John Houseman, Howard Fast, and the Pro-Soviet Voice of America

Houseman’s Role in VOA Propaganda

John Houseman, long mythologized as the “first director” of the Voice of America (VOA), was in reality its first chief producer — a man of the theater rather than a journalist. Editorial policy was shaped by Joseph F. Barnes, a pro-Soviet fellow-traveler newspaper reporter and close associate of Walter Duranty, The New York Times correspondent in Moscow and one of Stalin’s most notorious apologists in the 1930s. After Roosevelt divided responsibilities in 1942 — assigning intelligence-gathering and clandestine propaganda to Col. William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and overt propaganda to the newly created Office of War Information (OWI) — Barnes emerged as one of the more skillful defenders of the Soviet Union within OWI, able to present pro-Soviet narratives without the blunt markers of propaganda, yet still shaping VOA coverage in ways that cast Stalin as a statesman and the Soviet Union as a budding democracy to unwary listeners. ¹ Houseman’s job was to select ideologically trusted staff and produce broadcasts that condemned Hitler while shielding Stalin. To contemporary analysts familiar with Soviet realities, the effect remained unmistakable: Stalin was flattered, and the Soviet regime was normalized.

The radio operation itself had begun under Donovan’s earlier agency, the Coordinator of Information (COI) — America’s first centralized intelligence and propaganda bureau. In 1942, the COI was reorganized as the OWI, and within it, the broadcasting division — later officially known as the Voice of America — became part of the Overseas Branch.

At the same time, the overall propaganda strategy came from Robert E. Sherwood, a famous playwright, Roosevelt’s speechwriter, and the Director of OWI’s Overseas Branch. ² Houseman’s task was to “cast and stage” the broadcasts. The Voice of America name had not yet been officially adopted — several titles were used interchangeably.

Why Poland—and Why This Matters

Poland sat at the heart of Stalin’s wartime and postwar ambitions. It was the geographic corridor to Germany, the historic front line of Russian imperial expansion, and the political laboratory for a Sovietized “people’s democracy.” For Roosevelt, meanwhile, keeping the USSR fully engaged against Hitler — and later, building a postwar peace on cooperation with Moscow — made Polish realities of opposing Russian imperialism and communist dictatorship an uncomfortable liability. That collision of aims explains why Poland became a litmus test for U.S. information policy and for the culture that developed within OWI/VOA.

The reach of Soviet narratives in Western journalism

Long before OWI existed, Soviet talking points had seeped into influential Western newsrooms. Moscow’s model of “anti-fascist democracy” and planned modernization appealed to segments of the press disillusioned with the interwar order and terrified of a resurgent Nazism. Reporters and editors in the U.S. and Britain — far beyond OWI — could be admiring, credulous, or simply cautious about challenging Soviet claims. Those who did challenge them paid a price. When Gareth Jones exposed the Holodomor, the reaction among some Western correspondents ranged from icy skepticism to active disparagement. ³ The lesson to younger journalists and officials was clear: stepping outside the consensus on the USSR could end careers.

Katyn: the central test of truth

Nothing strained this consensus more than the Katyn massacre of thousands of Polish military officers and intellectual leaders held in Soviet captivity since the fall of 1939. Once the Germans publicized the graves in April 1943, the Roosevelt administration chose political expedience over clarity: avoid a rupture with Stalin, keep Polish-American voters mollified, promote Soviet propaganda lies about Katyn, and push the story off the front page.

Within OWI London, figures like Wallace Carroll worked under intense Allied messaging discipline. Houseman’s patron, Nelson Poynter, a progressive publisher who later founded Congressional Quarterly and the journalism institute that bears his name, became chief of OWI’s Motion Picture Industry Liaison Division. Poynter, who recommended John Houseman for his Voice of America position, shared his willingness to whitewash Stalin. He coordinated with Hollywood studios the production of several wartime films — including the most blatant pro-Soviet propaganda picture of the time, Mission to Moscow (1943), which justified Stalin’s purges and show trials.

OWI and VOA propaganda deception was not limited to the Katyn story; it extended to all events that might have reflected negatively on Stalin and the Soviet Union. One of OWI’s most zealous pro-Soviet propagandists was Professor Owen Lattimore, head of VOA broadcasts to Asia, who accompanied Vice President Henry A. Wallace on his 1944 trip to Russia. He later published an article in the December 1944 issue of National Geographic describing their visit to the Kolyma gold mines, where hundreds of thousands of Gulag prisoners had perished under Stalin’s rule.

According to Lattimore, however, they were all volunteer workers for whom “extensive greenhouses growing tomatoes, cucumbers, and even melons” were built “to make sure that the hardy miners got enough vitamins!”⁴

In Moscow, Ambassador Averell Harriman’s daughter, Kathleen Harriman, served as an OWI volunteer and later joined Western correspondents at the Soviet-organized Katyn inquiry, most of whom echoed the official Soviet line in their reporting — an episode that would shadow their reputation. Out of more than a dozen Western journalists, only one — the African American reporter Homer Smith — chose silence rather than repeat Soviet propaganda lies.⁵ American, British, Canadian, French, and other correspondents knew that Soviet officials were lying about Katyn, but none reported the truth. To do so safely, they would have had to leave the Soviet Union, as Gareth Jones had done a decade earlier to expose the Ukrainian famine. None of them took that step. Homer Smith, who could not leave Russia because of his Russian family, spent years trying to escape. Others could have left but chose to stay. They never admitted to their readers that their reports were censored by Soviet officials. Some, like Harrison Salisbury, later tried to conceal their presence in Katyn and divert attention from their false wartime reporting. For thirty-nine years, Salisbury never mentioned that he had been present at Katyn in January 1944 during the NKVD-organized visit.⁶ The Pulitzer Prize–winning The New York Times reporter claimed he was still not certain in the 1980s that the Soviets had committed this atrocity.⁷

Henry Cassidy, the Associated Press bureau chief in Moscow from 1940 to 1944, testified before the Madden Committee, providing a revealing account of his 1944 trip to Katyn. His testimony about how he and other Western correspondents had self-censored their dispatches and how deeply flawed their reporting from the Soviet Union had been was remarkably candid. The true record of wartime American journalism — including the Voice of America’s broadcasts — is not found in reporters’ memoirs or VOA’s official narratives, but in the Congressional Record, where the Madden Committee’s hearings, statements by members of Congress from both parties, and numerous objective press accounts entered over many years exposed these failures and eventually helped prompt reforms.

The fact that the Western correspondents in Moscow did not believe in what they had reported after their visit to Katyn was confirmed for the Madden Committee by a Roman-Catholic priest, Father Léopold L. S. Braun (1903-1964). From March 1, 1934, to December 27, 1945, under a diplomatic agreement between the Roosevelt administration and the Soviet Union, Father Braun served as chaplain to American Catholics working at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and to other permanent and temporary Western residents in the Soviet capital. He noted in his memoir: “not a single American correspondent was convinced of German guilt,” but pointed out, “most of the pressmen reproduced in their own words the absolutely fantastic communiqués issued” by the famous Soviet doctors. He was convinced that they had failed to fulfill their duty as journalists by not telling the whole truth and had misled their readers.⁸

Stalin’s personal courtesies — down to the much-remarked gift of horses to the Harrimans — symbolized the larger seduction of access and flattery that surrounded Western envoys and Moscow-based and visiting journalists.⁹  After the war, Kathleen Harriman even played a small role in the earliest steps toward VOA’s Russian broadcasting (1947), a reminder of how tightly diplomacy, journalism, and information work interlaced.  The Voice of America did not broadcast in Russian until 1947, presumably out of fear of Stalin’s reaction. Houseman’s legacy still lingered two years after the war.

According to Edward Carleton Helwick, Jr., a former VOA English-language writer-producer who compared VOA programs in 1947 with those from 1950–1953, the 1947 broadcasts contained no commentary — outside of straight newscasts — that criticized Soviet leaders or analyzed human-rights abuses under communism.

It was evident from newspaper accounts that the broadcast in America, at least, was received with something less than enthusiasm. Typical of the reactions was the New York World Telegraph headline, “Russians Restrain Joy Over U.S. Broadcast.”¹⁰

Houseman’s place in that system

Against this backdrop, John Houseman functioned less as the creator of policy than as its implementer and amplifier. The strategic line came from the White House and OWI leadership: maintain Allied unity, avoid stories that could fracture it, and, when necessary, launder Soviet claims through the language of “coalition discipline.” Houseman’s contribution was managerial and curatorial — selecting staff and shaping tones that would carry the line. Unlike others who later tried to erase their complicity, Houseman did not revisit Katyn directly. Yet, he continued to employ the same anti-Polish tropes and Soviet talking points — against the Polish Government-in-Exile — well after the guns fell silent.

Polish Ambassador Exposes VOA’s Katyn Lie

In a 1952 letter to the Chief Counsel of the bipartisan U.S. House Madden Committee — which investigated the Katyn massacre and concluded that it was a Soviet war crime and that the Office of War Information and the Voice of America had misled both Americans and foreign audiences about its perpetrators — former Polish Ambassador to Washington Jan Ciechanowski described how U.S. wartime policy subordinated truth to political expediency.

“I was painfully conscious at the time that the sole aim of winning the war militarily and the consequent anxiety to avoid any gesture that might irritate that most valuable ally — the Soviets — dominated American policy so completely that all other political and even human considerations were subordinated to the one major objective of preserving Soviet friendship.”

— Jan Ciechanowski, letter to John J. Mitchell, Chief Counsel, U.S. House Select Committee on the Katyn Forest Massacre, Paris, October 14, 1952. ¹¹

“Thus, in the case of Katyn, the unprecedented horror of the cold-blooded murder of thousands of allied officers and men — the fact that their murder had deprived the Polish Army, then being formed in Russia, of a most valuable cadre of officers, the fact that this dastardly act might seriously affect the fighting spirit of the Polish Armed Forces and of the Polish Nation — were all brushed aside by the United States Government in its anxiety to hush up the so-called ‘Katyn incident,’ lest it affect the all-important good relations between Washington and the Kremlin.”

— Jan Ciechanowski, 1952. ¹²

Years earlier, in his 1947 memoir Defeat in Victory, Ciechanowski had already warned of the same problem — that pro-Soviet sentiment had deeply penetrated U.S. wartime propaganda agencies, including the Office of War Information and its broadcasting arm, the Voice of America.

“Some of the new war agencies actively conducted what could only be termed pro-Soviet propaganda. So-called American propaganda broadcasts to occupied Poland were outstanding proofs of this tendency. Notorious pro-Soviet propagandists and obscure foreign communists and fellow-travelers were entrusted with these broadcasts.”

— Jan Ciechanowski, Defeat in Victory (Garden City: Doubleday, 1947), 130. ¹³

Ciechanowski’s warnings would be vindicated five years later by the Madden Committee’s findings, which confirmed that wartime U.S. government propaganda had concealed Soviet responsibility for the Katyn massacre and misled both domestic and international audiences — a deception in which the Voice of America played a notable part. The congressional investigative body, formally the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre and chaired by Rep. Ray Madden (D–IN), issued a bipartisan report concluding that the Office of War Information and VOA engaged in pro-Soviet propaganda and disinformation aimed at both American and foreign publics.¹⁴

The committee also documented illegal attempts by OWI officials to silence Polish-American radio stations reporting on Katyn. Yet despite the gravity of these findings — one of the most serious failures of wartime journalism — neither VOA’s official history nor major studies of the institution have acknowledged them.

Overlooked Polish Writers and Intellectuals

John Houseman, recommended by Poynter and hired by Sherwood and Donovan, staffed VOA’s Polish Desk not with the most qualified writers and intellectuals available, but with pliant newcomers who would not question pro-Soviet directives. The same was true for other VOA broadcasting services. As a result, he ignored some of the greatest Polish poets and writers of the twentieth century — émigrés such as Jan Lechoń, Kazimierz Wierzyński, Józef Wittlin, and scholars like Oskar Halecki. Allied-based Polish literary and journalistic luminaries abroad, such as Melchior Wańkowicz and Marian Hemar, were overlooked, even though they could have been recruited for jobs in New York or worked as freelancers and war correspondents with Polish troops attached to the Allied armies.

The absence of these voices was not accidental; it reflected Houseman’s preference for malleable staff who would not challenge the pro-Soviet editorial line. Not all of Poland’s best journalists and writers in exile might have agreed to join VOA during the war, but these figures could have given VOA cultural authority; however, Houseman preferred “performers” who fit the pro-Soviet ideological mold.

Even if the most talented refugees had been hired, they would have faced strict limits. The White House itself — almost certainly Roosevelt, through OWI Director Elmer Davis and propaganda chief Sherwood — dictated that the Katyn massacre, which triggered one of the greatest Soviet propaganda lies, be blamed on the Germans and that Stalin not be criticized. Stalin did not want the mass murder of thousands of Polish POW military officers and intellectuals, which he had ordered in 1940, to be blamed on him, and neither did President Roosevelt and VOA’s fellow-traveler journalists.

Yet while Lechoń or Wańkowicz would not have been free to speak the whole truth, they would not have lent their voices to pro-Soviet fabrications. More likely, they would have resigned in protest, as one principled VOA Polish broadcaster, Konstanty Broel Plater, eventually did. Many of them were later snatched by Radio Free Europe (RFE), established in the early 1950s with initially secret U.S. government funding and secret CIA management but enjoying considerably more editorial freedom than VOA.

Złotowska, Arski, and the “Unconquered Poland” Pamphlet 

Houseman relied on Short Wave Research, Inc., a private company that allowed him to bypass Civil Service scrutiny, to recruit lesser-known journalists and actors from his theatre world for the OWI. ¹⁵ Among them was Mira Złotowska (later Michałowska). ¹⁶ Under OWI auspices, she authored the pamphlet Unconquered Poland (1943), illustrated by Czech artist Adolf Hoffmeister, who, after serving as VOA’s Czechoslovak Desk chief, became the Prague communist regime’s ambassador to France. In that pamphlet, OWI radio broadcasts were already referred to as the “Voice of America” — perhaps the first time the name appeared in print.

The author of the segment “This is the Voice of America Calling the People of Poland” in a wartime socialist propaganda pamphlet was Mira Złotowska (later Michałowska), then employed in the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information. In the 1930s, while attending journalism lectures at a private college in Warsaw, she joined the underground Communist Party of Poland (Komunistyczna Partia Polski – KPP). ¹⁷

According to her Polish biographer, before the war, Mira became romantically involved in Poland with fellow KPP activist Zenon Kliszko and even secured his release from prison by persuading a psychiatrist to certify him as mentally unfit. ¹⁸ Her cousin later recalled — though the claim is absent from official records — that she herself was briefly imprisoned in prewar Poland for her communist publishing activities before being released without trial. ¹⁹ Her early ties to the Communist underground in Poland — and the personal networks she built there — would later echo in her relationships inside the Office of War Information and during her postwar life in Poland and abroad as a writer of popular books, the regime’s consultant on radio and television programming, and a wife of a high-ranking communist diplomat.

Although presented as a tribute to Polish resistance, Mira Złotowska’s Unconquered Poland promoted groups aligned with Moscow. It featured slogans such as: “Be ready for revolutionary fight for Freedom, Independence, Socialism!” ²⁰ The pamphlet omitted any mention of the vastly larger Armia Krajowa (Home Army), loyal to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London. Similarly, VOA broadcasts under Houseman’s direction downplayed or marginalized the democratic, multiparty Polish government once Stalin broke with it.

Another Voice of America recruit was Artur Salman (known later as Stefan Arski), Złotowska’s romantic partner at the OWI, who would go on to become one of communist Poland’s most strident propagandists, infamous for his anti-American invective and his denial of Soviet responsibility for the Katyn massacre. Złotowska’s own propaganda writing was more subtle, crafted to persuade American and British readers of the legitimacy and “progressive” character of the Soviet-backed regime taking power in Poland.

After leaving the OWI, she worked briefly for Time magazine, then known for employing numerous pro-Soviet reporters — and even at least one confirmed spy, Stephen Laird. There is no evidence that Złotowska herself was recruited as an agent of influence; however, her background and expertise in Polish affairs suggest she may have provided sympathetic insights to editors eager for pro-Soviet perspectives.

According to Złotowska’s (later Michałowska’s) biographer, one of her high-level U.S. government contacts may have been Alan Cranston, an OWI Domestic Branch official who was responsible for misleading American media about the Soviet Union and who attempted to suppress Polish-American newspapers and radio stations that criticized Stalin and reported the truth about the Katyn massacre.²¹

The Madden Committee condemned such domestic censorship by Cranston and other OWI officials, stating that these actions “went beyond the scope of their duties as official Government representatives.”²²

In congressional language, this was a restrained way of indicating that those officials had overstepped their legal authority — a formulation chosen, perhaps, because the committee, being bipartisan, avoided directly accusing the Roosevelt administration of illegal conduct. Still, Alan Cranston later became a U.S. Democratic senator from California.

In 1946, during a visit to Poland, she published an article in Harper’s Magazine portraying a Communist activist as a defender of the rule of law. ²³ As a journalist, she could hardly have been unaware that at the same time, Polish Communists — aided by Soviet NKVD security forces — were arresting, torturing, and murdering opponents of the new regime. Among the victims were former Home Army fighters who had resisted Nazi occupation and continued their struggle for independence, now branded as “bandits” by the authorities. Others, civilians with no military ties, faced brutal repression simply for demanding free elections or speaking out against Soviet domination.

