# A "Truth Dollar" with Washington's face, sold for Radio Free Europe

A 1954 Crusade for Freedom advertisement asks Americans to "invest a Truth Dollar" in Radio Free Europe, with George Washington's portrait framed like a banknote. The station was then mainly funded by the U.S. government through the CIA.

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      Invest a "Truth Dollar" in Radio Free Europe

      A "Truth Dollar" with Washington's face, sold for Radio Free Europe
      A 1954 Crusade for Freedom ad framed George Washington like a banknote and asked for a "Truth Dollar" for Radio Free Europe, then mostly CIA-funded.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Narrative launderingGlittering generalitiesTransfer
      Date1954Made byCrusade for Freedom / National Committee for a Free Europe (covertly funded by the CIA)MediumBanknotes and coinsCountryUnited StatesRegimeEisenhower AdministrationSourceUnidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosureSourceWikimedia Commons , retrieved September 27, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Crusade for Freedom (1954); via Cold War Radios / Wikimedia Commons.
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A 1954 Crusade for Freedom advertisement asks Americans to "invest a Truth Dollar" in Radio Free Europe, with George Washington's portrait framed like a banknote. The station was then mainly funded by the U.S. government through the CIA.

## What the sheet prints

George Washington's portrait sits in an oval frame of the kind printed on currency, with dollar signs around it. The text is one line broken into four:

Invest a

"TRUTH

DOLLAR"

in Radio Free Europe

Transcription in the FRAME record. Full record at propagandaarchive.org.

## Who issued it

The Crusade for Freedom, the public fund-raising drive of the National Committee for a Free Europe, issued the appeal in 1954. The archive's maker line records that the committee was covertly funded by the CIA, and it classes the source as blurred. It catalogs the piece under banknotes and coins because of its design, though it is an advertisement, not money. The image came from Wikimedia Commons, via the Cold War Radios collection, on 27 September 2026.

## How to read it

Two borrowings carry the sheet. Washington lends the founding generation's standing to a Cold War radio station, and the banknote frame makes giving feel like buying a share in something. "Invest" is the key word: the reader is a stakeholder, putting a dollar into truth.

The word "Truth" also covers a gap. The appeal says nothing about who else was paying. The archive record states that until 1971 Radio Free Europe was funded mainly by the U.S. government through the CIA. A reader who mailed a dollar was told he was investing in a cause; he was not told that his government paid most of the station's way and had chosen not to say so. A citizen who already pays for something through taxes is owed that fact before being asked to pay again. The case study on the campaign records that Congress was not asked to approve the funding until Senator Clifford Case raised it in January 1971.

The case study Americans were asked to chip in for a private radio quotes this ad. Related pieces from the same drive are the Freedom-Gram and the 1951 donor stamp.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, "Invest a 'Truth Dollar' in Radio Free Europe," 1954. Crusade for Freedom / National Committee for a Free Europe (covertly funded by the CIA). Wikimedia Commons (via Cold War Radios), retrieved by the archive 27 September 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/truth-dollar-1954/