What if it turns out that your favorite song was written by the CIA? That is exactly what a new podcast aims to determine.
In 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West German Scorpion gang released their prophetic ballad “Wind of Change”. With serious lyrics about marriage and the “children of tomorrow,” the song sounds like an anthem at the end of the Cold War. But according to The New Yorker Patrick Radden Keefe, there is reason to believe that the beaten ballad could have been a CIA concoction created to aid in the West’s fight against communism.
On the eight part podcast Winds of change, Produced by Spotify, Pineapple Street Studios, and Crooked Media, Keefe takes listeners on their informative journey, through interviews with musicians and their fans, former spies, and CIA historians, as he attempts to piece together the true story of the song.
Part spy, part music lesson from the Cold War era, Winds of change Analyzes the history of the United States government of exerting cultural influence abroad, especially through music, such as in the 1950s and early 1960s, when President Eisenhower sent jazz performers Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong to present the American art form to listeners in the Middle East and Africa, respectively. .
Keefe, whose 2005 book, Chat, it was about the National Security Agency, it also covers the gradual infiltration of western music into the Soviet Union, and the roles that superpower governments played: in the 1970s, Moscow officials elected SoCal country rockers , the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band to introduce rock & roll to the USSR, after rejecting the “loud, passionate” hard rock “of the Doobie Brothers and rejecting the Beach Boys for their lyrics about cars and girls. In 1989, the Moscow Music Peace Festival brought Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, Skid Row, and other hair metal acts, including the Scorpions, to Russia for an event advertised as pro-sobriety and anti-drug. That camaraderie of the festival experience allegedly led Scorpions leader Klaus Meine to write “Wind of Change”. Unless, as the rumor that Keefe listens to decades ago, he hasn’t written at all.
“You listen to a song and it affects you emotionally, almost physiologically,” says Keefe, whose podcast was released on May 11 and recently released two additional installments.. “There is a natural tendency to want to think of it as a pure, undiluted interaction between the listener and the song. Part of what I was trying to do. [in the podcast] It was pointed out that throughout the Cold War, there were times when it was more complicated, and the hand of the government was there. “
The first bonus episode, released last week, tells the story of a California musician who smuggled punk rock into and out of the Soviet Union, and a new one, now available, covers the United States government funding Hugo Chávez, the racist composition in Venezuela. .
Keefe spoke to Rolling Stone about reporting classified information, feeling like a conspiracy theorist and what it would mean if the US government wrote one of the best-selling rock songs in history.
So when you decided on a podcast, how did you start reporting a CIA rumor? And how was the audio report different from the print?
I’ve written about the world of intelligence before, so I was familiar with the dangers of writing about secret worlds. What was really complicated was reporting on audio. In the past, I have had sources speak to me, we meet, I take notes and I’m not recording, and they trust that situation. It’s another thing when you ask someone to speak into the microphone. There was the kind of crazy OPSEC [Operations Security] that we had to use to talk to Rose, a clandestine officer, where we changed her name and used an actress. But we try to have fun with it, and hopefully it will give you an idea of what it’s like to make these kinds of reports.
What did you think would be the biggest challenge for this? You were right?
I think it was mainly the secret: how do you tell a story about the undercover world that doesn’t feel like you’re looking around the edges? And that was a challenge, but I’m very happy with the way we put it together in the end because there are a lot of things in there that really hadn’t been known until now. Not just the story of the Scorpions but, I mean, the story of Nina Simone. This guy Hugh Wilford, this academic, had gone to the archives and discovered that Nina Simone had basically been sent to Nigeria without her knowing it by the CIA in 1961. That one may have hit me especially hard, because I grew up listening to Nina Simone. Of all the artists we talked about on the show, she’s probably the one that has meant the most to me the longest, and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that if she had known, she would have been very furious. I guess what I’m saying is that I think the challenge was, how do you tell a story that is as much about delivering the products, in terms of things that are secret and that people have not known before, as telling the secret story? But are you also honest about the challenges and the things we don’t know and will never know?
