You're listening to the CyberWire Network, powered by N2K. Hello and welcome to SpyCast from the Secret Files of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

I'm Peter Ernest, the Executive Director of the Museum. I served for some 36 years in the

Central Intelligence Agency largely as what is called an operations officer or a case officer.

Every month will be bringing you interesting talks with visitors,

with authors, with others who have something to do with the world of intelligence

and espionage. Well, today our guest is Richard Cummings.

Richard was the Director of Security for almost 10 years of Radio Free Europe, RFE, which now has a new name which I'll let him describe.

And he has just produced a book brand new called Cold War Radio,

the dangerous history of American Broadcasting in Europe

1950 to 1989, obviously through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

During that period, the station was bombed.

There were terrorist threats, and many, many attempts to penetrate RFEs, many some successful, by intelligence services,

particularly the Soviet KGB and other services.

But let us start, Richard, if we could, for our listeners, could you briefly

describe what is RFE? First of all, most people in the United States might be aware of Radio for Europe, which is

RFE. They're not aware of Radio Liberty, which is R.L. in our terminology.

RFE Radio for Europe began in 1949, 1950

broadcasting to Eastern Europe.

Radio Liberty began broadcasting in 1953 to the Soviet Union and by

the time 1990, excuse me 1976 when the

when the two radio stations were publicly acknowledged as being private

corporations they decided to combine RFE and R.L. into a hybrid corporation called RFE slash

...