Original subtitles

As World War II winds down, the West views Stalin's government

as a threat to democracy.

The West was extremely concerned that communism would spread.

The Soviets view America as their primary adversary

to winning the hearts and minds of oppressed people everywhere.

The Soviets are very much concerned and paranoid about Western power.

Behind the fear inspired by the arms race, the space race

and the Cuban Missile Crisis lies one question that was on everyone's

mind, democracy or communism, which system will rule the world?

In a cold war where weapons are not hot, how things look,

how things are portrayed, help you win people over.

Propaganda and media become weapons of choice.

The media wars, the manipulation of the mind became

extremely important for both sides.

Governments go to great lengths to silence enemy voices.

The accusations just get more wild and more ridiculous.

Fear and paranoia are at an all-time high.

When the revelation starts to hit the fan, it causes this panic.

And it created this deep distrust in American society,

a search for enemies that maybe weren't really there at all.

After World War II, emerging superpowers stand

on the brink of utter destruction, while spies work to control entire

nations in the shadows. As the Cold War

deepens, paranoia persists. In a world of double agents,

sleeper cells and cover networks, trust is impossible

and threats are everywhere.

One night in 1959, a man infiltrated the Radio Free

Europe headquarters in Munich and exchanged salt shakers

in the cafeteria, revealing an explosive plot

to poison the employees. Why would broadcast employees

be the target of assassination?

Celebrations after the Allies'

hard-fought victory over Nazi Germany are short-lived.

The close of World War II opens up a new era of unease

between the east and the west.

You've got these alliances that work together in World War II

to defeat Germany as a common enemy,

and then somewhere along the way, things shift.

War brings together people that otherwise

might have differing interests. When those wars end,

they revert back to their nation's primary self-interest.

At the end of the Second World War, Germany was occupied.

It was occupied by Soviet Red Army forces that had entered

from the east, and then by British, American and French forces

that had come from the west, and the victors in the war

had to decide what to do with a defeated Germany.

So, they agreed to divide up Germany and by being divided,

it could not be strong enough to create the kind of problem

that it did in first and second world wars.

They divided the country between the occupying powers

creating an East Germany and a West Germany,

and then they divided up the city of Berlin,

which was in East Germany, into different sectors

that were occupied by different occupying armies.

Dividing territories and assuming that people along either sides

of the territories would fall in line is such a colonial practice.

Typically, good things don't come

out of this arbitrary division of territory.

The Soviets are dissatisfied with the division of Germany.

They're concerned about what this could mean in the future,

particularly in Berlin. A unified West Berlin,

located right in the middle of their occupation zone,

would likely be powerfully and aggressively anti-Soviet.

Twice in their history, they had suffered major attacks

because of Germany, and they would not risk a third.

Very soon, Stalin's intentions become apparent.

He was interested in getting complete control rather than

creating some sort of democracy in East Germany.

And the West was taking the opposite approach.

They learnt the lesson from World War I,

that if you suppress an enemy, they'll come back and hit

you harder later.

The conflicts that are developing between the Western allies

and the USSR in Germany support fears around the communist

government and a desire to quash it before support grows.

Berlin. With Germany situated between Western and Eastern Europe,

control of the capital is seen as both symbolic and pragmatic.

Tensions between the USSR and the allies in Germany reach

a boiling point in 1948, when Soviet authorities announced

that the autobahn, the nation's main highway,

would be closed indefinitely for repairs.

All traffic from west to east is halted,

closing off all supply lines from the west,

beginning the Berlin blockade.

We have to remember that Berlin lies in East Germany and that means

that the Soviet Union can control access to the city.

It can control the access of food, of coal,

of those things that West Germans need to eat and to stay warm.

The lives of those within the blockade

are now being threatened.

Stalin's blockade is seen as an attempt to drive the Allies

out of the city, cut off capitalism,

and spread communism within the capital.

You see a lot of the desperation of the Soviet Union, at this point,

to have some form of control over Europe.

And so, the West had to make a decision.

Do they want to capitulate and give up the small area in this sea

of communist control, or do they want to reinforce it?

For the West, withdrawal is not an option,

but attack seems unwise, as it could force their former

allies to retaliate. Instead of using force,

the US and its allies decide to help the people of Berlin

by providing supplies.

There's an idea that maybe the city of West Berlin

can be resupplied by air. And so,

the Americans and the British start using bomber airplanes to airlift

supplies into the city.

Two days after the blockade begins, the US Air Force initiates

Operation Vittles, the mission to supply the people

of West Berlin with food, fuel, and other goods through daily

aerial cargo shipments.

It wasn't a simple operation of bringing in supplies by air.

It was bringing in supplies to a city that had sustained

incredible damage.

Pilots carry out complicated maneuvers to overcome quick

turnarounds, tight flying and landing space

and severe weather.

It was possible for the Soviet Union to shoot down these airplanes

and render the airlift ineffective, but Stalin chooses not to do this.

This is a matter of some debate why he didn't do this,

but it's clear that if he had, in fact, shot down these airplanes,

it might have been the start of a new war in Europe.

The Soviets thought that the resolve of the West would weaken

because it's a tremendous cost to fly in all those goods,

but the Americans were insistent on it and they were going to do

it as long as it was required.

Despite the difficult logistics and the immense cost,

the airlift continued for 15 months.

That is a game of chicken that really plays into the Cold War

mentality of who has the most power and who has the ability to kind

of wait the other one out.

Realizing that the blockade was doing nothing to help his cause

and only contributing to a negative image of the Soviet Union

around the world, Stalin decides to lift the blockade.

This had been a tremendous propaganda coup for the West,

both because it showed the ability of the Americans and the British

to bring food, to bring fuel, the very stuff of life,

to people who were threatened by the Soviet Union.

And the blockade also seemed to highlight the cruelty

of the Soviet Union. How could someone like Stalin decide

to simply choke off a city to make a political point?

And it allowed for the Germans to be very grateful

to the Americans. They saw the Americans

were there to protect them, whereas the Soviets wanted

to dominate them.

The event does nothing to ease tensions.

The Western allies unite their occupation zones to create

a democratic government in West Germany,

while the Soviets tighten their grip on the Soviet satellite

nation in the East.

Pretty soon, the Germans realized, we would much rather

be with the American, British, and French in their sectors

than stay in the Soviet dominated sector,

and there was massive transfer.

The blockade proves that the US and Western European nations share

common interests and a common foe, motivating them to create

the intergovernmental military alliance NATO,

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

All the frontline states could feel much more at ease because they knew

that if they were attacked, then they would not

just have to defend for themselves, but they would be able to call

upon the alliance as a whole.

The North Atlantic Treaty is signed in 1949 and ushers

in the birth of NATO. And NATO initially had 12 allies.

In 1955, West Germany now comes

to be an independent state again as the Federal Republic of Germany,

and Germany then joins NATO in 1955.

This alarms the Soviets because now NATO has moved east.

Now the former Soviet enemy, Germany, is part

of this Western alliance.

So, for the Soviet Union, that must have been very jarring,

and it prompted them to have a very quick reaction

in terms of forming their own alliance-ship.

After West Germany was integrated into NATO in 1955,

the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in central

and eastern Europe formed a collective defense treaty called

the Warsaw Pact.

It is a counter to NATO, but unlike NATO,

it's not a free nations. This is a Soviet dominated

organization. Nothing can be done

without approval from Moscow.

For the Soviets, NATO almost seems to reinforce

their worldview that the West is trying to encircle the Soviet

Union, trying to get rid of communism for capitalism,

what have you, so they see this as threatening.

And of course, that's not what the West

is really trying to do. They're trying to, in their minds,

counter what they see as Soviet expansionism and Soviet aggression.

The friction in Germany and battle for control of Berlin

would culminate in the construction of the Berlin Wall,

a permanent partition dividing the city in the early 1960s.

The wall would become a symbol of the Cold War and the division

between democracy and communism.

The Berliners on the east side are seeing the wall go

up and they realize they only have a matter of weeks to be able

to make their run for freedom.

But they also have to give

up the places where they were born, where they were growing up,

family and friends that they knew.

Must have just been an absolute unimaginable situation

to have happened.

After the Berlin wall gets constructed,

you essentially start to have two societies that are almost polar

opposites of each other.

There was freedom in the west and there was suppression

in the east.

I mean, you could not walk up to the wall from the eastern side.

There was no way you could even see the wall.

You just arrived at these streets that had police gates at them,

and beyond that, there was another three blocks

of empty buildings that led up to the Berlin Wall.

On the western side, of course, you could touch it.

Throughout the airlift, people in Germany listen

to the events being reported over the RIAS,

a radio and television station operating

out of the American sector of Berlin during the Cold War.

In the Berlin Airlift, the West recognized that radio

was a great propaganda tool for them to tell the people

of West Berlin what they were doing,

to give them some hope and to explain that food and fuel

was on the way and it would keep coming.

But walls and barbed wire couldn't keep the Allies

out of East Berlin and other Soviet-backed states.

There was so much Soviet propaganda and you couldn't get real news

out of the Soviet dominated sources.

It's almost like a grassroots effort or a collective effort

for those outside of the site of conflict to just spread

the message that we're watching and we do care.

In an attempt to reach audiences beyond the Iron Curtain,

two freedom radios emerge, Voice of America

and Radio Free Europe. They are, in essence,

Cold War institutions secretly funded by the CIA.

The reason it was given to CIA to engage in from the beginning

was the covert action nature of it, the desire to conceal the US

government's hand behind the broadcasts.

It was felt that if the populations of these countries knew

that it was government sanctioned, that they would view it

with the same level of distrust that they would view broadcast

from their own governments, they would view it as biased.

The programs were in the languages of the countries

in the Warsaw Pact. These stations not only inform

listeners, but attempt to bring an end to communism through media.

The larger war is really fought in controlling the hearts and minds

of people, and that's where media

is particularly important. Right from the get-go,

the Americans understood that part of their weaponry

was their way of life.

Voice of America is a Washington based radio broadcaster that offers

an inside look into American culture, values and politics.

In 1947, it starts broadcasting

to Soviet citizens with the goal of countering Soviet propaganda

directed against American leaders and policies.

It allowed the United States to get its message across to a people

that it believed were being denied the truth by their own governments.

The messaging of the Soviet Union was not just that capitalism

was bad, but that life was not good outside of the Soviet Union.

And because it was so isolated, it was really hard to check yourself

to make sure that this was the case.

And so having these broadcasts would've called that into question.

Many Soviet defectors would come to cite the VOA in their decision

to defect, particularly programming

that compared the lives of people on either side of the Iron Curtain.

There was a double goal in these stories that would be transmitted

by Radio Free Europe and Voice of America.

One theme kind of confirmed how bad life is where you are.

"You are not the only one. Here are defectors who experienced

even worse things than you are experiencing and get ready,

it could get worse for you over there.

Listen to what happened to this guy."

It allowed people to see each other as an oppressed people

as opposed to individuals. The other secondary theme,

of course, is, "Life is better over here.

Look how the streets are paved with gold. Look at all this opportunity.

Look at all these people who suffered just like you,

but they came here and now they're driving a Cadillac

and they have a big house and isn't life grand over here

in the free enterprise system?"

So, if you go to the shop and there's no food,

if you know that your brother's been taken away to a prison camp

for no apparent reason, if you have no freedom, no choice,

no vote, all of those things are probably your principal

motivator to get the heck out, but then you hear the other side

and the other side, you know, is quite different. That's powerful.

They are continuing to give people an alternative to think

about so that people know that there is an alternative.

Unlike the VOA, RFE's headquarters is based

in Munich, Germany, far closer to the leaders

it criticizes. In addition to its regular

broadcast, the RFE spreads information through a series

of operations to distribute print media.

One such mission fills the skies over central Europe

with more than 350,000 meteorological balloons

that deliver over 300 million leaflets,

books and other materials to Czechoslovakia.

I would love to talk to the creator of Operation Prospero.

It's just so wild in concept and execution.

I'm not sure how you'd measure the result of it other

than a little bit of a demonstration to the other side

that you don't control everything you think you can control.

The Soviet's approach to Western radio broadcasting is to label

them enemy voices. Communist authorities don't view

these broadcasters as American nationalists,

but as treasonous citizens who had defected and volunteered

to assist the CIA.

If you had a criticism of the way that these countries were run,

it was treasonous. It says a great deal

about the ability to criticize the Soviet Union at that time.

Over the next several decades, spies will infiltrate the radio

stations posing as employees. They bring their handlers cabinets

of files and documents while plotting to bring

down the establishments from the inside.

Any mass broadcast that cannot be controlled is a threat.

In 1959, the radio station

is tipped off to an attempted poisoning plot.

A double agent working at RFE informs authorities

that he has been assigned by a communist diplomat to replace

the cafeteria salt shakers with ones that he was told contain

a mild laxative. When the contents of the salt

shakers are analyzed, the salt is found to be mixed

with atropine, a deadly poison.

Outside of actual conflict, the West has largely avoided

the use of assassination. The Soviets have had no similar

compunctions to restrain themselves in those ways.

While the plan was foiled before anyone could be hurt,

it set off alarms within the radio station.

Could there be more spies working within the company? And, if so, who?

In 1967, Pavel Minarik is recruited as an intelligence agent

in Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite state.

His experience as a radio announcer gives him the perfect cover

to infiltrate the RFE on behalf of the Czechoslovakian government

who had been highly criticized by journalists at the station.

Minarik's job was to gain as much information he could

about these radio stations and this involved things

like keeping track of guest lists and show topics,

but it went further. He even gathered information

about floor plans to support a possible bombing operation.

Classic case, in my mind, of a hostile intelligence service

attempting a penetration of an organization

that's at odds with it. Radio Free Europe was a real bur

under their saddle.

In 1976, he's withdrawn from Germany before plans

could be executed. He's later paraded at a press

conference in Czechoslovakia, where he triumphantly reveals

details of how he infiltrated the disgrace of the airwaves.

Radio propaganda just like lobbing a missile, an information missile,

into your country. So, the kind of countermeasures

would include destroying that facility

or poisoning its staff. That was not off the table.

RFE is seen as a serious threat by the leader of another Warsaw Pact

member, Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu.

Ceausescu wages a vengeful war against the RFE after being heavily

criticized in their broadcasts.

That kind of information bleeds into a society and can really erode

your support, right? It can also exacerbate the fact

that you're hated.

He initiated a program called Ether in an attempt to silence

anti-communist voices by any means necessary.

Over the years, Ceausescu has formed a relationship

with international terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez,

commonly known as "The Jackal".

Carlos the Jackal, probably the most successful

individual terrorist that the world has ever had to face.

He is literally the stuff that you would've thought could only

appear in movies, but was real.

During his war against the radio station,

Ceausescu pays The Jackal millions of dollars to help him attempt

to bring down the station and its staff.

One of the targets is director of RFE, Vlad Georgescu.

In 1987, Georgescu is threatened

that he will not survive the year if he goes through with one

of his broadcasts, a warning he ignores.

He succumbs to a brain tumor in 1988.

Georgescu was one of many who come under fire

because of their anti-communist stance over the airwaves.

Probably most famous is Georgi Markov,

who's a Bulgarian dissident.

Georgi Markov worked as a journalist and broadcaster

for BBC and RFE, where he was extremely critical

of the Bulgarian regime. In 1978,

he was on his way to work when he bumped into someone

with an umbrella and recalled feeling a sharp pain.

That night, he developed a fever and was taken

to hospital where he died four days later.

Nobody can figure out what killed this guy.

Takes a medical examiner's assistant,

he finds this little metallic ball and when he looks

under magnification, he can see that there's a micro hole

drilled on two angles into it and it housed ricin poison.

Everyone is surmising that that umbrella that the guy

bumped him with had some kind of air gun pneumatic system

and you know, you get that exotic James

Bond-like assassination.

It's a targeted assassination, what the Russians call a wet-op,

in order to get rid of a fairly prominent journalist.

By far, the boldest act of violence against the RFE comes in 1981

at the Munich headquarters.

On February 21st,

a massive explosion on the ground floor rocks the office, causing

millions of dollars in damage. Several employees are injured,

but there are no fatalities. It is later determined that Swiss

terrorist Bruno Breguet detonated the bomb,

which had been planted by several men working under Carlos

the Jackal, who had been hired, once again,

by Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu.

These radio facilities, they become targets as much

as an air force base might.

At the end of the day, the operation

had the opposite effect. It strengthened RFE,

it strengthened what they were trying to do and bolstered

their reason for existence. Every one of those people

that was there was more empowered behind their mission and folks

said, "Gosh, if it's such a big deal

that they want to bomb them, it must be worth listening to."

The Soviets employed a different strategy to deal

with these freedom networks. The USSR used various methods

to interrupt and block the reception of Western broadcasts

from BBC, the VOA and RFE. Starting in 1948,

a focus is placed on radio jamming.

To jam a radio station is to find the frequency on which your enemy

is broadcasting and then for you to simply broadcast

more loudly and more powerfully something on that same signal

that will distort what your enemy is trying to say,

so it makes the radio stations un-listenable.

Broadcasters use powerful shortwave radio stations,

so jamming transmitters need to be even more powerful

with various interference signals like noise,

nonstop music or recorded voices played backwards.

So, you need to set up all these stations and also know

when they should transmit. So, that's a very large operation

that can involve thousands of people because they are

having to constantly keep watch.

A Soviet jamming network is established and led

by Natalia Kristianova.

An estimated 2,500 to 3,000 jamming transmitters

and 5,000 primary employees are at her disposal.

The Kristianova Department operates and organizes roughly 200 sites.

Such facilities are established within the USSR and in major cities

in every Soviet republic.

Now, to overcome a jammer, all you need to do is increase

the power of your own radio station and it created this back and forth,

sort of never-ending war between transmitters and jamming

stations, both trying to out-duel each other.

Jamming tech and the power to fuel it isn't cheap.

The Soviets spend roughly $35 million over the years

trying to jam the broadcasts from foreign stations,

far more than the cost of running the broadcasts themselves.

Despite spies, jamming and even assassinations,

the messages being sent out over the radio

waves remained unchanged. It's believed the US reached

between 50 and 70% of those on the other side of the Iron Curtain

through their broadcasts.

Really, the more you try to stamp

out free ideas, the more they're going to even

flourish. The people are trying to get access to this information

because they crave it and part of the reason they crave

it is probably because it was so repressed and eliminated,

and that just actually makes it more valuable.

The 1950s ushers in the golden age of propaganda,

both overt and covert. Radios and televisions are in almost

every home in America. Government produced propaganda

is replaced by more subtle studio content that promotes pro-American

values while demonizing communism in film, television, music and art.

We talked about conformity when it comes to the Soviet unions, right?

But we don't quite talk about that in the American context.

Media during the Cold War defined American values and by defining

American values, emphasized what was supposed

to be normal. It's showing this idealized

version of America. Quite simply, American values was symbolized

as the white, suburban, middle class family with very clear

gender roles, the kind of 'Leave it to Beaver'

image of American society. And the fact is that this is

a manufactured image, and it is so effective

that when conservatives argue about traditional values today,

they return to this image that was manufactured in the 1950s.

The irony of this time is that America was becoming

more of a monoculture like the Soviet Union,

even as they were trying to repel the Soviet Union.

As the Cold War intensifies, paranoia around communism

and communist supporters living in the US is known as the Red Scare.

Everyone's a potential communist. Communism is the greatest evil

in the world. People tried to link communism

to every social ill you could imagine.

They also generally refer to it as a deviancy with the idea

of lumping other so-called deviancies into the loop.

There's a lot of fear circulating in society and there's a lot

of people who are playing to those fears.

Senator Joseph McCarthy was one of those.

McCarthyism fed on the paranoia people and he claimed

to have a list of many, many communist spies

within the US government. He went on a crusade

against these communist infiltrators or sympathizers.

Digging out communism, corruption, treason in government.

The House of Un-American Activities is a government

committee created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty

and rebel activities suspected of having communist ties.

The Red Scare exacerbates the committee's concerns

in the 1950s, leading them to carry out

more intensive investigations and interrogations.

Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth,

the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Those who admit to supporting communism are sentenced

to jail time. Some who deny

are found guilty regardless. Anyone from politicians to patriots

could be subjected to trials.

By all accounts,

Alger Hiss is the model American with traditional values,

a well connected former government lawyer and state department

official who helped create the United Nations in the aftermath

of World War II.

He's good looking, he's athletic, he's smart as a whip,

and more importantly, he had had a pretty impressive

career.

To the surprise of many, in 1949, Hiss finds himself on trial, accused

of being involved with communist espionage.

Hiss is put on the stand after the investigation

of Whittaker Chambers, an American writer.

Chambers provides the names of individuals said to be members

of the Communist Party, including Alger Hiss.

Mr. Hiss represents the concealed enemy

against which we are all fighting, and I am fighting.

Hiss rejects these damning accusations.

He denies any ties to communism and claims he has never

met his accuser.

Mr. Hiss is lying.

Whittaker Chambers is an American writer and editor whose communist

beliefs lead him to join the American Communist

Party in 1925. In 1932, he's recruited to join the Communist

underground and begins his career as a spy working for the GRU Spy

Ring in Washington where he helps to organize fellow communists.

Using the code name Karl, he also serves as a courier

between New York and Washington, transporting stolen documents

between various sources and Soviet intelligence.

Chambers' belief in communism wanes as the years go on and by the late

1930s, he is less certain of the side he has been aiding,

now aware of the unforgiving punishments handed out by the MGB

for those who step out of line.

He ignores several orders that he travel to Moscow, fearing

what would happen to him if he did.

Instead, Chambers began concealing documents he collected

from his sources, along with several rolls

of microfilm photographs as a life preserver.

In 1938, he breaks ties with communism and takes

his family into hiding. After a series of contradicting

testimonies from both men, Chambers delivers a smoking gun,

producing documents and microfilm that appear to prove he and Hiss

were committing espionage. They contain images of State

Department materials, including notes

in Hiss' own handwriting.

And then it gets weird because it's not weird enough.

Given a statute of limitations, he cannot be prosecuted

for espionage. But by virtue of the fact that Hiss

denies knowing Chambers, and that's subsequently proven

to be untrue, they met one another, albeit

when Chambers went by another name, George Crosley.

So, in that murky world, Alger Hiss has perjured himself.

Alger Hiss is exposed as a liar, and, of course, that's a crime.

So, Alger Hiss is never convicted for espionage,

he's convicted for perjury.

The controversial case still leaves many wondering if Chambers somehow

conjured fake evidence or if Hiss truly shared secrets with the East,

and, if so, what were they? But not all who the HUAC

investigates hold communist views. The fear of falsely being accused

creates a climate of political intimidation known as red baiting.

These trials were very emotional. They were very illogical.

They wound up turning the desire to keep national security intact

to targeting people in Hollywood for possible pro-communist

messages.

Hollywood was a location of a lot of people with strong intellects,

who were open to alternative ideas and they also had influence.

So, some right wing political establishment figures decided

that Hollywood had to be tamed so that they would not be able

to propagate leftists or socialist ideas,

which was all conflated together with communism.

It becomes less of a strategic way of dealing with a military threat

or a political threat and more of a means of controlling a society.

Before you would be allowed to shoot anything or work

on any film, you would have to go to see

this private agency that would interview you

for your political past.

Just having a past political view or connection to a party

or ideology in this climate was enough to brand

you as a traitor.

The lines of civil liberties and national security begin to blur.

For those who are accused, the hearings are just as taxing

as the arrests.

One of the ways the committee worked was by asking

those who testified before the committee to name names,

to name lists of other individuals that they had worked

with or who they believed to be communist.

So, it wasn't simply the individual that was compromised,

it's all the networks around the individual.

People could never be sure that their coworkers,

their family members, their friends who testified

before the committee might not also name them.

Individuals who refuse to answer the committee's questions

or to provide names could be indicted for contempt of Congress

and sent to prison.

If you think I'll cooperate with you in any way, you are insane.

There was also the fear of blacklisting by their employers.

This type of blacklisting, it ends up destroying people's

livelihoods. You have the full power of the state

more or less branding you as a traitor,

and there's really not much you can do about it.

HUAC's controversial tactics to force confessions

through relentless examinations and the harsh consequences

that would follow, contribute to the fear

of distrust and repression. The climate feels uneasy.

There were two types of fears. One was a fear that there

might be a communist within my vicinity or within my family,

and then the other fear was, "Oh, I might be falsely accused,

so I've got to show how patriotic American I am."

This type of atmosphere encouraged people to point other people out

just to be safe.

These were not trials for espionage or spying,

these were trials for ideology.

Some believe HUAC is overstepping and stripping citizens

of their personal freedoms, while others see this as necessary.

The accusations just get more wild and more ridiculous and then start

to target specific communities like the gay community.

Although many people lost their jobs because of ties

to communism or perceived ties to communism,

even more people lost their jobs within the civil service

and the government because they were gay.

Because American society did not favor homosexuality,

the belief was that if you worked for the government and the Soviets

found out that you were gay, they could blackmail you.

They saw it as a weakness within American society.

At the end of the Second World War, the world also starts to develop

a concept of human rights and people are now actively

resisting and protesting and engaging in forms of dissent.

Many members of Hollywood comply with HUAC when they are questioned,

but a group of prominent Hollywood writers, producers,

and directors push back.

When put on the stand, none reveal their personal ideologies,

nor do they invoke their Fifth Amendment rights.

Instead, they outright refused

to cooperate with the investigations.

They used the trials as an opportunity to publicly

denounce the tactics employed by the HUAC as outrageous violations

of their civil rights.

Some of them just said, "It's a democracy,

I don't have to talk to you." The pressure, of course,

was from their bosses, the studio heads, who said, "Boys,

you want to be in Hollywood, you got to bow down to the kings."

The consequences they faced was the end of their careers.

It is later proved that all 10 members were in fact communist

supporters, but were these simply their personal

views or were they using their positions in the media

to supplant communist ideals in the minds of viewers?

All but one is sentenced to prison and blacklisted from Hollywood.

One popular media mogul is never targeted by the HUAC

despite having worked with the Soviets for nearly a decade.

In 1934, Boris Morros, a Soviet born music director working

for Paramount Pictures, takes a meeting at the Soviet

Consulate in New York City. In this meeting,

Morros makes the jump from high profile Hollywood music director

to Soviet spy.

One of the ways Morros made himself useful was to serve

as a sort of money launderer for Soviet interests

in the United States. He would invite people sympathetic

to the Communist Party or members of the Communist Party to invest

in his various business ventures, and then he would be able to funnel

that money back to different Soviet projects in the United States.

In 1947, the FBI is finally onto Morros and they confront him

and arrest him, but decide he'll be more useful

to them if they leave him in place.

And so, they turn him into a double agent and use his connections

to gain more intelligence about what the Soviets are up to.

As a double agent, Morros feeds low level secrets

and misinformation back to the KGB, while simultaneously feeding

information to American authorities.

Through Morros, the FBI is able to learn

about the Soble Spy Ring, which is a Soviet spy ring operating

across the United States.

When Soble arrived in the US, he took over supervision of an NKVD

spy ring known as the Mocase that had been around since

World War II. In his testimony, Soble names Martha Dodd

and Alfred Stern as members of his spy ring.

Dodd is known to use her charisma to initiate close relationships

with important figures like Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Soviets use her ties to the American government to gather

both personal and political information.

She also works as a Soviet talent scout to recruit people she thinks

may be of value, including the multimillionaire

businessman Alfred Stern.

Stern marries Dodd in 1938

and aids her in gathering intel for the Soviet intelligence.

He also pours money into the Soviet efforts in the US by investing

in the Boris Morros Music Company.

This large number of intellectuals who had access to high levels of US

society being willing to act as agents of the Soviet Union was,

I think, shocking in a scale that had not really been seen

prior to this.

In 1992, a man named Vasili Mitrokhin defected to the West.

And what makes Mitrokhin so important is that he was

essentially the archivist for the KGB.

When he defected, he brought with him thousands

of pages of documents detailing KGB operations in the West

and around the world, going back to the 1930s

and working their way through the Cold War.

Perhaps the most eerie and invasive Soviet strategies exposed

in Mitrokhin archives are disinformation campaigns.

Disinformation campaigns are incredibly powerful

because they sow seeds of doubt.

What the KGB was looking for were rifts inside a society

that they could exacerbate. One of the most striking examples,

I think, was Soviet support for disarmament movements

in the West. By spreading information and,

in some cases, disinformation about nuclear

weapons, the Soviet Union believed

that they could get the people of the West to ask their governments

to do away with those very weapons that targeted the Soviet Union.

Another Soviet operation planted a damning idea that the CIA

was attempting to suppress non-whites

through the development of HIV.

It was this pandemic and there was a lot of myths surrounding

it as to who was affected and why they were affected.

So, to have additional information coming in about that,

that is misinformation, further disintegrates the citizen's

belief in their leader.

The story was that the AIDS virus was manufactured at Fort Dietrich

by genetic engineers. The Soviet operation was a way

to undermine US credibility, foster anti-Americanism,

and create global tensions.

Disinformation is a way for adversaries to find something

that they can amplify to make a bad situation worse.

In 2016, after a controversial and confusing presidential election

in the US, it's revealed that Russian groups had digitally

infiltrated the elections through a series of cyber attacks

and a massive push of online propaganda.

Russian hackers used more than 50,000 bots or fake accounts on social

media platforms like Twitter to spread false or misleading

information about candidates and influence the political

narrative online to sway public discourse.

You know, the difference between now and then is not so much

that the tactics have really differed.

The tactics are, at the root of them,

really the same, the difference is the technology.

It's the level you can engage in and that has amplified

with the internet and with social media especially.

One of the main targets of these campaigns was Democratic

candidate Hillary Clinton. The term 'Russian Probe' is used

to describe the hacking of Clinton's emails that publicized

private discussions within her campaign.

The emails revealed criticism of fellow Democrat Bernie Sanders

and internal efforts by the Democratic National Committee

to undermine his presidential campaign,

which caused a significant backlash among his supporters.

If you can heighten and sow that kind of internal division,

you are essentially contributing to destabilizing a place.

The Cold War did come to an end between 1989 and 1991.

First with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact

and then the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The world watched as the Berlin Wall was torn down brick by brick,

and for a time, a sense of calm and security washed

over the West.

This edifice that was rotting in corruption, in fairyland,

Marxist economic theory, collapsed under its own weight.

But the wall was just a symbol, and the deep-seated roots

of a dangerous ideology cannot be removed so easily.

There are elements of the Cold War which are reemerging

in our society.

In the years after the fall of the Soviet Union,

the former Communist regime continues to make calculated moves,

from its attack on Georgia in 2008, to the annexation of Crimea

in 2014, to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022,

Russia continues to use their power and influence to shift

the geopolitical tides.

Russia remains a totalitarian state with a heavy security focus,

both internal and external, and aims on significant control

over much of the world.

Likewise, military and political

maneuvers by communist China show concerning signs of their desire

to expand by force. Their refusal to recognize

the independence of Taiwan, territory claims over the South

China Sea and accusations of human rights violations of minority

groups like the Uyghur Muslims are eerily reminiscent

of Cold War mentalities.

The elements that propelled the Cold War are elements

that propel human beings, and it's a lust for power,

it's control over information. We'll have to suffer through many

dictators and some tyrants. In some ways,

the challenge only makes the world stronger.

It vindicates the principles for which people have fought two

world wars, the Cold War, and are now fighting today's wars.