Category: Smith-Mundt

Ashraf Fouad, Smith-Mundt and Al-Hurra

~ Matt Armstrong

In Losing Arab Hearts and Minds: The Coalition, Al Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion (see review here), Steve Tatham interviewed Middle East media consultant Ashraf Fouad in 2004 on the creation of Al-Hurra, the U.S.-sponsored television station:

If you look at it from the positive side it is much needed and it is long overdue. They should get involved in the debate. But if you look at it from the negative side then it is unacceptable. How dare you come and air a channel like this to try and brainwash my people, when your law in the U.S. bans you from airing something like this in the U.S.? It is against the Constitution to broadcast a government channel in the States. How dare you say that we are sheep, and that you can show us this, but you can’t show it to the American people? …

While it’s not in the Constitution, the Smith-Mundt Act certainly does prevent Al-Hurra from being broadcast to the American public. Among the various reasons for revisiting Smith-Mundt, the perception it creates of our overseas broadcasts and the lack of transparency of the same is not a myth, even if the modern understanding for the purpose for the prohibition is.

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More on the Media’s bias toward money not informing

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Briefly, Paul Fahri writing at the Washington Post nails NBC News for its in depth coverage of the Olympics:

"SportsCenter" had a bit of news about the Olympics, but only a bit. …

"Nightly News," by contrast, was all over the Olympics. Man, were they all over them. First, Ann Curry gave the opening "billboards" for the top stories, which included a couple of Olympics-related features. Then, on came the Olympic news like the parade at the Opening Ceremonies. Curry mentioned Bolt, the medal count, and the news that an athlete from Afghanistan had won his country’s first medal ever. … Oh, yeah: Curry managed to squeeze in a story about the Spanish plane crash and a new presidential poll (I don’t think either mentioned the Olympics).

In other words, "Nightly News," which rarely cares about sports, was out-reporting "SportsCenter," the leading sports-news broadcast on TV, about the Olympics. High-fives, NBC News!

But hold on a second.

What I was really witnessing was a little lesson in media economics. The contrasting priorities of "SportsCenter" and NBC tell you loads about how money can drive the TV news agenda.

NBC has a massive investment in the Olympics (parent General Electric shelled out $894 million in rights fees alone), and has made an equally massive commitment to showcasing the Games on "the networks of NBC." Said networks (CNBC, MSNBC, etc.) are devoting a record 3,400 hours, on the air and online, to the Big Show this time around.

But all those decisions were made on the corporate side of NBC, not in the news division. Call me old school, but in the journalism textbooks, it says the news division is supposed to make up its own mind about what to cover without being too mindful of what the bosses in corporate are pushing. In other words, GE’s need for a return on its investment in the Olympics isn’t supposed to be NBC News’ problem.

Yet for the past two weeks, the line between NBC News and NBC’s corporate priorities has seemed awfully blurry. Since the Olympics began, "Nightly News" (emanating live from Beijing) has been larded with the kind of soft-focus/feel-good Olympic stories that are a staple of the soft-focus/feel-good stuff that’s appearing on NBC in primetime.

NBC responded to Fahri with a list of “hard hitting” news stories on China beginning just over a week before the Opening Ceremonies. While Fahri notes NBC’s coverage was still fluff, he misses the point that NBC’s network news was not covering the world but, in the week prior to the Games, priming its audience for China. Since the games started, all news coverage, and even the quasi-news show “Today” as Fahri points out, focuses almost entirely on the Olympics with barely a mention of global events.

It’s worthwhile to note that while, according to Fahri, the Spanair crash received coverage on NBC, on Al Jazeera English my interview was delayed nearly twenty minutes and my segment was squeezed from ten minutes to one because of Spanair and other pressing international news.

Who’s more focused on the news?

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Rethinking Smith-Mundt: responding to Sharon Weinberger

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

I appreciate Sharon Weinberger’s thoughtful three-part response at Wired’s Danger Room (Part I, Part II, Part III) to my interim paper “Rethinking Smith-Mundt” over at Small Wars Journal. Several points in her impassioned response deserve attention. However, to begin, it is important to understand that researching and writing “Rethinking Smith-Mundt” was more than an “esoteric” pursuit. Derisively labeling our adversaries exploitation of information as “asymmetric conflict” as if it was something unfair, we clung to our guns as it were as we continued to imagine a bureaucratically controlled global environment (more on asymmetry here). However, even as the Russians roll into Ossetia and Sarkozy recreates the part of Chamberlain, the Russians have not neglected the power of information to affect foreign public opinion. They have used cyber-warfare to block access to Georgian information while actively propagating Russian messages and images.

