The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was an open source intelligence component of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Science and Technology. It monitored, translated, and disseminated within the U.S. government openly available news and information from media sources outside the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. Its headquarters was in Rosslyn, later Reston,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

, and it maintained approximately 20 monitoring stations worldwide. In November 2005, it was announced that FBIS would become the newly formed Open Source Center, tasked with the collection and analysis of publicly available intelligence.

History

On 26 February 1941, President Roosevelt directed that $150,000 be allocated for creation of the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service (FBMS) under the authority of the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

. The mandate of the FBMS was to record, translate, transcribe and analyze

shortwave Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave (SW) radio frequencies. There is no official definition of the band, but the range always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz (100 to 10 me ...

propaganda radio programs that were being beamed at the United States by the

Axis powers The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were ...

. Its first monitoring station was established in October 1941 in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous ...

Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service

The year following the

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...

in December 1941, the system gained importance and changed its name to the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service partly to make it sound more like a war agency. At four different listening centers it recorded shortwave broadcasts on plastic disks. Selected material was transcribed and translated and then sent to War agencies with weekly reports. These special reports included special titles such as ''Radio Tokyo's Racial Propaganda to the United States, Underground Movements and Morale in Japan,'' and ''New Nazi Portrait of the American Soldier.'' Monitored stations included official stations in many countries, and "black" stations that were not what they pretended be. These black stations broadcast attacks on President Franklin D. Roosevelt while pretending to be stations in the American Midwest. This tactic was used to stir up racial tensions and other issues. Foreign Broadcast Information Service equipment 1945

Foreign Broadcast Information Service equipment 1945

Multiple speeches and recording were monitored including speeches by

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...

Joseph Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the '' Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to ...

Joachim von Ribbentrop Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (; 30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and diplomat who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945. Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's not ...

Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in ...

, Philippe Pétain,

Pierre Laval Pierre Jean Marie Laval (; 28 June 1883 – 15 October 1945) was a French politician. During the Third Republic, he served as Prime Minister of France from 27 January 1931 to 20 February 1932 and 7 June 1935 to 24 January 1936. He again occ ...

, and others; broadcasts over German radio by American citizens, including Fred W. Kaltenbach, Douglas Chandler, and Edward Leo Delaney; and broadcasts from Japan or Japanese-held territory, including news reports and commentary by "

Tokyo Rose Tokyo Rose (alternative spelling Tokio Rose) was a name given by Allied troops in the South Pacific during World War II to all female English-speaking radio broadcasters of Japanese propaganda. The programs were broadcast in the South Pacific ...

." The FBIS kept track of a total of sixty black stations, which included a German-language station that pretended to represent an anti-Nazi army group, an anti-Nazi "Catholic" station, and an English-language station that attacked

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

Foreign Broadcast Information Service

With the termination of the

OSS OSS or Oss may refer to: Places * Oss, a city and municipality in the Netherlands * Osh Airport, IATA code OSS People with the name * Oss (surname), a surname Arts and entertainment * ''O.S.S.'' (film), a 1946 World War II spy film about ...

following the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, the service was transferred to the

Department of the Army The United States Department of the Army (DA) is one of the three military departments within the Department of Defense of the U.S. The Department of the Army is the federal government agency within which the United States Army (U.S.) is org ...

. Like many other wartime organizations, the service was threatened with disbandment. The possibility of its disbandment was roundly criticized in many different quarters, which helped ensure its survival. When President Harry S. Truman created the

Central Intelligence Group The National Intelligence Authority (NIA) was the United States Government authority responsible for monitoring the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), the successor intelligence agency of the Office of Strategic Services established by President ...

under the direction of a

Director of Central Intelligence The director of central intelligence (DCI) was the head of the American Central Intelligence Agency from 1946 to 2005, acting as the principal intelligence advisor to the president of the United States and the United States National Security C ...

by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, the FBIS became part of that group. In 1946, the service was renamed the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), and became a part of the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

(CIA) as that organization was formed following the

National Security Act of 1947 The National Security Act of 1947 ( Pub.L.br>80-253 61 Stat.br>495 enacted July 26, 1947) was a law enacting major restructuring of the United States government's military and intelligence agencies following World War II. The majority of the pro ...

