C.D. Jackson by Stern John Allen;

Author:Stern, John Allen; [Stern, John Allen;]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780761857303
Publisher: UPA
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

V

While balloons seemed an unlikely choice of weapons with which to prosecute a war, they were the centerpiece of a covert-sabotage scheme called “Project Focus.” In the Byzantine world of “dirty tricks” departments, the CIA, NCFE, and RFE teamed up “in the early rough-and-tumble era of the Cold War,” according to Agency veterans Victor Marchetti and John Marks, and used balloons “to carry anti-communist literature into the denied areas behind the Iron Curtain.” Significantly, the pair claims, “these operations, although lacking in plausible deniability, normally a prerequisite in covert propaganda efforts, had scored high—judging from the numerous angry protests issued by the Soviet Union and its East European satellites.”70 The man most responsible for launching this balloon-invasion, and, according to leading Washington journalist Drew Pearson, America’s leading “balloonitic,” was none other than C.D. Jackson.

After Dwight Eisenhower had secured the Republican nomination for president in 1952, much talk emanated from his camp concerning the “captive” nations of Eastern Europe. Many in the GOP would make a campaign issue of liberating the satellite nations; and “rollback” would replace “containment” (former Russian Ambassador George F. Kennan’s long-term strategy to defend U.S. global interests) in America’s Cold War lexicon. George Kennan’s “X” article in Foreign Affairs in 1947 titled “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” had, in essence, mapped out a course of action for the US in response to the specter of Soviet expansion. His proposal split the American foreign policy establishment into two opposing wings: those that supported Kennan’s plan to meet Russian aggression symmetrically in the areas we considered our “spheres of influence;” and a more vocal group that advocated “rendering the Soviet Union helpless to hold their satellites in check.” Though the Dulles brothers rejected outright Kennan’s policy of “containment” (going so far, according to Washington “insiders,” as to help engineer his dismissal from the Policy Planning Staff in favor of hard-liner, Paul Nitze), Eisenhower, as both candidate and later President, was firmly committed to the proposition that the United States “should use all peaceful means” to achieve liberation for the enslaved peoples of East Europe.71

The balloon project, begun in August 1951, fit nicely into the Jackson template of a more cerebral Cold War offensive; later, his intriguing would become increasingly more truculent. These “messages from the sky,”72 as Abbott Washburn characterized the balloon literature that was dropped on the Eastern Bloc nations, “addressed specific policy issues behind the Iron Curtain.” It was important, he noted, to convey to these people, that the “U.S. was sympathetic to their grievances, and might help.” In addition, the balloons “provided information about their own country that they could not readily obtain.”73

The home base for “Project Focus” was West Germany (although some flights evidently also originated from Austria), where leaflets were dropped mainly over Czechoslovakia, Poland, and later, Hungary. The balloon blitz delighted CDJ, who reveled in “the helplessness of the authorities to do anything about it.” The initial foray into communist airspace involved “11,000 balloons carrying 13 million leaflets ‘to boost the morale of

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