special Reports Division was approved on February 13, 1947 on an experimental basis, began work on March 28, 1947 and issued its first Survey of Soviet Radio Broadcasts on April 15, 1947. The early years of analysis under the CIA are described as "stormy."89 Shepherd resigned on September 29, 1947, and Colonel White became chief.90

The service also had a working relationship with the BBC monitoring service. In June 1946 Shepherd spent three weeks in London with BBC officials, and met Malcolm Frost, then chief of the BBC Monitoring Service, who proposed that the American service begin paying its share of the monitoring cost, perhaps $250,000 a year, or supply the BBC with enough material from its own monitoring to balance the books.91 The BBC service then employed 385 persons at a cost of $650,000 a year. After further negotiation, Frost informed the service on October 15, 1947 that the BBC had obtained authority and funds to sign an agreement.92

After 1957 the service "had come of age as an established CIA unit." On March 23, 1961 the Directorate of Intelligence and the Assistant Director for Operations instructed FBIS to accept responsibility for propaganda indications, and that FBIS and the BBC together monitored broadcasts from 90 countries in 1961, a figure that rose to 115 by the spring of 1963.93

Daily Report and Records

The Daily Report, the service's translation series, first appeared on November 18, 1941.94 Ellis G. Porter, a former newspaper editor, joined the staff in January 1942 to direct its publication.95 A Daily Report of the Far Eastern Section dated January 3, 1946 is in Record Group 262, Entry 25, Box 1, and the first issue of the new Daily Report was published that month.96

The wartime records are held in Record Group 262, including the daily reports of foreign radio broadcasts for 1941 to 1945, daily reports of the Far Eastern, Latin American and European sections for 1941 to 1946, the weekly reviews, the Radio Reports on the Far East for 1942 to 1945, and program schedules for 1942 to 1947. The Foreign Broadcast Information Branch records for 1947 and 1948 are in Record Group 263, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency.97

Open Source Center, 2005

On November 8, 2005 John D. Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the CIA, Porter J. Goss, announced the establishment of the Open Source Center. The release said the center would be "[b]ased at the CIA" and would "build on the established expertise of the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which has provided the U.S. Government a broad range of highly valued products and services since 1941." Negroponte called the center "the centerpiece of my response to the WMD Commission's recommendations." The CIA Director administers the center on behalf of the DNI, and Douglas J. Naquin, a senior CIA manager, was named as its director.1

Relationships 18

Partner of
Employer of
  • Alexander L. George, Analyst in the Central European Section36
  • Harold N. Graves Jr., 1941–1943, Senior Administrative Officer; acting director in 194265
  • Goodwin Watson, 1941–1943, Head of the Analysis Section, later Analysis Division24
  • William E. Dodd Jr., 1941–1943, Editor, hired December 194142
  • Hans Speier, 1942–1944, Senior Political Analyst, head of the Central European Section; Principal Political Analyst from November 194215
  • Nathan Leites, from 1942, Analyst; sent to London with Watson in September 194230
Headed by
  • Lloyd Free, 1941–1942, Director21
  • Goodwin Watson, 1941–1943, chief of the Analysis Division (Analysis Section until 1942)15
  • Robert D. Leigh, 1942–1944, Director23
  • Theodore Newcomb, from 1943, Director of the Analysis Division, succeeding Watson, per the National Archives records description27
  • Charles S. Hyneman, 1944–1945, Director69
  • Russell M. Shepherd, 1945–1947, Director, fourth director of the service90
Investigated by
  • House Un-American Activities Committee, 1941–1943, Named Goodwin Watson, Frederick L. Schuman and William E. Dodd Jr. in 1941 and 1943 attacks41
  • Cox Committee, 1943–1945, Special House committee to investigate the Federal Communications Commission59
Owned by
  • Federal Communications Commission, 1941–1945, Parent agency of the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service and Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service4
  • Central Intelligence Group, 1946–1947, Sponsoring agency after the War Department80
  • Central Intelligence Agency, from 1947, Component of the agency, under the Assistant Director for Operations81

