Mark Scott Smith's Blog: Enemy in the Mirror, page 48

U.S. Information Agency

The United States Information Agency (USIA) was established in 1953 “to understand, inform and influence foreign publics in promotion of the national interest, and to broaden the dialogue between Americans and U.S. institutions, and their counterparts abroad.”

The USIA was the largest full-service public relations organization in the world, spending over $2 billion per year to highlight the views of the U.S. while diminishing those of the Soviet Union, through about 150 different countries.

The stated goals of the USIA were:

To explain and advocate U.S. policies in terms that are credible and meaningful in foreign culturesTo provide information about the official policies of the United States, and about the people, values and institutions which influence those policiesTo bring the benefits of international engagement to American citizens and institutions by helping them build strong long-term relationships with their counterparts overseasTo advise the President and U.S. government policy-makers on the ways in which foreign attitudes will have a direct bearing on the effectiveness of U.S. policies.

From 1961-64 Edward R. Murrow, a prominent journalist and broadcaster at CBS, was USIA director. Well-known and respected by the American public, Murrow’s short tenure gave legitimacy to the agency.

The USIA was dissolved in 1999.

Main sources: Wikipedia and Scribd

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Arab Republic of Egypt

In July 1952 the Egyptian Free Officers Movement, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein with General Muhammad Naguib as titular head, seized control of King Farouk’s government buildings, radio stations, and police stations in Cairo. The rule of Egypt passed to military hands and all political parties were banned. 

In 1953 Gamal Abdel Nasser took control of the interior ministry post and pressured General Naguib to conclude the abolition of the monarchy. In June 1953, the monarchy was abolished and the Arab Republic of Egypt declared, with General Mohamed Naguib, as its first president.

After a 1954 attempt on his life by a Muslim Brotherhood member, Nasser cracked down on the organization, put President  Naguib under house arrest and assumed executive office. Nasser was formally elected president in 1956.

Main source: History of Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser

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Armistice Ends Korean War

The armistice signed on July 27, 1953, formally ended the war in Korea.

North and South Korea remained separate and occupied almost the same territory they had when the war began.

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Attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba

On 26 July 1953, the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba was attacked by an armed group of ~135 revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro.

Poorly executed, the attack failed and the surviving revolutionaries, including Castro, were imprisoned. This armed attack is widely accepted as the beginning of the Cuban Revolution.

Main Source: Wikipedia

Telesur is funded by multiple Latin American governments.

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Conquest of Mount Everest

Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest in May 1953.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Britannica

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Riots in East Germany

In June 1953 a strike by construction workers in East Berlin against Soviet-inspired work standards, evolved into a series of demonstrations against declining living standards and unpopular Sovietization policies across the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

With the rule of the communist government threatened, the uprising in Berlin was violently suppressed by police and Soviet tanks.

Source: Wikipedia

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Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II was the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York. After the the abdication of his brother in 1936, the Duke became King George VI.

In 1947 Elizabeth married Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, with whom she has four children: Charles, Prince of Wales; Anne, Princess Royal; Prince Andrew, Duke of York; and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex.

When her father King George VI died in February 1952, Elizabeth became head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of the independent Commonwealth countries:  United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon. 

Source: Wikipedia

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Wormwood

In 1953, an Army scientist took a fatal plunge from his hotel window. In 1975, a bombshell report tied his death to a top-secret experiment.   —   Wormwood (TV Mini-Series 2017) – IMDb

Frank Rudolph Emmanuel Olson  was an American biological warfare scientist employed by the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Camp Detrick (now Fort Detrick) in Maryland.

At a meeting in rural Maryland, he was covertly dosed with LSD by the head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s MKUltra program, intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures that might weaken an individual and force confessions through mind control.      

Nine days after being surreptitiously dosed with LSD, Olson plunged to his death from the window of the Hotel Statler in Manhattan. Although the U.S. government described his death as suicide, others alleged murder.

In July 1975, The New York Times reported that unnamed staff sources within the Rockefeller Commission said that Sidney Gottlieb, commander of the CIA’s LSD experimentation program, was personally involved in the experiment that killed the researcher Frank Olson and had destroyed the program’s records in 1973.

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Battle of Pork Chop Hill

The Battle of Pork Chop Hill comprised a pair of related Korean War battles fought between United Nations forces and the Chinese and North Korean armies from April through July 1953.

Fought while the UN and the Chinese and North Koreans were negotiating the Korean Armistice Agreement, these battles were controversial because of the many soldiers killed for terrain of no strategic or tactical value—although the Chinese lost many times the number of US soldiers killed and wounded.

UN forces won the first battle (depicted in the 1959 movie Pork Chop Hill) when the Chinese broke contact and withdrew after two days of fighting. The second battle was bitterly contested for five days before UN forces withdrew behind the main battle line.

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Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Executed

In 1951 the American citizens Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union.

In June 1953 the Rosenbergs were both executed in the Sing Sing correctional facility in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for espionage during peacetime.

For decades, the Rosenbergs’ sons and other defenders maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent of spying on their country and were victims of Cold War paranoia.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, much information concerning them was declassified, including a trove of decoded Soviet cables (code-name: Venona), which detailed Julius’s role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets. Ethel’s role was as an accessory who helped recruit her brother David into the spy ring and she typed documents for her husband that were given to the Soviets.

In 2008, the National Archives of the United States published most of the grand jury testimony related to the prosecution of the Rosenbergs.

Main source: Wikipedia

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