The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2003

his year marks the fiftieth anniver- sary of the creation of the United States Information Agency. Set up in August 1953 as part of the new Eisenhower administration’s deter- mination to deal with the growing propaganda challenge coming from the Soviet Union, the agency thrived for over 45 years before it was closed down in 1999 and its remaining operations transferred to the State Department. Defunct federal agencies do not normally encourage nostalgia. But there is a case for revisiting USIA’s role in U.S. diplomatic history. In many ways the agency was an extraordinary undertaking, carried out with a distinct American flair. It set important precedents on what to do (and what not to do) in practicing the uncertain art of influencing overseas public opinion about this country, its ideas and its global policy agenda. This subject, now rela- beled “public diplomacy,” has taken on new urgency since the events of 9/11. In that regard, it is noteworthy that the United States was a latecomer to the practice of international propagan- da. Before World War II, it was the only major power that did not have a strategy, with a supporting bureaucracy, for carrying out ideological programs beyond its borders. But after Pearl Harbor, that changed: an Office of War Information was given the double mission of strengthen- ing home-front morale and explaining American war aims to foreign audiences. Within two years the OWI was running the largest pro- paganda operation in the world, including the radio net- work still known as the “Voice of America.” Yet the whole operation was closed down just two weeks after the war ended. Its tattered remains were relegated to the third level of the State Department while Congress and gov- ernment officials debated whether we should be in the propaganda business at all. A few years later, however, Cold War developments convinced the Eisenhower White House that a new orga- nization, separate from the State Department, was need- ed to deal with the Soviet ideological threat. The decision to create an independent agency was prompted in large part by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’ belief that propaganda operations were not a proper diplomatic function — an attitude many Foreign Service officers would continue to hold long afterward. The Early Years The U.S. Information Agency began with several strikes against it. Its operations were weakened by a J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 57 Wilson Dizard Jr. is a retired Senior Foreign Service officer who specialized in international communications policy until his retirement in 1980. During his 28-year career in USIA and the State Department, he served in Istanbul, Athens, Dacca, Warsaw and Saigon. A former writer and editor for Time, Inc., he is the author of seven books: The Strategy of Truth (Public Affairs Press, 1961), Television: A World View (Syracuse University Press, 1966), The Coming of the Information Age (Longman, 1985), Gorbachev’s Information Revolution: Controlling Glasnost in the New Electronic Era (CSIS/Westview, 1988), Old Media, New Media (Longman, 1993), Meganet (Westview, 1997), and Digital Diplomacy: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Information Age (Praeger, 2001). His latest work, Inventing Public Diplomacy , will be pub- lished next year in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series. Dizard has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and was affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies from 1983 to 2000. B Y W ILSON D IZARD J R . R EMEMBERING USIA T HIS YEAR MARKS THE 50 TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE U.S. I NFORMATION A GENCY ’ S FOUNDING . A RETIRED USIA OFFICER RECALLS THE AGENCY ’ S MANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS . T