nationalpost A man was jailed 15 years for calling Joseph Stalin a fathead. One year for sedition, 14 years for revealing a state secret
As historian Gene Zubovich helpfully pointed out this week, the CIA is apparently sitting on an impressive collection of jokes.
In recent years, the U.S. intelligence agency has declassified more than a million Cold War-era documents. The National Post sifted through the pile in a search for the funny parts, and found these highlights.
This is from a document entitled “Soviet Jokes” that was prepared for the CIA’s deputy director in the 1980s. The jokes were all told amongst Soviets themselves, and were apparently gathered by CIA operatives . This one involves Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev who, despite his aggressive campaign of government reforms, wasn’t able to fully assuage the his people’s desire to assassinate him.
New York lawyer James Donovan specialized as a U.S. diplomatic negotiator in the early 1960s, and was instrumental in the freeing of captured spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers as well as the release of 9,000 Americans captured by Cuba in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He’s also one of a growing list of historical figures to have been portrayed by Tom Hanks, in the 2015 film Bridge of Spies. And like most New Yorkers, Donovan apparently had a penchant for shooting off his mouth. This is an excerpt of a press account detailing how, during prisoner negotiations with Fidel Castro, Donovan threatened to succeed him as Cuban leader.
Speaking of Castro, after the Bay of Pigs the Cuban dictator scoffed that he would gladly return his American prisoners in exchange for a few hundred tractors. In response, Eleanor Roosevelt immediately formed a committee to round up enough tractors to bring the boys home. This is from a 1961 press report that was placed in the Senate record, and it details Cuba’s shock at discovering that the tractor joke was taken seriously.
Another zinger from the “Soviet Jokes” document. Late in his presidency, Ronald Reagan became fond of telling crowds that he had a “new hobby” of “collecting” dissident Soviet jokes. This may be evidence that one of the CIA’s duties under Reagan was to flesh out the president’s joke collection.