In his memoirs published after the war, Houseman does not mention Złotowska or Salman (Arski). He praises Tadeusz Hudes, a recent émigré from France in 1942, whom he appointed head of the VOA Polish Desk. Hudes’s name surfaced twice in Congress — once accused of Communist ties by Rep. John Lesinski, Sr. (D-MI), once defended by another congressman, James Assion Wright (D-PA) — but he was never summoned to testify. ²⁴ There is no proof that he [Hudes] was a Communist Party member, as charged by Lesinski, but he was ideologically aligned with Arski and Złotowska. They, in turn, were in touch with a known Soviet NKVD/NKGB spy, Bolesław “Bill” Gebert (code name Ataman), and a key Soviet agent of influence, the University of Chicago economist Oskar Lange (code name Friend), a naturalized U.S. citizen who later became the Warsaw regime’s first ambassador in Washington. Declassified Soviet intelligence cables from the Venona project — a top-secret U.S. Army program that decrypted NKVD/NKGB wartime communications — confirmed both men’s roles: Gebert appeared as a paid Soviet agent, while Lange was handled as a trusted contact. ²⁵ In November 1943, Rep. Fred E. Busbey (R–IL) told the House of Representatives that Gebert, “member of the National Committee of the Communist Party [USA],” participated in VOA programs to Poland in October or November 1942.” ²⁶

The Venona decrypts revealed that several unidentified Soviet espionage contacts operated within the Office of War Information, including one in the French Section who used the cover name Philosopher. That spy has never been conclusively identified, but may have been among Houseman’s early, unvetted hires at VOA. ²⁷ Another important Soviet source inside OWI was Flora Don Wovschin (cover name Zora), a U.S.-born researcher and librarian in the Overseas Branch producing VOA programs. A Venona cable from January 27, 1944, identifies “Zora” as Wovschin, noting her role in providing information from OWI to Soviet handlers. ²⁸

Another case highlighting the porous boundaries between journalism and espionage was that of Peter Rhodes, a wartime OWI and FBIS employee. A Venona cable from August 26, 1944, records his recommendation to Moscow Center by another Soviet source. In Rhodes’s case, as with some journalists outside of OWI, there may be no definitive proof of formal recruitment. Yet many provided valuable information to Soviet contacts, and many more echoed Moscow’s propaganda lines — including false denials of Soviet responsibility for the Katyn massacre — even when they likely knew those denials were lies. ²⁹

This pattern was not limited to OWI or VOA. A 1941 Soviet intelligence report listed twenty-two journalists working for the NKVD/NKGB, a profession outnumbered only by engineers (forty-nine). ³⁰ These findings underscore that Soviet espionage and influence penetrated not only American government propaganda agencies but also a broad swath of Western journalism. ³¹

Houseman himself was never named in congressional debates, which ironically made him a perfect candidate decades later to be remembered as VOA’s “first director” and champion of truth. ³²

However, the reality of Houseman’s hiring practices and his management of VOA broadcasts was quite different. After the war, Julius Epstein, a Jewish refugee journalist from Austria, spoke publicly about “love for Stalin” at the Voice of America’s government agency, where he worked as a German Desk editor:

When I, in 1942, entered the services of what was then the “Coordinator of Information,” which became after a few months the O.W.I., I was immediately struck by the fact that the German desk was almost completely seized by extreme left-wingers who indulged in a purely and exaggerated pro-Stalinist propaganda. ³³

Epstein added:

I do not know of any other case which shows so clearly that the policies of the Voice of America have sometimes exactly the same effect as if they had been designed and carried out by a well-paid Soviet agent than the way the Voice treated Stalin’s cold-blooded murder of 15,000 [the figure known at that time] Polish officers who were massacred on Soviet soil in the spring of 1940. ³⁴

Plater’s Protest and Resignation

The one exception among Houseman’s pro-Soviet Polish Desk staff, Konstanty Broel Plater, resigned when ordered by the VOA Director (it is unclear whether it was Houseman or his successor) to stop challenging Soviet propaganda and disagreeing with President Roosevelt. ³⁵ His departure underscored what might have happened had more independent figures been employed: they would not have collaborated in spreading lies, even if it meant losing their U.S. government jobs.

Howard Fast, Joseph Barnes, and Sumner Welles’s Warning

Houseman’s most famous protégé — completely absent from VOA’s official history and from nearly all books on the subject — was Howard Fast, the organization’s first chief English-language news writer and editor. At the time, he was already a bestselling novelist admired by Eleanor Roosevelt. Later, he became a correspondent for the Communist Party USA newspaper and, in 1953, a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize. He was in charge of VOA news for his English-language broadcast to Europe when the Katyn story broke in April 1943. Fast never returned his Stalinist award and even complained about not receiving royalties for Soviet editions of his books. The translator of Polish editions was his VOA colleague Mira Złotowska (Michałowska).

Fast’s prestige in the communist world grew after his 1947 conviction for contempt of Congress (for refusing to name contributors to a Communist bail fund). He began serving his three-month prison sentence in June 1950, an experience that made him a cause célèbre behind the Iron Curtain. He finally broke with the Communist Party in 1957. He eventually condemned Stalinism but not Marxism, continuing to maintain ties with his Polish friends, whom he regarded as pro-reform Communists. Like him, they had once supported a repressive regime that silenced dissident writers and defended propaganda falsehoods such as the Soviet cover-up of the Katyn massacre.

Earlier at VOA, Fast, like Houseman, lashed out at the pro-democracy Poles who put the blame for Katyn on Stalin and the Soviet Union. In his autobiography, he admitted candidly:

As for myself, during all my tenure [1942–1943] there [the Office of War Information — the Voice of America], I refused to go into anti-Soviet or anti-Communist propaganda. ³⁶

Fast’s candor decades later confirmed what critics of OWI had long suspected: that VOA under Houseman and Barnes had become an echo chamber for Soviet interests. During his tenure at VOA, Fast considered any criticism of the Soviet Union to be anti-Soviet propaganda. Both he and Houseman were later denied U.S. passports for official government travel abroad — another fact expunged from VOA’s official history. The State Department judged that they, along with others at VOA, had carried their enthusiasm for Stalin — and their willingness to repeat the Katyn lie — too far. The White House shared the concern, not because of the lack of support for the Soviet Union as America’s most important ally against Nazi Germany, but for domestic political reasons.

Roosevelt wanted the Katyn massacre of thousands of Polish military officers and intellectuals pinned on the Germans. Exposing Stalin as a mass murderer might have derailed his plans to base postwar world security on close cooperation and friendship with Soviet Russia. Still, OWI’s clumsy, overly zealous defense of Stalin risked alienating Polish-American voters in the 1944 elections.

Members of Congress from both parties began to question the presence of Communists and Soviet sympathizers within the OWI and its domestic propaganda efforts. Unlike President Roosevelt, Republicans and southern Democrats — and even some northern Democrats — were not afraid to ask whether a postwar peace could truly rest on the rosy image of Stalin, Hitler’s recent ally. Some American diplomats and journalists, less dazzled by promises of social progress in communist propaganda, also raised doubts. They argued that Roosevelt’s fear of Stalin striking a separate peace with Germany, combined with the bitter lesson of the 1938 Munich Agreement imposed on Czechoslovakia by Britain and France, should have been a warning enough: appeasing totalitarian dictators only convinces them that aggression pays. It is a lesson with obvious relevance today in the face of Vladimir Putin’s wars.

Even some liberal members of Roosevelt’s inner circle harbored doubts about the administration’s view of Soviet Russia and about how it was being presented to the world through VOA broadcasts. They sometimes shared these concerns privately with the Office of War Information and the White House. In April 1943, Roosevelt’s close friend and trusted foreign policy adviser, Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, sent a memorandum warning about Houseman and his patron, Barnes:

About Houseman: “Said to have been responsible for placing Communists in key positions in foreign radio sections of OWI.” ³⁷

About Barnes: “It is reliably stated that there has been no crucial point in Russian development, since 1934, when Barnes has not followed the Party line and has not been much more successful than the official spokesman in giving it a form congenial to the American way of expression.” ³⁸

Houseman soon resigned under pressure, as did Barnes and Fast, and President Roosevelt made no effort to save their jobs. Robert Sherwood was reassigned to OWI’s London bureau, where he coordinated American propaganda with Soviet messaging. From there, he urged VOA to assure listeners that Stalin was no longer an enemy of religion. ³⁹

Sherwood, Barnes, and Houseman cultivated a culture at VOA in which Soviet interests shaped coverage, and protecting Stalin often meant deliberately misleading listeners. One tragic result was the near-silence on the Holocaust. Neither Roosevelt nor Stalin made saving Europe’s Jews a priority, and the wartime VOA gave the genocide only minimal attention. ⁴⁰Sherwood, Barnes, and Houseman fostered a VOA culture in which Soviet interests dictated coverage, and protecting Stalin required deliberately misleading VOA audiences. Because Roosevelt and Stalin showed little willingness to use military means to rescue Europe’s Jews, the wartime VOA gave scant coverage to the Holocaust.

Congress Pushes Back Against OWI

In 1943, Congress slashed the budget of the OWI’s Domestic Branch, cut funds for VOA’s overseas broadcasts, and nearly abolished the agency altogether. Later, clashes between OWI Director Elmer Davis and General Dwight D. Eisenhower — who charged that VOA officials had shown “insubordination” toward the President and endangered U.S. troops with communist-influenced propaganda — further undermined the organization. In 1945, President Truman dissolved the OWI and transferred the Voice of America to the State Department. ⁴¹

Lost Audiences, Lost Credibility

The Germans forbade the Poles from listening to Allied radio stations and confiscated their radio receivers. Polish listeners who kept their radios tuned to the BBC Polish Service, to Polish Radio broadcasts from London, and to the clandestine station Świt, supplied daily with news from transmitters in Poland operated by Zofia Korbońska. ⁴² After President Truman’s reforms of U.S. international broadcasting and the departure of most pro-Soviet VOA officials and journalists, she joined the Polish Service in 1948. Still, even as late as 1950, the then VOA Polish Service chief censored a broadcast by Józef Czapski, a Polish artist, writer, and reserve officer in the Polish Army during World War II, who was in Soviet captivity. The reason for censorship was Katyn. Captain (later promoted to Major) Czapski avoided execution in Katyn by being transferred to another camp and was released after Hitler attacked Russia in June 1941. Following Stalin’s recognition of the Polish Government-in-Exile, Czapski was tasked with looking for the missing Polish officers in Russia and was repeatedly lied to by various Soviet officials about their fate. He described his futile search for his fellow officers in his memoir, titled The Inhuman Land, and wanted to do the same in a VOA broadcast to Poland, but was prevented by the then-VOA Polish Service chief from telling his story as he wanted.⁴³

End of Censorship, Audience Gains under Reagan

Even after Truman’s reforms, VOA’s audience lagged, and candid reporting on the Katyn massacre and other communist atrocities was restricted by the State Department, the United States Information Agency (USIA), and compliant VOA managers and editors. Bureaucratic bloat, underfunding of foreign language services, and continued timidity left it vulnerable. By contrast, Radio Free Europe became the premier broadcaster to Poland. By the 1970s, RFE’s Polish Service had five times VOA’s audience. ⁴⁴

Only under Ronald Reagan did VOA regain ground. Reagan’s team replaced its senior leadership, empowered language services, and removed restrictions on reporting on the Soviet Union and the Katyn massacre.