Sources

  1. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, "ODNI Announces Establishment of Open Source Center," News Release No. 6-05, November 8, 2005. https://irp.fas.org/news/2005/11/odni110805.html. ↩
  2. Joseph E. Roop, "Foreign Broadcast Information Service. History. Part I: 1941-1947" (Central Intelligence Agency, approved for release April 1969), pp. 2-6, on the Princeton Listening Center's launch in November 1939, the Defense Communications Board resolution, and the request to the President. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  3. Helena Huntington Smith, "It Pays to Listen," Collier's, January 30, 1943, pp. 43-44, which states "Its godfather was Breckinridge Long of the State Department, who foresaw that we might one day be cut off from accustomed sources of news in foreign countries. He took it up with Chairman Fly of the FCC." https://archive.org/details/colliers111janspri_201908. Stephen C. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis, 1941-1945," Studies in Intelligence 45, no. 5 (2001), on Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, "godfather" of FBIS, and his letter of September 10, 1941 to FCC chairman James L. Fly. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  4. Federal Communications Commission, Seventh Annual Report, fiscal year 1941, section on the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, "created February 26, 1941, by the Federal Communications Commission in cooperation with the Defense Communications Board." https://archive.org/details/fcc_DOC-308657A1. ↩
  5. Roop, Part I, p. 9, on the President's allotment of $150,000 on February 25, 1941, its transfer the next day, the "birth date" of the service on February 26, 1941. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  6. Daniel Morris Bessner, "The Night Watchman: Hans Speier and the Making of the American National Security State" (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 2013), p. 132, which describes "a late 1940 meeting between Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson and FDR" and the allocation of $150,000 on February 25, 1941. Stimson was Secretary of War from July 1940; Roop (note 7) gives the Secretary of State without naming him. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/19152946-8fbb-4b9b-9da0-faca0979e718. ↩
  7. Roop, Part I, pp. 5-6, quoting the account that "Toward the end of 1940 the Secretary of State, in an informal discussion with President Roosevelt, suggested that a government unit should be established to monitor and analyze propaganda beamed to the United States." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  8. Roop, Part I, p. 9, on the FCC's Radio Intelligence Division and its National Defense Activities, quoting the FCC as "the only group staffed and equipped" for the monitoring work. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  9. Roop, Part I, p. 9, on the service's beginnings "in an old garage at 316 F Street Northeast," and p. 49, "In April a move was made to 1424 K St., N.W., where four floors were assigned to FBMS." Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," photograph caption, "FBIS headquarters from 1942-1947 at 1424 K Street, NW, in Washington." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  10. Roop, Part I, pp. 49-50, on Leigh taking over "on 15 July 1942," his recommendation of the name Broadcast Intelligence Service, the phrase "less unwieldy and more accurately reflected the duties of the organization," the FCC's insistence on "foreign," and the change of July 26, 1942. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  11. National Archives and Records Administration, Guide to Federal Records, "Records of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service," Record Group 262, administrative history, which gives "FCC order, July 28, 1942." https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/262.html. The same guide's history line reads "Federal Broadcast Intelligence Service, 1942," which is an apparent typographical error. ↩
  12. Roop, Part I, p. 259, on Hyneman's memorandum for the FCC of March 2, 1945 proposing alternative names to avoid confusion with the FBI, the preference for Foreign Broadcast Reporting Service, the report in On the Beam of April 9, 1945, and, on p. 260, the reversal and the statement that the new name was "never formally adopted." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  13. Harold N. Graves Jr., War on the Short Wave (Foreign Policy Association, Headline Books No. 30, 1941), Acknowledgments. ↩
  14. Princeton University Library, "Princeton Listening Center Records, 1939-1941" (AC015), finding aid, Scope and Contents and Biographical / Historical notes. https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/AC015 (EAD at https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/AC015.xml). The finding aid states that the project "was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation," that the center "continued its work successfully until June, 1941," and that its published book was Propaganda by Short Wave, edited by Harwood L. Childs and John B. Whitton (Princeton University Press, 1942). ↩
  15. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on the Princeton Listening Center's launch in November 1939 with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, and on its absorption by FBIS in June. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  16. Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 133, on the absorption of the Princeton Listening Center and Graves's post as Senior Administrative Officer. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/19152946-8fbb-4b9b-9da0-faca0979e718. ↩
  17. Roop, Part I, p. 10, describing Graves as "the young man who had been acting as director of the Princeton Listening Post since its inception" and naming the Princeton staff; Roop, Part I, pp. 93-95, on the Baltimore Sun article, Graves's memo of July 9, 1941 about his "embarrassment," the "dragging in" of the Princeton Listening Post, the "brain child" description, and the Eleanor Ragsdale column of September 8, 1941. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  18. Roop, Part I, pp. 93-95. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  19. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," note 24: Nelson A. Rockefeller to James L. Fly, July 29, 1942, National Archives, RG 262, Entry 68, Box 22, quoted as "We have been able thus far to make good use of the material provided by teletype from the Kingsville Field Bureau of the Monitoring Service of your Commission." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  20. FBIS Administrative Memorandum No. 16, "To Officers of the FBIS," January 22, 1943. CIA reading room copy, CIA-RDP82-00177R000300410017-3. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp82-00177r000300410017-3 ↩
  21. Roop, Part I, p. 10, on Free's editorship of the Public Opinion Quarterly, and "Mr. Free assumed office as Director on 16 June 1941" (p. 11); p. 35, on Free's contacts with BBC officials "very soon after he assumed office with the idea of attaching a staff to BBC." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  22. Roop, Part I, pp. 36-37, quoting "With Lloyd Free still in London, Harold Graves and Tom Grandin took over at 316 F St. on 7 December 1941." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  23. Roop, Part I, pp. 48-50, on Free's resignation in April 1942 "to accept a commission in the Army," his service as military attache in the United States Embassy in Switzerland, the appointment of Leigh of Bennington College, the $1,000 difference from Free's $8,000 salary and the appropriation bill provision, and Graves as Acting Director until Leigh took over on July 15, 1942. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  24. Roop, Part I, p. 189, on Free and Graves's recruitment of Goodwin Watson of Columbia University, who "entered upon duty 17 November 1941." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  25. Hearings before the Special Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, 78th Cong., 1st Sess., acting under H. Res. 105 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1943), p. 2. https://archive.org/details/1943-watson-dodd-lovett ↩
  26. Roop, Part I, p. 50, on the Analysis Section becoming the Analysis Division. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  27. Central Intelligence Agency Reading Room, Records of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (National Archives records description, compiled by Walter W. Weinstein): "Goodwin Watson was Director of the Division from November 15, 1941, until November 15, 1943, when he was succeeded by Theodore Newcomb." https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp08t00376r000100250001-1 ↩
  28. Roop, Part I, p. 122, on Newcomb, "who was second only to Watson in the Analysis Division," in a note of February 15, 1943. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947 ↩
  29. Roop, Part I, p. 57, "In March 1942 the table of organization of the Analysis Division called for 37 analysts, assistants, and trainees, but with only 17 of the positions filled," and p. 58, "the planned table of organization was never reached." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  30. Roop, Part I, p. 46, that Watson and Leites "were sent to London in September 1942" to set up analysis, and that "a two-man analysis staff remained" through the war. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  31. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on the Central European Radio Analysis, begun January 1943 by the German Section, and the Radio Report on the Far East, first published August 24, 1942 (RG 262, Entry 34, Box 1). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  32. Roop, Part I, pp. 121-122 (Leigh's announcement of April 19, 1943; Graves on May 13, 1943; Eugene Katz's letter of June 18, 1943). https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947 ↩
  33. Bessner, "The Night Watchman," pp. 132-133, on Speier's report sent "a week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor," Free and Watson's reading of his work "with the greatest of interest," the February 1942 offer, and the Analysis Division as the "heart" of the service. ↩
