The Operations Coordinating Board forwards CIA’s acceptance of Jackson Committee recommendations that the Free Europe Committee and American Committee for Liberation concentrate on radio broadcasting to the Soviet bloc as distinct from émigré support projects.

A CIA memorandum formulates guidelines for RL broadcasts to be conducted by a Coordinating Center of Soviet exiles

The Psychological Strategy Board issues a restrained revision of the Princeton Statement adopted at a May 1952 meeting at Princeton on psychological operations [available in the Hoover Archives] convened at the initiative of Free Europe Committee President C.D. Jackson.

Allen Dulles (who has joined CIA as Deputy Director for Plans) informs Frank Wisner that CIA has approved RFE’s capital budget for new transmitters.

Frank Wisner reviews RFE broadcasting after 5 months and notes a shift from use of exile leaders “of questionable current value” to “timely news items and commentary.” He foreshadows expansion of broadcast hours and shift of program production to West Germany.

State Department Policy Planning official Robert Joyce laments to Frank Wisner disarray among the national councils and suggests redoubled efforts to unify them. Check copy and redactions.

Office of Policy Coordination requests information – negative and positive – from the State Department on conditions in Eastern Europe that could be used in Radio Free Europe broadcasts.

George Kennan, State Department official Llewellyn E. Thompson, and Office of Policy Coordination director Frank Wisner agree that influential private citizens organizing the Free Europe Committee (FEC) require approval for the project from Secretary of State Dean Acheson and thereafter responsibility for dealing with East European émigré leaders will shift from State to the FEC.

The US National Security Council discusses the effect that Stalin’s death had on Soviet policy and on Communist Parties outside of the USSR, as well as the opportunity it provided the US to use Stalin’s death in a psychological strategy to influence the Soviets. The Council also discusses the possibility of negotiations for a settlement with the Soviets in Korea.

The two parties set forth their joint security strategy to manage perceived threats to state authority from the summer of 1978 through 1980. They agree to work with broadcast stations, including Radio Free Europe, to ensure they are not subversive stations and to use Czechoslovak students as agents against subversive radio stations. The parties highlight the importance of fighting Zionist and Trotskyist organizations, and make plans to cooperate to infiltrate organizations, including Jewish religious groups, that may have been infiltrated by these organizations. KGB and Czechoslovak security officials pledge to cooperate in monitoring and infiltrating international communist groups and reactionary church groups, including some associated with the Vatican, in order to detect and foil potential upcoming actions against the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and other socialist countries. Foreign religious groups active in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists, are mentioned as potentially anti-state. Both parties agree to cooperate in order to frustrate attempts by anti-socialist parties in Czechoslovak to connect with anti-state dissidents in the Soviet Union and share information on new forms of fighting actions of anti-socialist individuals. To combat ideological diversion, the parties decide to promote scientific and cultural exchanges between the two countries. The Soviet and Czechoslovak delegates decide to implement counter-intelligence and anti-ideological diversion measures at prominent international events such as the 1980 Summer (Moscow) and Winter (Lake Placid) Olympic Games and international film festivals, exhibitions and fairs to be held in the Soviet Union. Both parties agree to monitor extremist and terrorist groups, youth organizations in East Germany, France, England and the United States and Kurdish students studying in Europe.