Frank Wisner

And here's why I believe it.

When I met with Frank Wisner and Tom Pickering, a couple of other people, myself with President Ahmadinejad in New York, when UNGA was happening in that time, I think it was somewhere around 12 or 13, it was the last year of Ahmadinejad's presidency.

I had an opportunity to meet afterwards with the very eloquent English speaking, as good as me anyway, foreign minister.

He essentially told me that he would go to the UN Security Council.

So both countries are kind of thinking, "This is how we can undermine the Soviet grip on these countries." And Philby's relationship here will be with a, a particularly interesting officer.

So on kind of the intelligence gathering side, it's with Angleton, but on the covert action side, it's a guy called Frank Wisner, The Wiz.

The Wiz.

[laughs] Br- And Wisner, The Wiz, runs what was then called the Office for Policy Coordination, which I think has one of these great-

Euphemistic names

... anodyne [laughs] bureaucratic names as actually this is the covert action arm.

And, you know, the Americans have the money, but the Brits think, "Well, we've got kind of, we've got more experience, particularly in Europe.

We've got the brains, the background," but also something else of value.

But when China fell to the Communist Party, he had returned home and sold the airline to the CIA.

You might remember it was the airline Frank Wisner bought in the early 1950s.

Anyway, how can we help Mrs. Chenault?

Well, actually, I was more wondering if I could help you.

And they just recreate it with a different name.

So that became the flagship for their cultural operation, and basically it was married with Frank Wisner's Mighty Wor- Wurlitzer, as it was nicknamed.

Um, and they set up a whole bunch of different front groups.

Many of them were foundations.

And awaiting that, Tofta had bought flowers that he was going to bring to his daughter-in-law.

But while he's sitting there waiting for Finn to pick him up, he befriends this attractive young woman who's a nurse at the nearby hospital and gives her the flowers instead.

Then when Finn comes to pick his dad up, the woman gushes to him that, oh, your dad is absolutely charming.

Toft is 74 years old at the time.

So in a sense, how much of this bleeds over into the Cold War? Because at the same time, there's another fascinating OSS story unfolding In a region right next door in Romania.

So Frank Wisner arrives in Romania in 1944 and becomes alarmed, not so much by the Germans, but what the Soviet Union is doing as the Red Army moves into Eastern Europe.

So our Sparrow and what Wisner is doing in Romania, two snapshots of a moment of World War II.

It's already starting to turn towards the Cold War.

But when China fell to the Communist Party, he had returned home and sold the airline to the CIA.

You might remember it was the airline Frank Wisner bought in the early 1950s.

Anyway, how can we help, Mrs. Chennault?

Well, actually, I was more wondering if I could help you.

Francis Stoner Saunders when he first walked into my apartment where we were editing.

So, you know, the mighty Wurlitzer, of course, refers to Frank Wisner, who was like a deputy director of CIA, who would talk about his big propaganda machine, which included, as we now know, Encounter magazine and all these literary books.

magazines throughout Europe.

And, you know, he would play his mighty Wurlitzer and the world's press would dance the tune.

Right.

So it's combining the beggars waltz idea with Frank Wisner's mighty Wurlitzer.

So that's where that first opening number that all the Yale students who are real Yale students are dancing to.

Our wish to preserve the illusion of a classless society lends itself to the telling of a story, a story about two young men who don't know whether they want to rule the world or save it.

I could not believe it.

And like, you know, I spent all that time in the archives, like, like really learning and like hanging out with the offspring of Frank Wisner, which we're going to talk about today, actually, because a lot of that shit goes back to it.

But, um, Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah, so many more episodes yet to be done together.

The other thing was, in the late 40s, early 50s, as I explained in parts on The Hut for Tom Clancy, or I did my master's thesis on it, if you want to read a master's thesis, it's on Virginia's website.

But...

Frank Wisner in the Office of Policy Coordination basically decided the threat from the Soviets was the Comintern.

Like, you know, and all the things the Comintern was doing, sponsoring cultural shit, sponsoring like publishing, actors, plays, you know, whatever.

And he talks about the, the relationships between journalists and, uh, their, their use for intelligence purposes.

And again, uh, you have people like Frank Wisner, who worked for the CIA and, and actually helped to c- uh, uh, recruit journalists to counter, they said, pr- communist propaganda.

They funded front organizations.

And it is said today, this is not Bernstein saying this, this is...