Who am I and how did I land here?

Allow me to briefly give some biographic details: I was born and grew up in Massachusetts eventually graduated form Boston University with a B.A. in Soviet and East European Studies. While in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s, I studied Russian at Indiana University, followed by assignments as a Russian linguist in Berlin and Turkey.

I was one of the last graduate students at the Institute for the Study of the USSR in Munich, before it closed in 1972. My academic life basically ended then, and my professional life began as I returned to Boston and served as a Criminal Investigator for the US. Immigration & Naturalization Service until October 1980.

Through luck, happenstance, or fate, I then became the Director of Security for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL in Munich, Germany, for the next 15 years. After RFE/RL moved to Prague in the summer of 1995, I became the Security and Safety Consultant for RFE/RL in Prague until 1998. For the next nine years, I was West European Director of Security for Citibank, based in Düsseldorf, Germany, until 2007, when I went moved on to the third stage of my life: writing and speaking about the Cold War.

My articles on Cold War history have appeared in various publications in Europe and the USA, including the August 2008 issue of The Journal of Transatlantic Studies: The ether war: hostile intelligence activities directed against Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and the émigré community in Munich during the Cold War.

I have given presentations at numerous international academic conferences, the last of which was: A Tangled Web: Central Intelligence Agency, Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Asia, International Intelligence History Association (IIHA) 16th Annual Conference, Tutzing, Germany, April 23-25, 2010

My book Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 was published by McFarland & Company Publishers in 2009. My second book, Radio Free Europe’s Crusade for Freedom: Rallying Americans Behind Cold War Broadcasting, 1950-1960, will be published by McFarland in July 2010.

Participation here is exciting and I am looking forward to a lively exchange of ideas and experiences.