  34. Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 132, note 51, citing Harold Graves to Hans Speier and Ernst Kris, December 23, 1941, and Lloyd Free to Hans Speier, January 31, 1942, RG 262, Entry 2, Box 66. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/19152946-8fbb-4b9b-9da0-faca0979e718. ↩
  35. Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 134, which places the letter of May 26, 1942 two months after Speier entered the Analysis Division and quotes it as stating that, "as a result of investigation," he had "been rated eligible on suitability for the position of Senior Political Analyst" (note 59: United States Civil Service Commission to Hans Speier, May 26, 1942, Speier Papers, Box 2, Folder 5). https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/19152946-8fbb-4b9b-9da0-faca0979e718. ↩
  36. Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 135, on Speier's colleagues George, Leites and Henry Kellermann and on Watson's praise, with the quoted phrases "extraordinarily good job of analysis" and "nobody in the United States whom I would willingly trade for him" (note 62). ↩
  37. Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 138 and p. 143 (note 90), on Watson leaving "under pressure from enemies of the New Deal" and Speier becoming acting chief analyst, overseeing thirty people. ↩
  38. Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 143 and note 90 (Theodore Newcomb to Col. S. A. Greenwell, December 4, 1943; Speier's Application for Federal Employment, Speier Papers, Box 2, Folder 5): "Speier replaced Watson as Acting Chief Analyst." ↩
  39. Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 145, on Speier's transfer on "May 22, 1944" from the Analysis Division to the Office of War Information, with Wallace Carroll as his immediate superior. ↩
  40. Bessner, "The Night Watchman," pp. 136-137, on the memorandum of October 29, 1943, the seventeen of twenty-five predictions, Mark Abrams, Representative Joseph Martin and Senator Alexander Wiley. ↩
  41. Roop, Part I, p. 189, on Dies's letter to Fly of November 18, 1941, which expressed "deep concern" and named thirteen organizations. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  42. Roop, Part I, pp. 190-191, on Fly's reply that Watson "belonged to only one of the 13 organizations Dies named," the Senate Appropriations Committee's deletion of the rider, Dodd's hiring as an editor in December 1941, and Watson's testimony of February 4, 1942. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. Roop and Mercado spell the analyst's surname "Schumann"; Bessner writes "Schuman." ↩
  43. Roop, Part I, pp. 191-192, on Dies's House speech of February 1, 1943, listing 39 "communists," with Dodd, Watson and Schumann at the head of the list. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  44. Congressional Record, vol. 89, pp. 623-624 (House, February 4, 1943, notice of the amendment naming thirty-nine employees), and pp. 645, 655 and 656 (House, February 5, 1943). Roop, Part I, pp. 191-192, states that a rider "immediately was attached" to the appropriation bill after Dies's speech. https://archive.org/details/sim_congressional-record-proceedings-and-debates_january-06-march-01-1943_89 ↩
  45. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on Congressman Dies accusing three FBIS employees, among dozens of civil servants, of "un-American beliefs." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  46. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," quoting Vice President Henry Wallace on Dies. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  47. Hearings (as above), pp. iii-v and 1 (the text of H. Res. 105 and the membership; first sitting April 9, 1943, "pursuant to adjournment on Wednesday, April 7, 1943"). https://archive.org/details/1943-watson-dodd-lovett ↩
  48. Congressional Record, vol. 89, pp. 2788-2789 (House, March 31, 1943). https://archive.org/details/sim_congressional-record-proceedings-and-debates_march-02-april-05-1943_89 ↩
  49. Congressional Record, 78th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 89, p. 3068 (House, April 7, 1943). https://archive.org/details/sim_congressional-record-proceedings-and-debates_april-06-may-13-1943_89 ↩
  50. Roop, Part I, pp. 192-193, on the subcommittee under Congressman Kerr, which started hearings on April 2, 1943 and reported on 21 April, the findings of "subversive activity" and "unfit," the three named men, and the statement that the subcommittee "was later accused of having its final report prepared before the men were called to testify." Roop states that the subcommittee was named by the Un-American Activities Committee. The printed hearings give the authority as House Resolution 105, adopted February 9, 1943, directed to the Committee on Appropriations (Hearings, pp. iii-v), and give the sitting at which Watson's testimony begins as April 9, 1943, against Roop's April 2. United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303 (1946), likewise describes a special subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, appointed under a House resolution, whose report is H. Rep. No. 448, 78th Cong., 1st Sess. The Monthly Catalog lists H. Rept. 448 (May 14, 1943, pursuant to H. Res. 105, "submitted by Mr. Kerr") on Watson, Dodd and Lovett; a February 1943 newspaper report names Kerr, a North Carolina Democrat, as chairman of the subcommittee. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/328/303. ↩
