Warsaw Soviet Lie Factory

The smug gullibility of Western correspondents and the wishful thinking of the Poles combine to make Warsaw an ideal center of Soviet “disinformation”

Retrospective analysis shows that the most sensational news received in the last two years on the USSR and the Soviet bloc has reached the West by way of Warsaw. Any information bearing a Warsaw dateline is regarded in the Free World as particularly reliable. Even that major document, the “top secret Khrushchev report to the Twentieth Party Congress” came to the State Department, it is said, via Warsaw. Western correspondents there seem to know all there is to know on political developments behind the Iron Curtain—Kremlin intrigues, secret conversations, private opinions of Communist leaders, even the secret plans of the Chinese Communists. On the other hand, the unhappy correspondents reporting from other Iron Curtain capitals seem to know nothing, either on China or on the doings of the local “people’s democracy.”

GK

About the Author

George Kremer

Featured Tags

The smug gullibility of Western correspondents and the wishful thinking of the Poles combine to make Warsaw an ideal center of Soviet “disinformation”

Retrospective analysis shows that the most sensational news received in the last two years on the USSR and the Soviet bloc has reached the West by way of Warsaw. Any information bearing a Warsaw dateline is regarded in the Free World as particularly reliable. Even that major document, the “top secret Khrushchev report to the Twentieth Party Congress” came to the State Department, it is said, via Warsaw. Western correspondents there seem to know all there is to know on political developments behind the Iron Curtain—Kremlin intrigues, secret conversations, private opinions of Communist leaders, even the secret plans of the Chinese Communists. On the other hand, the unhappy correspondents reporting from other Iron Curtain capitals seem to know nothing, either on China or on the doings of the local “people’s democracy.”