Balloon Barrage

More than a month after a Czechoslovak airliner crashed on a mountainside in bad weather, killing 22 people, the Communist government came forth with its explanation of the crash: "Collision of the plane with a balloon which had been sent to Czech territory by American organizations from bases in West Germany." The Czech "evidence": balloons had been seen in the area the day of the crash, and remnants of a balloon and leaflets in scribed "Free Europe" were found about a mile from the site of the crash.

Nobody at Radio Free Europe was surprised. The Czech Communists have protested to the U.S. Government three times in eleven months against the balloons launched by Radio Free Europe from West Germany to drift over Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, charging that the balloons are "endangering air traffic." (The U.S. State Department's position is that Radio Free Europe is a private organization over which the Government has no control.)

Speaking for itself last week, R.F.E. pointed out that its balloons are made of light plastic, are only ten feet or less across, and carry a load of leaflets weighing less than seven pounds. They rise from their launching sites almost vertically to altitudes above 24,000 ft.--far above air traffic lanes. After they spill their leaflets, an automatic device upsets the balloon, the hydrogen spills out, and the whole thing flutters harmlessly to the ground. Damage to an airplane, said R.F.E., would be virtually impossible.

R.F.E. took the occasion to point out that it has launched more than 400,000 balloons, which have showered more than 250 million leaflets over Czechoslovakia. Hungary and Poland in the two years since R.F.E. took to the air to surmount the Iron Curtain. The Communists' frantic anti-balloon barrages were a sure sign that the truth was hurting.

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