American_Anti-Communist_Propaganda_in_the_1960s

General Approach to Propaganda The concept of psychological warfare and propaganda as one of its means is commonly believed to be a part of security strategies and foreign policies of almost all modern states. According to Harold D. Lasswell, „propaganda in the broadest sense is the technique of influencing human action by the manipulation of representations. These representations may take spoken, written, pictorial or musical form.” The goal of an propagandist is then to urge his or her audience to some kind of an action that the propagandist is concerned with. Three types of propagandistic coverage can be distinguished: white, black and grey. The author of white propaganda does not endeavour his or her identity and the consumer of this kind of propaganda is acquainted with the origin and intentions of the propagandist. On the other hand, the goal of black propaganda (sometimes also called propagandist disinformation) is to mystify the general public, while the identity of the propagandist remains hidden. The grey propaganda is then a combination of the above mentioned types. Another division of propaganda regarding the type of the audience is also possible. The influence on domestic population is pursued by the internal propaganda (e.g. negative presentation of an enemy in the media). The external propaganda focuses on influencing the enemy state’s population or the political representatives of the opponent (e.g. leaflet actions during the World War II or the annual May Day military parades of soviet army in Moscow, that were observed by western experts and diplomats). The key role of propaganda and psychological warfare during the Cold War is inevitable. The Cold War was an ideological, psychological, and cultural contest more than a traditional war and the American policy makers soon realized that it would be won or lost merely on the field of public opinion. In my essay, I would like to focus on the development of the the external American anticommunist (mostly anti-Soviet) propaganda during the 1960’s period. Since, the propaganda was, as a part of psychological warfare, closely associated with the covert actions and operations of the governmental information agencies, some of these actions will be also marginally mentioned in my paper. Firstly, I will introduce the evolution of the concept of psychological warfare toward the Soviet bloc and American anticommunist propaganda in the post WWII period, when the key institutions participating in producing the propaganda were established. Then, I will describe some of the actions of one the most influential governmental organization, the United States Information Agency, that were practised during the 1960’s period and were the pillars of American anticommunist propagandistic efforts throughout the whole Cold War era. In the last part, I would like to concentrate on the function of the radio broadcasting of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as the most influential part of American white (in case of the RFE/RL grey) propaganda, that was centred on influencing public opinion of common population living in the Soviet Union and its satellites. Evolution of American Psychological Warfare and Propaganda after the WWII The techniques of psychological warfare and covert actions concept were accepted as official means of U.S. foreign policy in 1948. In this year, the National Security Council presented a plan of organized political warfare against communism, that was subsequently transformed into a NSC 10/2 document. “The document went beyond mere propaganda and psychological warfare to authorize preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures as well as subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups.” The Office of Policy Coordination (an organization attached to the CIA) was created to ensure the actions practiced in terms of fulfilling the NSC 10/2 plan. The intensification of the political and psychological offensive against the Soviet bloc presented in NSC 10/2 was later supplemented by the NSC 68 document which inaugurated the militarization of containment and enabled the expansion of U.S. military capabilities in the official U.S. foreign policy. During the Truman and Eisenhower administrations the covert actions and psychological warfare became important components of American foreign policy and an integral part of U.S. grand strategy. The implementation of psychological warfare techniques into the American policy was also highly supported by the key national strategists. It is indeed important to note that in the early years of CIA’s covert action operations, the American public was kept totally uninformed about the existence of these actions and offensive operations against the Soviet bloc (which were focusing on supporting and harnessing resistant forces inside the Soviet bloc, exacerbating personal rivalries within the Communist leadership, accentuating differences between Soviet Union and its satellites, using not only leaflet drops and radio broadcasts, but also paramilitary actions). Even after some information about these operations began to fill the pages of American newspapers, enriched by many compromising details, up until the beginning of 1960’s the media focused mainly on positive presenting of the CIA’s operations. In 1964, the first open critiques appeared and disclosed the system and techniques of CIA’s covert actions. It started a boom of journalist interest about the CIA’s operations. Some of the disclosures then led to congressional investigation of CIA practices and in the 1970’s ended in an temporal interruption of the covert action practices. Aside from the CIA, the key U.S. propaganda agency of its Cold War campaign was the United States Information Agency (USIA). It was founded in 1953 by Eisenhower administration and it absorbed various programmes that were established by president Truman. “It included press offices at US embassies; it administered libraries; it taught English; it made and distributed documentary films; it ran Voice of America radio; it printed and distributed books, leaflets and magazines about American life and ideas; it created magnificent exhibitions that showcased American technology.” The USIA’s main mission was to present the American life style and foreign policies in an positive way and to make its audiences more receptive to America in general. In the contrary to the CIA, the USIA did not hide its activity and identity in any covert actions network and hence it can be indicated as primarily white type of propagandistic coverage However, the psychological warfare and propaganda were not the exclusive province of USIA or the CIA. Dozens of other agencies participated in Cold War propaganda campaigns, including the National Security Council, the White House administration, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Department of Defense, the Army, and others foreign but sometimes also primarily domestic agencies were involved into the U.S. propaganda production process. Also many of private and nonprofit organizations participated in these psychological warfare procedures. This fact can be very confusing, and therefore for the purposes of my essay, I will further focus only on the USIA’s activity during the 1960’s. The United States Information Agency Activity in the 1960’s Shortly after winning the election, president Kennedy created a set of foreign policy task forces to investigate key areas of foreign policy, including task forces dedicated to the USIA. Due to this task forces, Kennedy wanted to compete the Soviet Union on the field of international image, which meant to restore U.S. prestige and confront Soviet propaganda. As a part of this new policy, Edward S. Murrow, former well-known CBS journalist, was appointed as the head of the USIA. And Murrow “reformulated the agency’s objective as one of telling ‘America’s story to the world, warts and all’.” The old pillars of the USIA activities evolved its further existence accordingly with this new policy. Although the agency relied primarily on round-the-clock Voice of America broadcasting (which will be described later in this paper), other means of presenting the United States in the Soviet Union was provided by a series of informational, educational and cultural exchanges. These exchange agreements were negotiated with the Soviet Union already in the 1950’s but took place in the 1960’s as well. They were based on strict reciprocity, that was insisted by Kremlin administration and despite their limits “encouraged a slow but steady exchange of scholars and artistic groups between the two countries. Other Soviet-American agreements provided for reciprocal distribution of films, television programs, and magazines.” Other great concern of USIA was an organization of traveling exhibits that introduced various features of American life and new technologies to the Russian public. Fist of these exhibitions took place in Moscow in 1959 but other exhibitions were later introduced also in Leningrad, Irkutsk, Ufa, and Tselinograd. Each exhibit was provided by Russian-speaking American attendants, who were prepared to answer visitors’ questions, which often advanced the theme of the exhibit and more likely touched on delicate political and social topics. However, after Lyndon B. Johnson acceded to the presidential office, new approach to propaganda, the concept of public diplomacy, was produced and began to influence the USIA’s activities. The public diplomacy contained “efforts on behalf of a government to reach foreign audiences without going through the governments of the foreign countries. ‘Public diplomacy’ was meant to be repudiation of ideas of ‘propaganda’.” The disadvantage of this approach was that the Congress did not adopt public diplomacy as a necessary dimension to the new U.S. foreign policy of détente. Also USIA’s failure in Vietnam, where all American efforts to influence public opinion fell short, both in North and South Vietnam, determined the cuts in governmental appropriations for the USIA. A new impulse for its activity was given to the USIA again during the Reagan’s era. The Function of Broadcasting in American Anticommunist Propaganda The major emphasis of American Cold War propagandistic coverage was placed on the down-the-line radio broadcasting, that was the most successful tool to influence public opinion in the Soviet bloc countries. The two main broadcasting stations were Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Although they both participated in the common goal of anticommunist coverage and undermining Soviet totalitarianism, the primary aims of