According to RFE / RL, comparable sums are believed to be transferred through non-bank systems, implying that cash remittances make up approximately 30 percent of Armenia's GDP in the first half of 2008.

RFE / RL, August 30, 2007 ( an article about the impact of the Summer of Love event on Soviet youth culture )

* RFE / RL East German Subject Files: Communist Party Open Society Archives, Budapest

* RFE / RL East German Subject Files: Communist Party Open Society Archives, Budapest

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty ( RFE / RL ) is a broadcaster funded by the U. S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East " where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed ".

RFE / RL is supervised by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a bi-partisan federal agency overseeing all US international broadcasting services.

Founded as an anti-communist propaganda source during the Cold War, RFE / RL was headquartered at Englischer Garten in Munich, Germany, from 1949 to 1995.

In addition to the headquarters, the service maintains 20 local bureaus in countries throughout their broadcast region, as well as a corporate office in Washington, D. C. RFE / RL broadcasts in 28 languages to 21 countries including Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

In 1976, the two radios merged to form Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty ( RFE / RL ) and added the three Baltic language services to their repertoire.

On February 21, 1981, RFE / RL's headquarters in Munich was struck by a massive bomb, causing $ 2 million in damage.

Funding for RFE / RL increased during the Reagan Administration.

This presented a challenge to RFE / RL's broadcast strategy, which had been very cautious since the controversy over its alleged role in the Hungarian Revolution.

Following the November 17 demonstrations and brutal crackdown by Czechoslovak riot police, RFE / RL's Czechoslovak service reported that a student, Martin Šmid, had been killed during the clashes.

Upon hearing about the story, RFE / RL did not run it immediately, but attempted to find a second corroborating source for the story, as per official RFE / RL policy.

While a second source was never found, RFE / RL eventually decided to run the story of Šmid's death after it was reported by several major news organizations, including Reuters, the Associated Press, and the Voice of America.

In addition, Pavel Pechacek, the director of RFE / RL's Czechoslovak service at the time, was mistakenly granted a visa to enter the country by the Czechoslovak authorities prior to the demonstrations.

On January 31, 2004, RFE / RL launched broadcasts to the former Yugoslavia in Serbo-Croatian ( Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegrin ).

In the late 1990s RFE / RL launched broadcast to Kosovo in Albanian and to Macedonia in Macedonian.

In 1995, RFE / RL moved its headquarters from Munich to Prague.

RFE / RL ended broadcasts to Hungary in 1993 and stopped broadcasts to Poland in 1997.

In 2004 RFE / RL stopped broadcasting to Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Romania.

RFE / RL proceeded with reduced broadcasts to only six European countries: Moldavia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosovo.

1994 – 2008, RFE / RL used the former Federal Parliament building of the abolished Czechoslovakia in New Town, Prague | Prague New Town.

RFE / RL states that its mission is to serve as a surrogate free press in countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established.

In many of these countries, RFE / RL and similar broadcasters provide more reliable domestic news than local sources.

RFE also extensively monitored Communist bloc publications and radio services, creating an impressive body of information that would later serve as a resource for the CIA and other government organizations.

In addition to its regular broadcasts RFE was also known for its balloon operation ( 1951 – 1956 ), a project that involved dropping anti-Communist propaganda from balloons.

RFE / RL also faces a number of central security concerns including cyberterrorist attacks and general terrorist threats.

RFE played a critical role in Cold War era Eastern Europe.

Further investigation into the CIA's funding activities revealed its connection to both RFE and RL, sparking significant media outrage.

In 1971 the radio stations came under public spotlight once again when prominent U. S. Senator Clifford Case introduced Senate Bill 18, which would remove funding for RFE and RL from the CIA's budget, appropriate $ 30 million to pay for fiscal year 1972 activities, and have the Department of State temporarily oversee the radio stations.

In 1987 after decades of generally refusing to acknowledge that such jamming was even taking place the Soviets finally stopped jamming western broadcasts with the exception of RFE / RL which continued to be jammed for several months into 1988.

However, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the satellite communist governments of Eastern Europe, a Hoover Institution conference reviewing reports from citizens in newly independent Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and other countries tended to substantiate the effectiveness of RFE and U. S. Voice of America broadcasts both in providing information and bolstering democratic movements within those countries, despite attempts at electronic jamming and counter-propaganda.

In January 1950 the NCFE obtained a transmitter base at Lampertheim, West Germany and on July 4 of the same year RFE completed its first broadcast aimed at Czechoslovakia.

Although exile relations were initially its first priority, Radio Free Europe ( RFE ) became the NCFE's greatest legacy.

RFE was developed out of a belief that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means.

RFE was modeled after Radio in the American Sector ( RIAS ) a U. S. government-sponsored radio service initially intended for Germans living in the American sector of Berlin ( but more widely listened to in East Germany ).

The bulk of its RFE initial funding, however, came from the CIA.

In late 1950, RFE began to assemble a full-fledged foreign broadcast staff, becoming more than a " mouthpiece for exiles.

RFE did not use paid agents inside the Iron Curtain and based its bureaus in regions popular with exiles.

In 1951, RFE supplemented its shortwave transmissions from Lampertheim with broadcasts from a transmitter base at Glória.

Moreover, the early balloon and leaflet operations initiated by the National Committee for Free Europe during Nagy's first term as Hungarian prime minister ( 1953 – 1955 )— namely " Operation Focus "— arguably antagonized Nagy and spawned a stern neutralism ( later, hostility ) toward him among U. S. diplomats and RFE broadcasters during the crisis.

During the Cold War RFE was often criticized in the United States as not being sufficiently anti-communist.

Although its nongovernmental status spared it from full scale McCarthyist investigations, several RFE journalists including director of the Czech service, Ferdinand Peroutka were accused of being soft on Communism.