History Hidden, Lessons Not Learned

VOA’s wartime propaganda in favor of communists and the Soviet Union produced neither major uprisings against Nazi Germany nor a shorter war. Nowhere was this clearer than in Poland — the country most heavily targeted by VOA with pro-Soviet messaging. Predominantly Catholic and long familiar with Russian imperialism and the dangers of communism, Poles remained resistant to such propaganda. VOA had little wartime listenership in Poland, yet it was there that the largest anti-Nazi underground movement emerged and two of the most significant uprisings took place: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. A Polish refugee journalist in wartime London recalled:

“With genuine horror, we listened to the Polish-language programs of the Voice of America (or whatever name they had then). In line with what [the Soviet news agency] TASS was communicating, the Warsaw Uprising was being completely ignored.” ⁴⁵

There is no measurable evidence that VOA’s English-language broadcasts during the war — or even most of its programs in vernacular languages — reached significant audiences, contributed to winning battles, or advanced democracy abroad. They certainly did not help bring democracy to Poland or other East-Central European nations after the war. ⁴⁶

No English-speaking country was at war with the United States during World War II. Yet, as Republican members of Congress noted, much of VOA’s wartime broadcasting effort and spending went to English-language programs. ⁴⁷ Officials in charge of OWI and VOA created a space for hiring Roosevelt loyalists and admirers of Soviet-style communism. Arthur Krock, Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, wrote that OWI spoke with an ideology “that conforms much more closely to the Moscow than to the Washington-London line.” He added:

“Those administrators of the foreign propaganda division who are not confused, or deliberate undercutters of the State Department, are incompetent.” ⁴⁸

Washington Times-Herald columnist John O’Donnell was even more blunt when Congress considered defunding VOA in 1943:

“Few honest newspaper tears are going to be shed over the demise of an outfit which from birth was a New Deal Roosevelt propaganda body… a parking place for pay-roll patriots, political stumble bums and the incompetent sweepings of editorial rooms.” ⁴⁹

Journalists driven by extreme ideologies or partisanship risk alienating domestic constituencies, foreign audiences, and Congress alike, leading to budget cuts or even institutional collapse. The wartime VOA’s willingness to accommodate Soviet propaganda undercut its credibility — a cautionary tale whenever political expediency threatens editorial independence.

The lesson is clear: presidential leadership, professional management, authentic voices, and strong language services are the foundations of credibility. Even the best broadcasts cannot shorten wars against determined enemies. Nor can they secure democracy where societies lack the will and the institutions to defend it — as Poland did with remarkable bravery during World War II and the Cold War.

Politicians and journalists can inflict lasting damage when they abandon truth; undoing that damage is a slow and uncertain process. Whether Stalin could have secured absolute control of Poland if Roosevelt had not trusted Soviet agents of influence is unknowable. Nor can we know what might have happened if OWI had not concealed the truth about the Katyn massacre or if John Houseman had not hired pro-Soviet journalists to portray Stalin as a defender of democracy. What is certain is that it took decades of persistence by Radio Free Europe and later VOA journalists to counterbalance the long-term effects of wartime propaganda.

Memory, Reckoning, and the Long Arc of Truth

These historical failures gain sharper meaning when viewed in light of the later evolution of the American Left’s understanding of communism. By the 1970s and 1980s, liberal thinkers who had once looked at the Soviet Union with sympathy or strategic indulgence began to confront the magnitude of its crimes and the lasting harm inflicted by decades of apologetic journalism. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland — a genuine labor and human rights uprising grounded in Catholic and social democratic traditions — forced a reappraisal.

Even among progressive intellectuals, silence about Soviet oppression became untenable. In 1982, at a rally supporting Solidarity at New York’s Town Hall, Susan Sontag stunned her audience by declaring that communism was “a variant — the most successful variant — of Fascism” and observing that for decades readers of Reader’s Digest had often been better informed about communist realities than readers of left-liberal journals. Her remarks provoked immediate criticism from parts of the American Left but marked a watershed moment: a leading liberal intellectual publicly acknowledging the depth of Soviet betrayal and Western media complicity. ⁵⁰

Sontag’s shift illustrates a truth often omitted from simplified histories: criticism of Soviet influence at VOA and in American journalism did not come solely from the right or from McCarthyite paranoia. Many of the post-war RFE and VOA journalists who fought Soviet censorship were democratic Socialists, liberals, trade unionists, and Catholic lay intellectuals. In the early RFE Polish Service, the largest identifiable political group among those who declared affiliation were Socialists; most others were non-party democrats shaped by Poland’s labor movement and moral traditions.⁵¹

One Polish journalist who fled during martial law in 1981 found temporary refuge in Sontag’s home before joining VOA’s Polish Service. This personal detail illustrates a deeper truth: the defense of honesty about communism was not the monopoly of any political camp. It united those who refused to excuse oppression regardless of ideology.⁵²

By the time Solidarity rose to challenge Soviet domination, the old myths had collapsed. Sontag and many other liberal Americans recognized what Houseman, Barnes, Sherwood, Fast, Carroll, Lattimore, and their wartime colleagues had failed to see — or refused to acknowledge: that portraying the Soviet Union as a defender of democracy distorted reality and betrayed the very principles they claimed to defend. In contrast, post-war generations of RFE and VOA journalists labored for decades to restore the truth that wartime propaganda had buried.

Their work helped sustain democratic movements in Eastern Europe. In the end, it was not ideological convenience but honest reporting — grounded in lived experience and moral responsibility — that proved indispensable. This remains the enduring legacy of those who chose truth over expedience.

An abridged excerpt from Ted Lipien’s forthcoming book: Katyn, Yalta, and the Great Cover-Up: How Pro-Soviet U.S. Officials and Voice of America Broadcasters Hid Stalin’s Crimes and Helped Deliver Eastern Europe to Communist Rule.

