Radio Broadcasts

The radio broadcasts below were produced or edited by Chris Koch, or where he is the principal interviewer.

  • The report of Special Agent Levine

  • Malcolm X: a Retrospective

  • A View from the North - North Vietnam in 1965

    • Part 1 - First Impressions

    • Part 2 – The Front Lines

    • Part 3 – Prospects for the War

    • Part 4 – Listeners Questions

  • This Little Light - A 12 part series on Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964

Pacifica Radio

The Report of Special Agent Levine

The first broadcast ever by a former FBI agent reporting on the inner working of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. This unprecedented WBAI broadcast contained the first serious criticism of a sacrosanct American institution. Broadcast despite sustained efforts to prevent it, it led to an investigation of Pacifica Foundation by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee chaired by Senator Dodd.

Pacifica Radio

Malcolm X: a Retrospective

Shortly after Malcolm X was murdered in New York City on February 21, 1965, I produced this retrospective. Malcolm had been a frequent visitor to WBAI's studios, and we used tape that Pacifica had collected over the years.

A View from the North

North Vietnam in 1965

A series of four program about a trip to North Vietnam in 1965, when the United States increased its military presence in South Vietnam from five hundred advisers to combat troops. The Cold War had led Americans to see wars of national liberation as Communist weapons to conquer the world. Some called Vietnam our Munich. But the government we supported was corrupt and unpopular, and faced an armed resistance.  

When I returned to the United States, I reported that we were likely to lose the war. The North Vietnamese had resisted the Chinese for a thousand years, fought the French for ten before the French withdrew. They told me the United States was three thousand miles away and would be forced to withdraw for political reasons in five, ten, or twenty years. The war went on for another ten years killing one hundred and fifty-eight thousand American boys and two or three million Vietnamese before we finally got out 10 years later.

These programs lay out what many intelligence agents knew at the time but kept from the American people.

Part 1 - First Impressions

The trip to Hanoi began when we left Paris on August 21, 1965, on an Air France flight to Moscow and ended a day later when we entered Hanoi. Vietnam was a country at war, with slit trenches, fox holes, bomb shelters, anti-aircraft guns, and everyone armed.  Days begin with students singing in the streets returning from militia training. Everyone was waiting to be bombed. The old Metropole, now Unity, Hotel was crowded with Africans, Cubans and East Europeans. I describe our hosts, who explain the importance of youth between 17 and 30, the core of Communist Party’s plan for winning the war. During a long interview a Vietnamese student who spoke English explains that he is very grateful for the demonstrations in the United States, which he knows about in surprising detail.

Part 2 – The Front Lines

On a trip Than Hao province, the front lines under American bombardment, we dressed like Vietnamese. At the front they are bombed from 11:00 am to 11:00 pm.  The children screech “John’s coming,” when villagers see American aircraft.  Rice paddies, road full of people, women with poles carrying two baskets, bicycles with firewood, carts dragged by animals and old men. Motor bikes. Small villages. Food is plentiful. We see bombed out factories and working-class areas around them visited hospitals where we are given details of the bombing and its horrendous consequences.

Part 3 – Prospects for the War

History of Vietnamese resistance to invasion. Under Chinese control for a thousand years, but with many rebellions whose leaders are today’s national heroes. The period of French domination made second class citizens of all Vietnamese, enforced by brutality and torture. Interview with the head of Vietnamese Peace Committee, an artist, poet, musician who talks about the progress Vietnam has made in eleven years under Ho Chi Minh.

Part 4 – Listeners Questions

Interview of Chris Koch by Dale Minor and Joanne Grant and an hour of questions from listeners. More detail, and some interesting anecdotes.

This Little Light

A 12 part series on Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964. Koch was the first radio journalist in Philadelphia, Mississippi, after the disappearance of three civil rights workers who were later found murdered.