Richard Cummings' excellent ColdWarRadio blogspot, mostly about Radio Free Europe/Liberty, has two recent posts about a US government funded offshore radio project to beam propaganda into Albania in 1950. A boat was bought and test transmissions made:
Part One:
Part Two, how it all went wrong
The CIA documentation associated with project BGSPEED and used in the blog posts is at the link below. There were broadcast tests after the vessel reached Greece as well as in the US on a cruise to Miami.
Document 0029: "extensive broadcast testing in the eastern Mediterranean area."
Document 0027: "Subsequent tests in the actual area of operation produced completely negative results. Although careful and repeated operating tests were run under every conceivable condition with the single exception that the distance never exceeded 300 miles, no satisfactory signals were detected beyond ground wave distance (50 6-65 miles)."
Among problems noted in document 0021 were "Personal experience shows that seasick announcer makes bad impression."
(Mike Barraclough via bdxc-news io group)