  51. Hearings (as above), Appendix D, H. Rept. No. 448, 78th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 327-334, including the finding that Schuman's case did not support a recommendation of unfitness and the findings on Watson and Dodd. ↩
  52. Congressional Record, vol. 89, pp. 4554-4555 (House, May 17, 1943). https://archive.org/details/sim_congressional-record-proceedings-and-debates_may-14-june-14-1943_89 ↩
  53. Hearings (as above), pp. 100-105 and 118-119. ↩
  54. Congressional Record, vol. 89, p. 4583 (House, May 18, 1943), the page cited in United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303 (1946). ↩
  55. Roop, Part I, p. 193, on the Senate's four rejections, its approval of the rider by 48 to 32, and the President's signature while denouncing the rider and declaring it unconstitutional. ↩
  56. Urgent Deficiency Appropriation Act of 1943, section 304, 57 Stat. 431, 450, as quoted in United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303 (1946). Roop, Part I, p. 193, note, gives the effective cutoff as November 21, 1943, where the statute as quoted gives 15 November. The enacted text also excepted accrued leave and salary and payment for jury or armed-forces service; the text proposed in the subcommittee's report (Hearings, p. 328) omitted the November 15 date and the reappointment clause. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/328/303. ↩
  57. United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303 (1946), argued May 3-6, 1946, decided June 3, 1946, opinion of Justice Black. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/328/303. Mercado's article gives the middle name as "Morse." ↩
  58. Roop, Part I, pp. 194-195, on the attacks on Rhodes, Menefee and Speier; Fly's letter to J. Edgar Hoover of April 28, 1942, and the two informant reports, one calling the New York school a "refuge for exiled European communists" and the other calling it "a nest of pro-Nazi activities." ↩
  59. Roop, Part I, p. 196, on Cox, the Atlanta station case, the FCC's referral to the Justice Department, the House's naming of Cox as chairman in early 1943, and the appointment of Eugene Garey as investigator. ↩
  60. Roop, Part I, p. 197, on the removal of "three-fourths of FBIS personnel files," the subpoena of ten employees at 8:00 a.m., and "Star Chamber testimony," citing Leigh's article "Politicians vs. Bureaucrats" (subtitle "The case of FCC Chairman Fly and Congressman Cox"), Harper's Magazine, January 1945. https://harpers.org/archive/1945/01/politicians-vs-bureaucrats. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  61. Roop, Part I, p. 198, on the single irregularity found at FBIS and the list of charges, including "masquerading," "intelligence" and "glorified news gathering agency." Mercado renders the last phrase as "glorified news agency." ↩
  62. Roop, Part I, p. 50, on the Cox counsel's charge that Leigh changed the name of the service to "dignify its activities," make it sound more like a war agency, and influence Congress to grant appropriations." ↩
  63. Roop, Part I, pp. 198-199, on the Washington Post's sixteen editorials, the FCC member who "agreed to petition the Speaker of the House to dismiss Cox as chairman," Cox's resignation after an emotional speech, Lea's succession, and Garey's dismissal. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. Louis E. Miller (R-Mo.) and Richard B. Wigglesworth (R-Mass.) are the minority members named in Broadcasting, January 8, 1945. Full names: Clarence Frederick Lea (D-Calif.), Louis Ebenezer Miller (R-Mo.), Richard Bowditch Wigglesworth (R-Mass.) and Kenneth Douglas McKellar (D-Tenn.), per the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress as reproduced in the unitedstates/congress-legislators dataset. ↩
  64. "Lea Probe Demands Sweeping Law Change," Broadcasting, January 8, 1945, on the Miller and Wigglesworth minority reports and Wigglesworth's statements. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1945/1945-01-08-BC.pdf. ↩
  65. Roop, Part I, pp. 200-201, on the May 1944 testimony of Leigh, Hensley, Porter and Graves; the Lea report of January 2, 1945 ("an efficient and worthwhile service"); the Miller and Wigglesworth minority report ("grave doubt"); and the majority passage quoted in On the Beam of February 3, 1945, in the note on p. 201. The hearings are Hearings of the Special House Committee Investigating the FCC (GPO, 1944), three volumes, with FBIS testimony beginning in Volume III, page 3439. Roop, Part I, p. 189, records Graves's resignation by the end of 1943. ↩
  66. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on Leigh's newsletter of February 15, 1944: "The obvious conclusion is that the proposed cut relates to the opposition on the part of Representative Cox to FCC," the 30 percent figure, and Leigh's resignation "that summer." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  67. Roop, Part I, pp. 204-206, on the House Appropriations Committee's recommended cut of 25 percent for each FCC department, Senator McKellar's demand for proof, and the Senate Appropriations Committee's recommended cut of $500,000 that both houses approved. Mercado's figure of 30 percent is given at note 48. ↩