1. Duranty described Barnes to another sympathetic reporter, John Gunther, as “the best friend I had here [Moscow],” praising his knowledge of the Soviet Union. S. J. Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty, The New York Times’s Man in Moscow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 280. Walter Duranty to John Gunther, March 2, 1939, Personal Files of John Gunther. In November 2003, despite strong criticism of Duranty’s pro-Soviet propaganda and his cover-up of the famine in Ukraine, the Pulitzer Prize Board voted not to revoke his 1932 award. “Statement on Walter Duranty’s 1932 Prize,” Pulitzer Prize Board, November 20, 2003, https://www.pulitzer.org/news/statement-walter-duranty. See also the 2002–2003 Pulitzer Prize Board membership list, https://www.pulitzer.org/board/2003.
2. Robert E. Sherwood, “Weekly Propaganda Directive: Poland,” May 1, 1943, signed by Sherwood as Director, Overseas Branch, OWI, pp. 1–3, RG 208, Records of the Office of War Information, National Archives at College Park, MD.
3. Walter Duranty, “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving,” New York Times, March 31, 1933; Gareth Jones, “Mr. Jones Replies: Former Secretary of Lloyd George Tells of Observations in Russia,” New York Times, May 13, 1933, 12; Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937), chap. on the press corps’ response to Jones (excerpted in The Holodomor Reader [Toronto: CIUS Press, 2012], 572–78); Marco Carynnyk, “The Famine the Times Couldn’t Find,” Commentary, November 1983.
4. Owen Lattimore, “New Road to Asia,” National Geographic, December 1944, p. 567.
5. Homer Smith, Black Man in Red Russia (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1964), 158–166.
6. Krystyna Piórkowska, Anglojęzyczni świadkowie Katynia: najnowsze badania (Warszawa: Muzeum Wojska Polskiego, 2012), 100.
7. Harrison E. Salisbury, A Journey for Our Times: A Memoir (New York) Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1983), 216.
8. Leopold Braun and Gary M. Hamburg,In Lubianka’s Shadow: The Memoirs of an American Priest in Stalin’s Moscow, 1934-1945 (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 259.
9. “Pedigree Horses Gift from Stalin,” The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW), April 21 1946, p. 15; “Girl’s Gift Horses from Stalin,” The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld.), May 2 1946, p. 1.
10. Edward Carleton Helwick, Jr., “Policy problems of the Voice of America: 1945-1953.” Master Thesis, Department of Political Sciences, University of Southern California, June 1954, pp. 218-219.
11. Jan Ciechanowski, Ambassador, to John J. Mitchell, Chief Counsel, United States House Select Committee on the Katyn Forest Massacre, Paris, October 14, 1952, “Individual File,” A–Re, Box 5, Record Group 233, Select Committee on the Katyn Forest Massacre, 82nd Congress, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.
12. Ibid.
13. Jan Ciechanowski, Defeat in Victory (Garden City: Doubleday, 1947), 130.
14. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, The Katyn Forest Massacre: Final Report of the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre, 82nd Cong., 2nd sess., House Report No. 2505 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952).
15. U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 78th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 89, pt. 7 (House), November 4, 1943, 9138 (statement of Rep. Richard Bowditch Wigglesworth, Republican of Massachusetts), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1943-pt7/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1943-pt7-10-2.pdf (accessed October 5, 2025).
16. In a Request for Personnel Action form dated September 28, 1942, John Houseman, listed as Program Director in the Office for Emergency Management, signed the authorization to hire Mira Złotowska “at once” as Assistant Script Editor in the Polish Section of the Overseas Operations Branch, International Press and Radio Bureau of the Office of War Information. The appointment, at a CAF-7 grade with a salary of $2,600 per year, is preserved in her personnel file at the U.S. National Archives in St. Louis.
17. Stalin dissolved the KPP in 1938 and ordered the execution of many of its leaders and members who had taken refuge in the Soviet Union.
18. Monika Ksieniewicz–Mil, Mira. Kobieta światowa: Opowieść o Mirze Michałowskiej (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo AB, 2025), 43.
19. Ibid., 41. After her romance with Kliszko ended, she married Ignacy Złotowski and moved with him to Paris. Kliszko rose to power as one of the most hard-line communist leaders in postwar Poland, notorious for his role in the purge of Jewish Communist Party members and in the antisemitic campaign of 1968. Both of Mira’s parents were Jewish and died in ghettos during the German occupation.
20. Unconquered Poland (New York: Poland Fights / Polish Labor Group, 1943), Cold War Radio Museum collection.
21. Ksieniewicz–Mil, Mira. Kobieta światowa, 266–268.
22. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, The Katyn Forest Massacre: Final Report of the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre, 82nd Cong., 2nd sess., House Report No. 2505 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), 12.
23. Mira Złotowska, “I came back from Poland,” Harper’s Magazine, November 1946.
24. U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 78th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 89, pt. 5 (House), June 24, 1943, 6000 (statement of Rep. John Lesinski, Sr., Democrat of Michigan), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1943-pt5/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1943-pt5-9-2.pdf (accessed October 5, 2025). U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 78th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 89, pt. 5 (House), June 24, 1943, 6454 (statement of Rep. James Assion Wright, Democrat of Pennsylvania), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1943-pt5/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1943-pt5-9-2.pdf (accessed October 5, 2025).
25. U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service, “Belmont Memorandum – Some Cases Where CIA Has a Responsibility,” June 23, 1952, 2, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Venona%3A_FBI_Documents_of_Historic_Interest/Belmont_Memorandum_1952-06-23 (Gebert = “Ataman”); John Earl Haynes, “Lange, Oscar: ‘Friend’ / ‘Priyatel’ (KGB U.S. line) [source Venona],” https://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page66.html (Lange = “Friend”).
26. U.S. Congress, House, Congressional Record, 78th Cong., 1st sess., November 4, 1943, vol. 89, pt. 7, p. 9145. PDF of the bound edition: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1943-pt7/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1943-pt7-10-2.pdf.
27. John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2000), 197–199.
28. U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service / National Security Agency, Venona: New York KGB Messages, 1944, No. 144 (New York to Moscow), Jan. 27, 1944, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/article/Venona-New-York-KGB-1944.pdf (see p. 2, identifying ZORA as Flora Don Wovschin).
29. Venona cable, New York to Moscow, Aug. 26, 1944, “Recommendation of Peter Rhodes by ‘ECHO’,” cited in John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, 360–61; also referenced in FBI Silvermaster case summaries based on Elizabeth Bentley’s testimony.
30. John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2009), 145.
31. The Soviet security and intelligence services went through many reorganizations before the creation of the KGB in 1954. They began with the Cheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, 1917), then became the GPU (State Political Administration, 1922), OGPU (Unified State Political Administration, 1923), NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, 1934), NKGB (People’s Commissariat for State Security, 1941, re-established 1943), and MGB (Ministry of State Security, 1946). For simplicity, many Western authors use the name “KGB” to cover Soviet intelligence operations throughout this period, even when the agency had a different official title.
32. Communists who had turned against Stalin and communism were often the first to expose Soviet influence in the Office of War Information. Oliver Carlson, a writer, journalist, founder of the Young Communist League of America, and lecturer at the University of Chicago. Carlson, who had never worked for VOA and only observed the organization as an outsider, published a pamphlet, Radio in the Red (1947), describing how pro-Soviet U.S. government propaganda developed with the help of OWI officials and journalists: “During the war years — and largely with government blessing — the Communists moved en masse on the radio, as they did on the movies and the press to help ‘sell’ the American people on the virtues of our Soviet ally. The idea officially projected through such organizations as the O.W.I., was to cure ‘misunderstanding’ of Soviet Russia, which was suddenly discovered to be a ‘democracy’ and a noble social experiment.” Oliver Carlson, Radio in the Red (New York: Catholic Information Society, 1947), 7.
33. Julius Epstein, “The O.W.I. and the Voice of America,” a reprint from the Polish American Journal, Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1952.
34. Ibid.
35. Teofil Lachowicz, “Zapomniany dyplomata,” Przegląd Polski (New York), October 20, 2000.
36. Howard Fast, Being Red (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), 23.
37. Sumner Welles, memorandum to the White House, April 6, 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, PSF 76, Box 168. Only one piece of information in the attachment about John Houseman sent to the White House by Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles was false. Native Son, Richard Wright’s 1940 novel, was neither subversive nor un-American. Wright himself, while once a member of the Communist Party, broke with it and later condemned Communism in the landmark 1949 collection The God That Failed, alongside Louis Fischer, André Gide, Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, and Stephen Spender. The mischaracterization of Native Son should not obscure the broader accuracy of the State Department’s concerns about Houseman’s associations and his role in recruiting Communists into the OWI’s foreign language services.

