Newly declassified documents reveal that the CIA tried to recruit former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda into the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Axar.az, citing Daily Mail, reports that the plan, launched in 1958, was part of a CIA-backed operation through Radio Liberty, a US-controlled station broadcasting to audiences behind the Iron Curtain.

American intelligence officials aimed to enlist “credible messengers” to “stimulate heretical thinking” within the USSR and weaken faith in Marxism-Leninism following Stalin’s death.

Churchill, then 83 years old, was among several high-profile figures — including Clement Attlee, Aneurin Bevan, Hugh Gaitskell, Arthur Koestler, and Arnold Toynbee — considered for the campaign.

The documents show the CIA sought to exploit “a climate of fresh and unorthodox political thinking” emerging inside the Soviet bloc.

There is no evidence that Churchill accepted the offer or made any broadcast. Around the same time, he declined an invitation to Washington for health reasons, making only one final US visit to President Eisenhower in 1959 before his death in 1965.