Radio Swan was a pirate radio station owned by the CIA, and based in the Swan Islands, a group of islands in the western Caribbean Sea, near the coastline of Honduras. Under the "Radio Swan" and "Radio Americas" names, the station was in operation from 1960 to 1968. History In 1960, a Central Intelligence Agency cover, the Gibraltar Steamship Company owned and established Radio Swan on Swan Island, a covert black operation to win supporters for U.S. policies and discredit Fidel Castro. The Gibraltar Steamship Company did not own any steamships at the time while under the presidential rule of Thomas Dudley Cabot. The radio station began acting as a regular commercial broadcaster with sponsors such as Kleenex, Phillip Morris Co., and others lined up, operating with a 50,000-watt transmitter on AM 1165 (early 1960s) and 1160 and on shortwave with a power of 7,500 watts on 6 MHz. The importance of this island was in its location and proximity to the island of Cuba. On March 17, 1960, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had approved covert action to topple the regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba. As early as October 30, 1960, the Castro government sent reconnaissance flights over Swan Island and the Caribbean Coast of Guatemala (CIA 11-3-1960). Swan Island was claimed by the governments of both the United States and Honduras, although the island was in the de facto hands of personnel acting on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). A Mr. Sumner Smith of Boston also claimed ownership while Federal Communications Commission (FCC) claimed that it had no jurisdiction over the station. The AM transmitter in use by Radio Swan had been used by Radio Free Europe and was taken to Swan Island by US Navy Seabees of Mobile Construction Battalion 6 on two LSTs. Along with erecting two radio transmission towers, the Seabees built a small facility with an airstrip, dock and quonset hut. At first all broadcasts of this pseudo-commercial radio station were in the Spanish language and it was announced on air as Radio Swan, la Voz Internacional del Caribe, with its initial commercial programming coming on tape recordings from anti-Castro political groups in exile. Cuba responded to the broadcasts by setting up a jamming station to block the transmissions of Radio Swan and initiated La Voz de INRA, or The Voice of INRA, which represented the National Institute of Agrarian Reform