  68. Roop, Part I, pp. 206-207, on the absence of any stated congressional reason for the cut, Fly's being ruled out of order, the statement that "it was a punitive cut, made to punish Fly and FCC for defiance of Congress and for Fly's effrontery in asking the Department of Justice to prosecute Eugene Cox, a member of Congress," and, in the note on p. 207, Leigh's quotation of a member of Congress speaking privately, from Leigh's Harper's Magazine article, January 1945. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  69. Roop, Part I, pp. 241-244, "Charles S. Hyneman, who succeeded Leigh as FBIS director on 27 July 1944," and p. 260, "from 27 July 1944 to 7 August 1945," and Shepherd's appointment as the fourth FBIS Director. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  70. Roop, Part I, pp. 256-257 (note on the liaison study of April 29, 1944; abolition of the Special Reports Section on December 31, 1944), p. 259 (Far East Division retained "the only analytical work done in FBIS"), and pp. 267-268 (the protest of November 1944, Hyneman's response, and Robinson's letter of January 17, 1945). https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  71. Roop, Part I, p. 268, on the Soviet Embassy's request of November 11, 1942 and the TASS arrangement in London in 1943. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  72. Roop, Part I, p. 275, note, on the undated executive order with the name of President Truman, transferring FBIS functions to the Interim Research and Intelligence Service, "prepared by Shepherd and perhaps some representatives from State," and "never approved by the Secretary of State." Job 54-27, Box 15, CIA Records Center. ↩
  73. Roop, Part I, pp. 274-277, on the House Appropriations Committee's action of September 19, 1945, the FCC's news release of 26 September, the conference compromise of 1 December ($465,000) approved on 3 December, and the closing of operations on December 10, 1945. ↩
  74. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on the last Daily Report "on 4 December" and the FCC's termination "the following day." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  75. Federal Communications Commission, Twelfth Annual Report, fiscal year ended June 30, 1946, which states that FBIS "was discontinued as a Commission activity on December 30, 1945." https://archive.org/details/fcc_DOC-308665A1. ↩
  76. Roop, Part I, pp. 278-280, on Shepherd's letter of December 13, 1945 to the FCC, the token operations that followed, Patterson's letter of 21 December, Porter's reply of 27 December, the resumption on January 2, 1946 under War Department sponsorship, and the note on p. 279 that "No documents authorizing continued operations have been found, but permission may have been given orally." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  77. Roop, Part I, pp. 299-300, on the creation of the CIG by executive order in January 1946, the Vandenberg memorandum to Souers in February 1946, and the five-member committee. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  78. Central Intelligence Group, "Survey of the Function of Monitoring Press and Propaganda Broadcasts of Foreign Powers," C.I.G. 1, memorandum by the Director of Central Intelligence, February 25, 1946, which states that FBIS functions were "taken over by the War Department on an interim basis on 30 December 1945." https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400110003-4. Ad hoc committee report, March 18, 1946: https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400110004-3. ↩
  79. Roop, Part I, pp. 301-303, on the ad hoc committee's recommendations (March 18, 1946), the War Department's refusal, the State Department's reply, C.I.G. 1/1 (April 26, 1946), C.I.G. 1/2 (May 8, 1946, signed by James S. Lay), and the State memorandum signed by William L. Langer on May 27, 1946, enclosed with C.I.G. 1/3 (June 4, 1946). ↩
  80. Roop, Part I, pp. 303-304, on the notice, signed for the Director of Central Intelligence by Col. John Dabney, that the Director had "assumed control" of FBIS on July 31, 1946, and on the personnel transfer to CIG on November 3, 1946, announced on 31 October. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  81. National Archives and Records Administration, Guide to Federal Records, RG 262, administrative history: transfer to the Central Intelligence Group, "August 5, 1946"; "Abolished: November 1, 1946"; successors "Foreign Broadcast Information Service, CIG, November-December, 1946," "Foreign Broadcast Information Branch, CIG, January-September 1947," and "Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Central Intelligence Agency, 1947-." https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/262.html. ↩
  82. CIG, "Background on Development of Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service," memorandum for the Chief, Information Branch, March 1946. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400110001-6. ↩