. Its original mission revolved around radio and press agency monitoring, built on what was already becoming an “almost mature, trained and disciplined” organization from the war experience. In response to the

Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...

and

START Treaty START I (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the reduction and the limitation of strategic offensive arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 De ...

, FBIS was tasked with monitoring for clandestine and encoded messages from all nations and coordinating broadcast media contact points who could instantly broadcast urgent messages on "All Channels" and "All Calls". In 1967, the Service's mission was expanded to cover foreign mass media transmitted by radio, television, and print. Fbis

In 2007, Readex announced its plans to create a digital edition entitled Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports, 1941–1996. , this collection is available online via a paid subscription to Readex, as are Daily Report Annexes for 1974–1996.

Services

FBIS had approximately 20 stations, commonly called bureaus, that were located around the world. These stations operated as an adjunct of a U.S. embassy/consulate or military command. Bureaus opened and closed at various times depending on the world situation and local circumstances. These stations were not covert and operated with the consent of the host government. In addition, a few of the bureaus were located on territory belonging to or administered by the U.S. such as

Key West, Florida Key West ( es, Cayo Hueso) is an island in the Straits of Florida, within the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Sigsbee Park, Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Isla ...

, Bahia Sucia, Puerto Rico, the

Panama Canal Zone The Panama Canal Zone ( es, Zona del Canal de Panamá), also simply known as the Canal Zone, was an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the Isthmus of Panama, that existed from 1903 to 1979. It was located within the ter ...

, etc. The personnel in the stations were both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals who were responsible for the collection, translation, and dissemination of foreign open source material. Depending on location, and the availability of print media, these personnel may have been responsible for translation of more than one language. Because of the large number print/radio/TV/satellite sources worldwide FBIS did not collect all open source material, but only those sources that met the requirements of the Intelligence Community. Besides the translations done overseas a large volume of less-time sensitive material was sent to FBIS headquarters in Rosslyn and Reston where a more detailed translation could take place. Not only were translations provided by in-house FBIS personnel, but approximately 700 independent contractors were also employed.

Customers

Material provided by FBIS was disseminated to over 700 recipients in not only in the U.S. Intelligence Community, but also a large number of government, diplomatic and military organizations. The material provided by FBIS, although it came from openly available, public radio and TV broadcasts, was not made freely available to the American people, frequently due to copyright laws.

In the news

Saving FBIS from budget cuts

The

Federation of American Scientists The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is an American nonprofit global policy think tank with the stated intent of using science and scientific analysis to attempt to make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1946 by scientists who w ...

launched a successful campaign in 1997 to save FBIS from planned budget cuts. During its campaign, FBIS was described by academicians at the time as the "biggest bang for the buck in the American intelligence community."

The Larry Chin spy incident

Larry Wu-tai Chin worked for FBIS from 1952 to 1981 and sold classified documents to China.

Similar organizations

Australia

Office of National Intelligence Open Source Centre

Britain

BBC Monitoring

References

Fighting a War of Words

Australian Office of National Assessments

* ttps://fas.org/irp/fbis/riddel.html Remarks by J. Niles Riddel D/Director FBIS at the 1st Int'l Symposium "National Security & National Competitiveness: Open Source Solutions" 2 Dec 92 *

Specified references

External links

FBIS homepage

World News Connection

Readex online edition of FBIS Daily Report

Federation of American Scientists webpage on FBIS

* ttp://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0k40329q/ Inventory of the United States Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service Miscellaneous Recordsan
selected sound recordings online
at the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University. {{Authority control Central Intelligence Agency Open-source intelligence in the United States Government agencies established in 1941