2009 Smith-Mundt Symposium

The files and links below are intended to brief participants (audience and discussants) on the subject on public diplomacy and strategic communication in the modern era. In the interest of creating a discussion at the Symposium rather than a listening session, no white papers or PowerPoint will be presented.

In the interest of saving trees and expenses, hard copy of the below files and links will not be provided at the event. This is now required reading and you will not be tested you are encouraged to review the items below because there's a chance you'll pick-up at least one new and possibly interesting insight from the list below.

This Library is not complete, so check back often. Email me if you have a suggestion or contribution for the Library.

History

"Rethinking Smith-Mundt" by Matt Armstrong (2008).

Review of the the causes and debates over the Act. Focuses on 1946-1947 with forgotten context of the 1972 and 1985 revisions to the Act that led to the modern misconception of the purpose of the Act.

"Smith-Mundt Act- A Legislative History" by Burton Paulu (1953).

With only a few exceptions all present United States Government international information and educational exchange activities are carried on under this act. ... It is impossible to review these events without noticing parallels between them and many current developments. Some of the basic issues are still being debated: the loyalty of State Department advisers and officials; the efficiency of State Department operations; and the question of whether it is safe to expose the American people to uncensored radical opinions, especially those from abroad.

Part 2: Is the Domestic Dissemination Media Ban Obsolete from Alvin Snyder's 1994 colloquium

Weitzman Speech Notes for the above Annenberg Project - Feb 1994

Interpreting Smith-Mundt as a Freedom of Information Act exemption (1997)

This appeal challenges the USIA's interpretation of the Smith Mundt Act, 22 U.S.C. § 1461, as forbidding disclosure of certain agency records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552. In its brief, the USIA has not met appellants' central contention: that while the Smith Mundt Act places certain restrictions on the agency from engaging in domestic propaganda, it does not specifically exempt the USIA's overseas programming materials or its Internet addresses from mandatory disclosure under the FOIA.

Persuasive politics: Revisit the Smith-Mundt Act, 12/19/08 op-ed in The Washington Times

"Repairing America's image" is a popular mantra these days, but discussions on revamping America's public diplomacy are futile if the legislative foundation of what we are attempting to fix is ignored. ... In the early years of the Cold War, the threat to the United States was not military invasion but subversion capitalizing on economic and social unrest in Europe and elsewhere. ... Denying ideological and physical sanctuary to our enemy required more than deeds. ... A brand new National Security Council directed the State Department [in 1947] to respond to the "coordinated psychological, political and economic measures designed to undermine non-Communist elements in all countries."

Congressional Intent on Privatization of International Broadcasting, a footnote from a 1948 Brookings Institute report on America's international broadcasting.

The following link to the archives of The New York Times. The articles are free to download if you have an NYTimes.com account. (I requested permission to post the articles here, but licensing is $250 / article.)

"Cooper Criticizes 'Voice of America'; It Is Impotent, He Says at Medill School Jubilee, Speaking Not as AP Chief" (May 27, 1947), The New York Times.

[Kent Cooper, executive director of the Associated Press,] said that if communism was to be thwarted, "not propaganda, but the abhorrent method of military force alone, could accomplish it. Even if all the vast hordes of underprivileged in all of Eastern Europe had radios, and thus could hear the voice of America, I am afraid they would spurn communism and rejoice only if the voice of America were something more than a voice - military power, food, clothing, land, homes and freedom." he said. ...

He asserted that "the American press is unanimously sponsoring world-wide news exchange"through its own news agencies, practical access to whose reports is "available to every country in the world."

"Benton Questions Attack by Cooper: Replies in Detail to Criticism of Voice of America Made by Associated Press Chief" (June 15, 1947), The New York Times.

... 2. You have said in previous that if the United states abandoned its international information program, other nations would abandon theirs. ... 3. You say that 'all countries of any importance actually avail themselves' of the news reports of the United States wire services. ... 5. You say that the American people have no way of checking up on what the State Department is saying abroad 'that might lead us all to catastrophe.' In saying this, you underrate the rigid policing provided by our listeners and readers. You underrate Congress. You underrate your own staff, both here and abroad. You underrate the thousands of American business men living abroad, and those serving in our missions. It is all on the record.

"Editors Endorse U.S. News Service" (May 15, 1946), The New York Times.

Charges of obstructing a vital function of government were made against two major wire news services of the United States today by Ralph McGill, editor of The Atlanta Constitution, and Mark Ethridge, editor of The Louisville Courier-Journal and Times. ...

Mr. McGill told the [House Committee on Foreign Affairs] that the Constitution and the Congress are adequate to guard freedom of the press in the United States.

"Kleindienst Says Buckley Can Show U.S.I.A.'s Film" (April 1, 1972), The New York Times

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, J. W. Fulbright wrote Mr. Kleindienst last Thursday protesting that Senator Buckley's showing of the film "Czechoslovakia 1965" would violate the provisions of the 1948 law that established the agency. It was the intent of this law, the Arkansas Democrat argued, that material produced by the agency for dissemination abroad should not be distributed domestically.

Arguing, in a four-page letter that the U.S.I.A. film could be shown domestically by Senator Buckley, [Acting U.S. Attorney General] Mr. Kleindienst relied heavily on a section in the 1948 law providing for examination of the material by the press and members of Congress. This section, he noted, provides that material disseminated abroad by the Information Agency "shall be available in the English language at the Department of State at all reasonable times following its release as information abroad, for examination by representatives of United States press associations, newspapers, magazines, radio systems and stations, and, on request, shall be made available to members of Congress." Mr. Kleindienst said the "apparent purpose" of this section was to make U.S.I.A. materials available to the American public, through the press and members of Congress.

Defense Department

"Restrictions on Influencing Domestic Audience" (Aug 2006). "This paper was authored by Richard Shiffrin, former Deputy DoD General Counsel for Intelligence and Compartmented Activities. Mr. Shiffrin authored this document in late August 2006 in response to tasking received from the Defense Policy Analysis Office (DPAO)."

The legal objection to engaging in activities designed to influence a domestic audience is, to be sure, strong even in the absence of a specific prohibition on DoD. When the government tries to sway the American public through the various means at its disposal it imperils the essential relationship between the governed and the governing. Without going into a lengthy exegesis of the point, suffice it to say that while a particular undertaking may be intended to be benign, even ameliorative, what is to prevent a partisan effort or a malign one in the future. The far safer course is the current, well-settled ban.

"Strategic Communication CDRs Handbook-JFCOM" (Sep 2008).

Strategic communication must be at the heart of US Government efforts to influence key audiences in support of broad US national interests, policies, and objectives. We seek to achieve this influence by understanding key audiences and engaging them with coordinated programs, plans, themes, messages, images, and products synchronized with the actions of all instruments of national power.

"Enabling Public Dilomacy Field Officers To Do Their Jobs" by AMB William Rugh (Jan 2009).

Defense Department's Principles of Strategic Communication

U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy: no one in PD conducts PD overseas

On / From the Discussants

Panel 1

"The World According to Zorthian: Public Diplomacy and the Virtues of Integration" by Uri Zighelboim (Oct 30, 2007)

Pages 180-186 from The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century by Richard Arndt.

Panel 3

Humpty Dumpty Redux by William P. Kiehl

Chapter 8 "Seduced and Abandoned: Strategic Communication in the National Security Process" by William P. Kiehl in Affairs of State: The Interagency and National Security edited by Gabriel Marcella

Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 by Nancy Snow (1998)

"A Call for Action on Public Diplomacy, 2nd ed." (Oct 2005) by The Public Diplomacy Council

Also of interest are: