Newly released intelligence documents have revealed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) once attempted to recruit former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill for a Cold War propaganda campaign aimed at influencing Soviet citizens.
According to declassified papers obtained by The Telegraph, the CIA-backed station Radio Liberty, which broadcast into the Soviet Union from Eastern Europe, hoped Churchill would lend his voice to a series of programmes designed to undermine Communist ideology and “stimulate heretical thinking” among listeners.
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The broadcasts were planned for 1958, to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death, a time when ideological cracks were beginning to appear within the Soviet Union. With the rise of “revisionism” among Soviet thinkers who questioned rigid Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, American intelligence sought to exploit this intellectual shift to weaken Moscow’s grip on its satellite states and promote Western ideas.
Radio Liberty’s controllers in Munich informed CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, that they were preparing a special series featuring Western thinkers and unorthodox political ideas. A briefing note released under US freedom of information laws described the campaign as an effort to stimulate heretical thinking, undermine confidence in Marxism, and demonstrate that the future did not belong to the communist idea or Soviet state structure.
Though Radio Liberty appeared to Soviet listeners as an independent émigré station, it was covertly funded and directed by the CIA between 1951 and 1972. Churchill, who was then 83, was among several prominent British figures the agency hoped would take part, alongside former prime ministers Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan, Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, and intellectuals Arthur Koestler and Arnold Toynbee. The list also included international figures such as US philosopher Sidney Hook, journalist Eugene Lyons, former French president Vincent Auriol, and Austrian vice-chancellor Bruno Pittermann.
There is no evidence Churchill ever accepted the invitation, but the documents confirm that Radio Liberty’s staff in Munich were instructed to contact him and other potential contributors. The operation took place while Allen Dulles served as CIA director and his brother, John Foster Dulles, was US Secretary of State — both long-time acquaintances of Churchill.
In early 1958, the former prime minister declined an invitation to visit Washington due to poor health. He would make just one more trip to the United States, in 1959, to visit President Dwight D. Eisenhower, before his death in 1965.
Commenting on the revelation, Prof. Rory Cormac, a professor of international relations and intelligence history at the University of Nottingham, said the recruitment attempt reflected the CIA’s broader information strategy during the Cold War. “Propaganda operations in the Cold War were designed to undermine authority, chip away at orthodox ideas, and encourage questioning,” he told The Telegraph. He explained that the US government was searching for credible messengers, respected voices who could appeal to Soviet listeners with moral and intellectual authority, often working indirectly through outlets such as Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, and sympathetic newspapers. Both Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the CIA declined to comment on the newly declassified records.
Historians say the files highlight how the Cold War was fought not only with weapons and espionage, but also with words and persuasion. For Washington, Churchill’s voice, the same voice that once rallied the free world against fascism , was seen as a powerful tool that could help shape hearts and minds behind the Iron Curtain.