    Welles emphasized that this was not an isolated concern. The attached report went further, noting the risk that if American and Soviet policies diverged, many VOA staffers would side with Moscow:

    “Should there be a divergence between policies pursued by the United States and by Russia, many of these men would probably follow the line taken by Russia, rather than the line taken by the United States.”

38. Ibid.
39. Robert E. Sherwood, confidential cable (paraphrase), London to the Office of War Information, May 8, 1944, RG 208, Records of the Office of War Information, Director of Overseas Operations, Area Policy Files, 1943–1946 (Entry 358), Korea to Portugal, Box 111, National Archives at College Park, MD.
40. “The Voice of America — the United States Government overseas radio broadcasting station founded in 1942 — ignored the subject of the Holocaust throughout the Second World War,” wrote American scholar Holly Cowan Shulman in 1997. She noted that many officials in charge of VOA were “either Jewish or philo-Semites,” yet during the war, they “said very little about the persecution of the Jews of Europe at all.” Holly Cowan Shulman, “The Voice of America, US Propaganda and the Holocaust: ‘I Would Have Remembered’,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television 17, no. 1 (March 1997): 91–103.
41. Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956–1961 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1965), 279. Eisenhower continued to view VOA critically even during his presidency. He recalled one incident in which a VOA reporter sought partisan support in Congress: “In Washington I had been told that a representative of the Voice of America (our governmental radio overseas) had tried to obtain from a senator a statement opposing our landing of troops in Lebanon. In a state of some pique I informed Secretary Dulles that this was carrying the policy of ‘free broadcasting’ too far. The Voice of America should, I said, employ truth as a weapon in support of the Free World, but it had no mandate or license to seek evidence of lack of domestic support of America’s foreign policies and actions.”
42. Zofia Korbońska, “Tajemnica Radiostacji ‘Świt,’” Przegląd Polski (New York), July 30, 1992, 6–7.
43. Prof. J.K. Zawodny wrote in his 1962 Katyn study Death in the Forest:

    “Even in the postwar years, after President Roosevelt had died, the war with Japan was over, and the U.N. Charter was already in effect— the policy of suppressing the Katyn case was continued by the State Department. The war was over for several years when Mr. Czapski, the man so actively engaged in searching for the missing men in Russia, and himself a survivor of the annihilation, came to the United States for a visit in the early spring of 1950. The Voice of America invited him to make a broadcast in the Polish language to Poland. From it officials of the Voice of America meticulously eliminated all references to the Katyn Massacre. He was not even allowed to mention the word ‘Katyn.’” J. K. Zawodny, Death in the Forest (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962), 186.

44. A. Ross Johnson and R. Eugene Parta, “Cold War International Broadcasting: Lessons Learned,” paper presented at “Communicating with the Islamic World,” Annenberg Foundation Trust, Rancho Mirage, California, February 5, 2005.
45. Czesław Straszewicz, “O Świcie,” Kultura, October 1953, 61–62. Reference located by Jarosław Jędrzejczak (historian of VOA’s Polish Service).
46. Edward P. Lilly, The Development of American Psychological Operations: 1945–1951 (Washington, DC: Psychological Strategy Board, 1951), 21.
47. U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 78th Cong., 2d sess., May 26, 1944, vol. 90, pt. 4, p. 5022. Full text: govinfo.gov.
48. Arthur Krock, “President Rebukes OWI for Broadcast on Regime in Italy,” The New York Times, July 28, 1943, A5.
49. John O’Donnell, “Capitol Stuff,” Washington Times-Herald, August 20, 1943.
50. Susan Sontag, remarks delivered at Town Hall, New York, February 6, 1982; contemporary coverage includes “Seeing Red,” Time, March 15, 1982, and The Washington Post, March 16, 1982.
51. Jan Nowak (Zdzisław Jeziorański), Wojna w Eterze: Wspomnienia, Tom I, 1948-1956 (London: Odnowa, 1985), 84.
52. Personal recollection confirmed in interviews with former VOA Polish Service staff; see also internal VOA oral histories of Solidarity-era émigré journalists.