  83. Roop, Part I, pp. 303-304, on the notice of October 31, 1946 that "the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service would immediately become the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), with all publications and letterheads changed accordingly." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  84. Roop, Part I, p. 305 and note, on Sibert's statement of December 31, 1946 "informing that the name had been changed to the Foreign Broadcast Information Branch (FBIB)" and his wire of January 2, 1947 designating Russell Shepherd Chief, FBIB. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  85. CIG, "'A' and 'X' Wire Services Furnished by Foreign Broadcast Information Branch," memorandum, June 10, 1947. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400110015-1. Also memorandum on the May 6, 1947 interview of Colonel L. K. White, Acting Chief, FBIB, with Lloyd Stratton of the Associated Press. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400110022-3. ↩
  86. Roop, Part II (CIA Directorate of Intelligence, August 1970), p. 102, on the notice that field bureaus would no longer bear "the confusing name of Foreign Broadcast Information Branch (FBIB)," and on the camouflage of their connection with CIG. The notice is dated July 28, 1947. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690. ↩
  87. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," note 4: "The initial monitoring service was renamed the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service in 1942 and evolved into the Foreign Broadcast Information Service in 1967." Roop, Part I, pp. 303-304 (the notice of October 31, 1946) and the 1947 CIG memoranda already use the later name. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  88. Roop, Part I, p. 2, "FBIS took form during those six years before its adoption by the Central Intelligence Agency, and came to CIA almost mature, trained and disciplined, and ready to plunge immediately into the tasks outlined for it." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  89. Roop, Part II, pp. 151-152, on Shepherd's memorandum of November 5, 1946, the Assistant Director for Operations' presentation to the PRC on January 6, 1947, the 35-employee and $150,000 proposal, the reduced request of twelve staff at $61,000, the "stormy" early years, and the Special Reports Division (approved February 13, 1947, begun March 28, 1947, first Survey of Soviet Radio Broadcasts April 15, 1947); p. 2, on the announcement of Col. Lawrence K. White as Deputy Chief on January 9, 1947. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690. ↩
  90. Roop, Part II, p. 56, "Shepherd resigned from FBIS on 29 September 1947," with Colonel White the new FBIS Chief. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690. Appointment of the fourth director: Roop, Part I, p. 260. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. ↩
  91. Roop, Part II, p. 51, on Shepherd's visit to London from June 24, 1946, his meeting with "Malcolm Frost, Chief of the BBC Monitoring Service," the $250,000 figure, and the BBC Monitoring Service's 385 employees and $650,000 cost. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690. ↩
  92. Roop, Part II, pp. 54-56, on the Shepherd-Frost negotiations and the notice of October 15, 1947. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690. ↩
  93. Joseph E. Roop, "Foreign Broadcast Information Service History, Part III: 1957-1967" (CIA Directorate of Intelligence, May 1972), p. 2, "after 1957 FBIS had come of age as an established CIA unit"; p. 19, on the March 23, 1961 instruction to accept responsibility for propaganda indications; and pp. 4-5, "FBIS and the BBC were monitoring broadcasts from 90 countries in 1961. By the spring of 1963 this number had increased to 115." https://archive.org/details/CIADirectorateOfIntelligenceHistoricalSeriesForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart319571967. ↩
  94. Roop, Part I, p. 25, on the mailing list for the Daily Report issued on November 18, 1941; Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," states that the service "published its first Daily Report of translations on 18 November 1941." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  95. Roop, Part I, p. 50, that Ellis G. Porter, "former editor of newspapers in Baltimore and Philadelphia," joined the staff in January 1942 "to direct publication of the Daily Report." ↩
  96. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," note 39: "FBIS, Daily Report, Foreign Radio Broadcasts, Far Eastern Section, 3 January 1946, NARA, RG 262, Entry 25, Box 1," and the text that the first issue of the new Daily Report was published in January 1946. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/. ↩
  97. NARA, Guide to Federal Records, RG 262: "Daily reports of foreign radio broadcasts, 1941-45"; "Daily reports of the Far Eastern, Latin American, and European Sections, 1941-46"; "Weekly reviews of official foreign broadcasts, 1941-44"; "Radio reports on the Far East, 1942-45"; "Program schedules of foreign broadcasts, 1942-47"; and "Related Records: Records of the Foreign Broadcast Information Branch, 1947-48, in RG 263." https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/262.html. ↩

