An "Eyes Only" annex held in Kennedy White House files says a CIA radio station on Swan Island was built for a 1960 covert program against Castro, set up as a commercial station at the Navy's request, and run by selling airtime to Cuban groups.
What the page says
This is a government record, not a broadcast. It is page 2 of an annex, marked "Eyes Only," with the word "Secret" struck through at the head and the foot. In four numbered paragraphs it tells how Radio Swan came to exist and why it was given a commercial face. The page breaks off in the middle of a list of the station's customers.
3. Originally it was planned that Radio Swan would be a clan-destine station [blank] Prior to inauguration, however, it was decided the station should be a commercial one. This was at the request of the Navy, which reasonably argued that should their participation in construction of a black facility be known, explanations would be difficult.
4. Using a "commercial" station for the tactical and strategic tasks envisaged for Radio Swan is not, of course, the most desirable way to support a covert operation. The only practical method of operation is to "sell space". Thus, program time on Radio Swan was sold to various Cuban groups.
The earlier paragraphs give the chain of decisions: a covert action program against the Castro government approved by President Eisenhower on 17 March 1960, a request that the CIA build a high-powered station outside the continental United States within sixty days, Navy help clearing a landing strip on Swan Island, and a first broadcast on 17 May 1960.
How to read it
The archive files this under narrative laundering, and the label fits. A listener heard what sounded like a private station selling time to exile organizations. The annex says the private station was a costume. The reason it gives for the costume is candid: if the Navy's part in building "a black facility" became known, "explanations would be difficult." The cover was chosen to spare the government an explanation, not to protect a listener.
A free country can broadcast to a dictatorship, and it can do so under its own name. Radio Swan was not that. The tool the page describes, an official voice passed through a front so that nobody has to answer for it, is the same tool the FBI later turned on Americans through friendly reporters; see COINTELPRO and the press. A different hidden-author device of the same decade, the Sacred Sword leaflets, borrowed a league that did not exist.
Record and rights
FRAME describes the maker as an unsigned U.S. government annex held in the Office of the Special Assistant to the President, Kennedy administration. The scan comes from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library through the Digital Public Library of America and Wikimedia Commons, retrieved 29 September 2026. The record names no author, no memorandum it was annexed to, and no NAID.
Sources
- FRAME object record, "Brief History of Radio Swan": annex to a 1961 memorandum. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, via DPLA and Wikimedia Commons, retrieved 29 September 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. federal government record; Commons tag PD-US).