How did you get so many CIA people to talk?
Slowly. In fact, we interviewed more CIA people than in the final podcast. There were some that we couldn’t work on in the end. It was a slow process. In some cases I had presentations from people, which helped me. I think the intelligence community is like any other subculture. It really helps to have someone who can be a referee or runner who can answer for you. It was complicated, especially since we didn’t want to tell people from the start that we are doing a podcast on whether the CIA wrote “Wind of Change.” If you announce that in your initial overture, no one is going to say yes.
What is your understanding of why some former CIA officers can talk so much on the record? Jonna Méndez, whom you interviewed, gives TED TalksFor example, and others can’t talk to you?
It has to do with where you were, what you were doing, how long it has been and to what extent you want to go through the whole process. Jonna has to get everything she says or writes approved through a whiteboard to make sure nothing is classified there. There may be other people for whom it is simply not worth the effort. So it’s a combination of factors, but it was kind of interesting to us for exactly the reason why she said: There were some people who could be really forthcoming, although you’ll notice that most people were talking about something that happened longer ago. . In Jonna’s case, she can tell us all kinds of things, but literally, when we wanted her to say the country she lived in, she said, “You have to say that. I can’t tell you where I lived 25 years ago, because it’s still classified.” .
Did you feel like you were chasing a conspiracy theory or piece of music history?
Part of the fun of this whole experience was that sometimes I felt like I was chasing a really fascinating piece of musical history, sometimes I felt like I was chasing a decades-old crazy government conspiracy, and sometimes I felt like complete aluminum foil. The hat conspiracy theorist. So my emotions about what I was doing were faltering throughout the process. I wanted to involve the listener in that, and make you feel the same way, give you an idea of what it means to start opening these kinds of secret worlds and if you can trust your own eyes and ears when you’re in the middle of a story that is inevitably a hall of mirrors.
How much did you know before you started reporting on the CIA’s cultural influence operations? How do you feel about them now?
I knew a little, because during the years when this was an issue for me, I had done some research. Frances Stonor Saunders wrote the book on Cultural Cold War, which is amazing. It’s about the early years, and it’s a lot about high culture. So there was this aspect to all of this if you look back in the fifties and sixties, the CIA was basically these elite white boys that went to Yale and what they focus on is abstract expressionism, the Paris Reviewand jazz. So they have a feeling that high culture should be the vehicle for this kind of influence effort. Part of the fascinating thing was knowing that, and looking at the shape, you know, back in 1990 it was so much more about pop culture. For 1990, the CIA is not going to put its hopes in Jackson Pollock’s paintings to win the Cold War.
In terms of how I feel about them in the CIA’s grand scheme of covert action, what’s at stake is probably lower than it would be to foment a coup d’état or targeted murder or torture, but I also think that that was part of what he wanted. trying and capturing on the podcast was how we felt about music. It gives me chills [knowing about the government’s involvement] and it makes me question the natural reaction I have when listening to a song. I wanted to tell these stories in such a way that people would re-examine these moments in history where the government started playing with music.
How would their impressions of the CIA be affected if they had, in fact, written this song?
I have thought about this constantly, as I was working on the podcast, but also over the years. For one thing, I think there are a lot of people, including CIA people on the podcast, who say how awesome that would be. What an amazing ps-op. I think there is an undeniable level of mastery that you would have to give them credit for, taking this song and sending it, and suddenly half of Russia is listening to “Wind of Change”. At the same time, it is disturbing for me to contemplate. Those are the two parts of the cocktail that this podcast is. There’s crazy cool, but also, I think there are ways that when you start to unpack these stories, the implications can be troubling.
Do you think it is because of this rumor that you heard or do you think you will continue to chase him?
That I have not yet discovered. I feel like I did everything I could as a journalist, and yet I still have questions on my mind. You ask me on a good day. We just released the podcast. I feel like this is a complete job. But come back to me in a few months and we’ll see how I feel.