Connected to by shared pages

10 shared · Organizationvia Research Project on Totalitarian Communication, Hans Simons, Institute of World Affairs
New School for Social Research
7 shared · Personvia Hans Simons, CIAA, Office of War Information
Goodwin Watson
8 shared · Personvia Research Project on Totalitarian Communication, Institute of World Affairs, Office of War Information
Hans Speier
9 shared · Organizationvia Research Project on Totalitarian Communication, Hans Simons, Institute of World Affairs
Rockefeller Foundation
6 shared · Programvia Research Project on Totalitarian Communication, Institute of World Affairs, Office of War Information
Research Project on Totalitarian Communication
6 shared · Organizationvia Office of War Information, Goodwin Watson, Office of Strategic Services
Office of War Information
6 shared · Personvia Research Project on Totalitarian Communication, Institute of World Affairs, Rand Corporation
Ernst Kris
8 shared · Personvia Institute of World Affairs, CIAA, Office of War Information
Nelson Rockefeller

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    An interactive diagram of Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service's connections, drawn on a canvas and explored with a pointer. The same connections are listed as links in the Connected and Mentioned-in sections below.

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    How to read the graph
    Colour shows the entry type or cluster
    • People
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    Node size

    Larger = more mentions across the vault.

    Connections

    A documented relationship (employed by, member of…). Hover it for dates. Entry pages only.

    A link from one entry to another.

    A name mentioned in an entry without a direct link. Toggle these with “Inferred”.

    Highlights

    Gold rings mark entries mentioned across several clusters.

    Orange rings mark your selection.

    Tags

    OrganizationFBISForeignBroadcastMonitoringPropagandaAnalysisPsychologicalWarfareFCCCIAColdWarOpenSourceIntelligenceCongressDiesCommitteeCoxCommitteeNewSchoolRockefellerFoundation