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The CIA attempted to recruit Winston Churchill to deliver radio broadcasts that would turn listeners against Communism, new documents have revealed. American intelligence officers are said to have drawn up a list of 'credible messengers' during the height of the Cold War who could take to the airwaves on Radio Liberty, a CIA-backed station in Eastern Europe that broadcast programmes into the USSR. The British Prime Minister was one of several prominent figures approached in late 1958 to 'stimulate heretical thinking'. At the time, the USSR existed as one domineering Soviet bloc led by Moscow that exerted its political and economic influence over a coalition of communist states, including in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. The USSR followed the one-party state of Marxism-Leninism, but following Stalin's death in 1953, there were the beginnings of a shift towards 'revisionism'. Supporters of this new ideology wanted to see a move towards individual Communist states. According to the newly surfaced documents, Radio Liberty wanted to 'exploit the climate of fresh and unorthodox political thinking' by promoting Western voices that could bring about the end of the USSR and communism. A briefing note, released under a Freedom Of Information request, shows Radio Liberty launched a propaganda operation between March 14 and May 5 1958. The broadcasts were intended to 'undermine confidence in any form of Marxism by suggesting that its basic assumptions, its historical method and its predictions are false'. The station was controlled in Washington and funded by the CIA for almost 20 years, from 1951 and 1972, which wasn't made clear to Soviet listeners at the time. It continued to be funded by the US government after merging with Radio Free Europe, which focused on Soviet satellite states. Experts say there is no evidence Churchill accepted the CIA's invitation to broadcast propaganda, nor are there details in Churchill's briefing notes about his scheduled broadcast. Documents show other dignitaries to approach for programmes, including former Prime Minister Clement Attlee, ex-Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan and Labour Party leader at the time Hugh Gaitskell. Other suggestions were three significant post-war Labour figures, and two left-wing intellectuals, journalist Arthur Koestler and historian Arnold Toynbee. Radio Liberty was set up to appear as an immigrant station to offer other viewpoints on current affairs across the world to Soviet citizens. Documents obtained by the Telegraph showed the station wanted to capitalise on emerging left-wing thinking within the USSR, using the anniversary of Marx's death as justification. It also wanted to 'show that the future does not belong to the communist idea and the Soviet State structure'. Churchill had been in contact and photographed with then-CIA director Alan Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles, who was the US Secretary of State. Churchill declined an invitation to visit Washington for health reasons at the same time he was designated for a propaganda programme around Spring 1958. At 83-years old, he only managed one more trip to the US to visit President Eisenhower in 1959 before Churchill died in 1965. University of Nottingham Professor of International Relations and Intelligence History, Rory Cormac, has stated that the CIA's attempt to recruit Churchill was standard practice in the agency's strategy towards the USSR in the 1950s. He said: 'Propaganda operations in the Cold War were designed to undermine authority, chip away at orthodox ideas, and encourage questioning. He said the US government was looking for 'credible messengers' for its appeal to the Soviets, and 'sometimes operated indirectly' through Radio Liberty and other channels, including newspapers. The Daily Mail has approached Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the CIA for comment.