their broadcasting as well as the means they used to its implementation differed. The Voice America’s aim, according the USIA’s attitudes, was to present truthful image of the United States of America and its people. It developed as news-based international radio station. The program composition of the Russian broadcast of the Voice of America, for example, was divided into two main blocs: the news and the commentaries. The news contained information about international events, American events and happenings inside Russia or concerning Russia. It focused basically on informing about events misinterpreted by Soviet propaganda or that were unfavorable to the communist dictatorship. The commentaries varied from economic, cultural, to religious and philosophical field. Also labor relations and life in the satellite countries were themes of weekly commentaries. Non-permanent commentaries on political topics were contained in the program as well. In the 1960’s the Murrow’s principle “warts and all” produced a trend of providing faithful information about such things as strikes, civil rights demonstrations and other issues of domestic American politics to propagate the American democratic system. He and the people in the USIA also insisted on giving truthful information about issues of U.S. foreign policy, although they were often refused while trying to get the information from the State Department administration and other involved institutions. The position of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE broadcasted to eastern Europe, RL to the Soviet Union) was a bit different. They were established as non-profit, non-governmental private corporations but were secretly funded by the CIA. Their goal was to “contribute to liberation of the nations imprisoned by the Iron Curtain by sustaining their morale and stimulating in them a spirit of non-cooperation with the Soviet-dominated regimes.” The stations were stuffed by émigrés and refugees from the communist countries which allowed the stations a more aggressive approach to propaganda then it was in the case of official outlet like Voice of America. The fact that the RFE/RL was covertly supported by the U.S. government composes a classical example of a grey propaganda coverage. The disclosure of the CIA’s subsidies to RFE/RL in 1967, when the New York Times first reported the connection, evoked a huge controversy, because the radios had for years solicited donations from the public through an advertising campaign known as Crusade for Freedom. Although both broadcasts were repeatedly jammed and sabotaged by the Soviet and East European secret police and had internal troubles in the domestic field, the process of shaping and influencing public opinion in communist countries and providing its citizens with the information that were denied to them could not be stopped and contributed to the fall of communism. Conclusion The CIA and USIA both undergo through a major change in the 1960’s, same as did the whole American society during this period. The euphoria of the early 1960’s and the depression of its end can be metaphorically seen even in the activities of these key U.S. psychological warfare agencies. In the beginning of the 1960’s the CIA had free hands in organizing its covert actions and basically was not controlled neither by the Congress nor by the public, that was completely kept in the dark about these operations. By the mid 1960’s, the boom of books and articles about CIA’s covert actions broke out and some of the disclosures led to the congressional investigation and interruption of the covert actions in the 1970’s. Release of couple thousands members of the CIA, which followed, had very demoralization effect on the whole apparatus of the CIA. The Edward Murrow’s policy in the USIA brought a new impulse into its activities and was fulfilling the mission of “telling America´s story” and positive presenting American life and foreign policies. However, the Vietnam war, assassination of president Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy worsen the American image abroad and together with Johnson’s and later Nixon’s policy of détente and the cuts of the USIA’s appropriations, made the USIA’s mission much harder. But even after the 1960’s period, these agencies were functioning and still contributing to the propagandistic combat with the communism. References: Bittman, L., Mezinárodní dezinformace: černá propaganda, aktivní opatření a tajné akce, Mladá fronta, Praha, 2000 Critchlow, J., Public Diplomacy during the Cold War: Records and Its Implications, Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter 2004) Cull, N.J., “The Man Who Invented Truth”: The Tenure of Edward R. Murrow as Director of the United States Information Agency During the Kennedy Years, Cold War History, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Oct., 2003) Dizard, W., Telling America’s Story, American Heritage, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Aug/Sept, 2003) Lasswell, H.D., Propaganda in Jackall, R. (ed.), Propaganda, New York University Press, Washington, 1995 Osgood, K. A., Hearts and Minds: The Unconventional Cold War, Journal of Cold War, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Summer 2002) Rapoport, A., The Russian Broadcast of the Voice of America, Russian Review, Vol. 16, No. 3