banjoplayinnerd (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
banjoplayinnerd) wrote2012-05-02 08:13 am
banjoplayinnerd) wrote2012-05-02 08:13 am
Hello To All My Friends And Fans In Domestic Surveillance
Yesterday it occurred to me after posting my journal entry entitled "Yemen" that for an American to make a public post on a major discussion forum with a title like "Yemen" might show a lack of common sense.
To that I say, pfffft. Here's why.
Someday I'll post the story of how I got bitten by the radio bug. For now, suffice it to say it happened when I was 8, and by the time I was 11 I was sending reception reports to stations overseas and getting QSL cards - postcards confirming my reception report, almost always with a picture somehow related to the culture, history or scenery of the country in question. One notable exception was HCJB, a primarily ecclesiastical station in Ecuador, whose QSL card just showed their call sign and slogan "Heralding Christ Jesus' Blessings" along with details of the reception confirmation.
Many stations had "listeners' clubs" you could join if you sent in a certain number of reception reports in a year. Members of the club got special stickers, pennants, newsletters or other mementos. The stations loved them, as it was a way to judge who was listening, where, at what times of the day, and how well the signal was getting through.
Some just sent packets of such goodies as a matter of course. The most notable of these, at least of the ones I was able to copy easily, were Radio Prague, Radio Warsaw, Radio Sofia, Radio Bucharest and Radio Moscow.
Notice a pattern there, other than the word "Radio" followed by the name of a national capital? (Back then Prague was the capital of Czechoslovakia; nowadays it's still a capital, but of only about half as much territory.) If you're under about 30 you might be forgiven for thinking they were all just in the eastern part of Europe.
Back in the 1960s, though, these countries were all members of the Warsaw Pact, a mutual-defense organization set up to keep NATO in check. McCarthyism had mostly ended, the John Birch Society was a footnote to politics and Pete Seeger had recovered from the blacklist to perform on TV, but make no mistake, the Cold War was still going. We were only a few years out from the Cuban missile crisis. Propaganda ran hot on both sides, and we and the Soviet bloc countries used any means we could to get the word out. For our side, that included Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. For them, it meant the North American services of their international broadcast operations. Interspersed with music and verbal travelogues were editorials toeing the Soviet line on international policy. Radio Havana Cuba was perhaps the most strident of the ones I could hear; I was later able to find others that were even more so.
None of that mattered to me. For me this was a hobby. I was mostly interested in the music and cultural programs and would usually just suffer through the editorials (whether from an eastern European station or the Voice of America) to get to the good stuff. And to get enough information to send the reception report that would get me the QSL I wanted.
One other thing I should mention is not just when I grew up, but where. Richland, Washington was created as a bedroom community for people working on the Hanford portion of the Manhattan Project. Pretty much over one summer weekend in 1943 it went from a sleepy little farm town of about 200 people to a city of over 20,000. And it was all run by the government, and for several years it didn't exist. Mail was postmarked "Seattle." Phone calls either weren't allowed or were tightly controlled. Saying the wrong thing could get you shipped out of town. By the time I arrived on the scene a lot of that had cooled down but we were all very much aware that we lived 30 miles from a first-strike target if the Cold War ever suddenly turned hot.
I have no doubt that the national security apparatus was keeping an eye on the mail at the Richland post office. I don't have any direct evidence that they were reading my letters to Prague and Vienna. I don't have any evidence for any of my suspicions. But I have long believed, given the people we know the FBI was keeping files on in those days, that my overseas correspondence with Foreign Powers did not go unnoticed.
And it tickles my heart greatly to think that somewhere in the other Washington, there is a file folder with my name on it that details the subversive correspondence of an 11-year-old, writing to Radio Warsaw that he had received a news broadcast anticipating a visit by Leonid Brezhnev to Poland followed by a report of an agricultural festival in Lodz.
Oh, and if you ever have occasion to find out that there was no such file, please. I don't want to know about it. I want to go on thinking that I grew up to be nowhere near the threat they thought I'd become.
To that I say, pfffft. Here's why.
Someday I'll post the story of how I got bitten by the radio bug. For now, suffice it to say it happened when I was 8, and by the time I was 11 I was sending reception reports to stations overseas and getting QSL cards - postcards confirming my reception report, almost always with a picture somehow related to the culture, history or scenery of the country in question. One notable exception was HCJB, a primarily ecclesiastical station in Ecuador, whose QSL card just showed their call sign and slogan "Heralding Christ Jesus' Blessings" along with details of the reception confirmation.
Many stations had "listeners' clubs" you could join if you sent in a certain number of reception reports in a year. Members of the club got special stickers, pennants, newsletters or other mementos. The stations loved them, as it was a way to judge who was listening, where, at what times of the day, and how well the signal was getting through.
Some just sent packets of such goodies as a matter of course. The most notable of these, at least of the ones I was able to copy easily, were Radio Prague, Radio Warsaw, Radio Sofia, Radio Bucharest and Radio Moscow.
Notice a pattern there, other than the word "Radio" followed by the name of a national capital? (Back then Prague was the capital of Czechoslovakia; nowadays it's still a capital, but of only about half as much territory.) If you're under about 30 you might be forgiven for thinking they were all just in the eastern part of Europe.
Back in the 1960s, though, these countries were all members of the Warsaw Pact, a mutual-defense organization set up to keep NATO in check. McCarthyism had mostly ended, the John Birch Society was a footnote to politics and Pete Seeger had recovered from the blacklist to perform on TV, but make no mistake, the Cold War was still going. We were only a few years out from the Cuban missile crisis. Propaganda ran hot on both sides, and we and the Soviet bloc countries used any means we could to get the word out. For our side, that included Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. For them, it meant the North American services of their international broadcast operations. Interspersed with music and verbal travelogues were editorials toeing the Soviet line on international policy. Radio Havana Cuba was perhaps the most strident of the ones I could hear; I was later able to find others that were even more so.
None of that mattered to me. For me this was a hobby. I was mostly interested in the music and cultural programs and would usually just suffer through the editorials (whether from an eastern European station or the Voice of America) to get to the good stuff. And to get enough information to send the reception report that would get me the QSL I wanted.
One other thing I should mention is not just when I grew up, but where. Richland, Washington was created as a bedroom community for people working on the Hanford portion of the Manhattan Project. Pretty much over one summer weekend in 1943 it went from a sleepy little farm town of about 200 people to a city of over 20,000. And it was all run by the government, and for several years it didn't exist. Mail was postmarked "Seattle." Phone calls either weren't allowed or were tightly controlled. Saying the wrong thing could get you shipped out of town. By the time I arrived on the scene a lot of that had cooled down but we were all very much aware that we lived 30 miles from a first-strike target if the Cold War ever suddenly turned hot.
I have no doubt that the national security apparatus was keeping an eye on the mail at the Richland post office. I don't have any direct evidence that they were reading my letters to Prague and Vienna. I don't have any evidence for any of my suspicions. But I have long believed, given the people we know the FBI was keeping files on in those days, that my overseas correspondence with Foreign Powers did not go unnoticed.
And it tickles my heart greatly to think that somewhere in the other Washington, there is a file folder with my name on it that details the subversive correspondence of an 11-year-old, writing to Radio Warsaw that he had received a news broadcast anticipating a visit by Leonid Brezhnev to Poland followed by a report of an agricultural festival in Lodz.
Oh, and if you ever have occasion to find out that there was no such file, please. I don't want to know about it. I want to go on thinking that I grew up to be nowhere near the threat they thought I'd become.