The fact of the matter is we have just begun to realize that the comfortable world we, as Americans, grew accustomed to since the late-1960’s and early 1970’s, is gone. The global information environment, with its satellite communications, 24/7 news, text messaging, and immediate access to video and images has substantially reduced the autonomy of leaders provided by the raw, supreme power of militaries provided over the last four decades. With few exceptions, war is no longer war among leaders but among the people and between the people. Small groups now have an amplified voice and strategic reach to run the show. Increased communications skills of our adversaries better leverage the digital age, as well as the analog age’s culturally attuned rumors, has changed the objective of war. Whether restricting access to information through cyber-warfare, inserting distortions into the information ecosystem with distortions, the purpose of conflict has become not to destroy the enemy while preserving oneself, but a contest “in spirit, will, and intelligence on a silent battlefield.” Conflict through bullets or economies is transformed as “attitude warfare” or “perception warfare.” It is now organized processes of persuasion.

The U.S. Government, consultancies, and the presidential candidates are all finally realizing the tremendous value of information and the informational effects of policy and actions. While bureaucratic inertia has prevented systemic changes for years, this may be changing. There are several major reports, and a couple of pieces of draft bills, that look to revamp America’s architecture of engagement (think variations on USIA 2.0). Virtually any discussion on restructuring America’s informational engagement with the world includes at least one (almost always) erroneous statement on Smith-Mundt. “Rethinking Smith-Mundt” was written with this in mind.

As described in “Rethinking Smith-Mundt,” the Act was written and debated during a time when “hot war” was unlikely between the major powers, a time before “Us” and “Them” were firmly established. But this was not the Cold War so many invoke today (it was not 1968) with massive military power at the ready and missiles aimed at the other’s capitals. Economies were not substantially linked and the key threat was not invasion but subversion. As our Ambassador to Russia said in 1946, the most important “fact in the field of foreign policy today…is the fact the Russians have declared psychological war on the United States, all over the world.” It was, he continued, “a war of ideology and a fight unto the death.” The struggle for authority and relevance had shifted from the arena of power to the arena of ideas and international persuasion.

However, Sharon’s impassioned critiques of my recommendations are based not on the lessons learned from the past, of a holistic approach to informational activities based on truth. Her comments are based on a selective, band-aid approach to the modern beauty contest known as public diplomacy today. I know we both agree that what is called “public diplomacy” today is broken. Many believe the term itself has become so burdened to be nearly as radioactive as “propaganda.” Even the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy rebuked the State Department for not tasking its public diplomacy officers with “public diplomacy.” Sharon experienced this and the failure of the bureaucracy to even comprehend “public diplomacy” during her brief stint as a Foreign Service Officer.

For a high-level thematic response to Sharon’s posts, see Steve Corman’s Real vs. False Distinctions in Rethinking Smith-Mundt. As Steve notes, Sharon is concerned about an “anything goes atmosphere.” I share this concern, which is why I want oversight and transparency, two elements previously central to the Act (related: 1948 Brookings report). TO be honest, “Rethinking Smith-Mundt” was less about modern recommendations than about dispelling myths about the Act. It was more about finding (surprising) common ground with history for today’s policy makers and report writers. The similarities between past and present were implicit as I didn’t want to bang the reader on the head in an already long and dense read. With that, below I go into more detail to respond to two of Sharon’s more significant of assertions.

Continue reading “Rethinking Smith-Mundt: responding to Sharon Weinberger
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Are the Russians violating US sovereignty in the cyber war?

~ Matt Armstrong

The purpose of Computer Network Operations (CNO) and Electronic Warfare (EW) are, put quite simply, to create and deny access to information. Typically considered tools to interfere with the decision making of leaders, they are being used by the Russians to shape international opinion. Georgian CNO, having been defeated and on the retreat, moved some sites to Google-hosted services. Whether these are in the United States or not is unknown. The question hasn’t been raised so far, perhaps because Google largely operates in its own pseudo-sovereign realm. 

The Associated Press is reporting that some Georgian sites (maybe the same sites?) have been moved to U.S. servers:

The website of the president of Georgia, the small nation that is battling Russian forces over a breakaway enclave, was moved to a U.S. hosting facility this weekend after allegedly being attacked by Russian hackers.

The original servers located in the country of Georgia were “flooded and blocked by Russians” over the weekend, Nino Doijashvili, chief executive of Atlanta-based hosting company Tulip Systems Inc., said Monday.

Making this particularly interesting is the question of whether these servers are U.S. sovereign territory. If so, then the Russian hackers, government or not, are attacking the United States. This would be like a foreign national taking refuge inside an American embassy and the local police charging in after them. This is at least the position of some of the U.S. government even if they don’t realize it.

How so, you ask?

Simply put, the U.S. Government is prohibited from engaging discussion boards, blogs, etc. hosted on U.S. servers in part because of the modern interpretation of Smith-Mundt, but not entirely. The concern is the U.S. Government, mostly military as they are the most active in the informational sphere, may influence American citizens by virtue of the fact the server is on American soil regardless of the physical location of the users. So-called “public affairs authority” changes things a bit and permits access, but there remain special considerations for engaging U.S.-based servers.

So, if the U.S. considers U.S.-based servers as the equivalent of U.S. physical territory for the purpose of informational engagement, how is a foreign attack on the same not an incursion against the United States? This dichotomy is going to hurt us sooner than we think.

As I noted earlier, the Georgian dilemma highlights the extreme importance of information in wars among people and the critical requirement to get your side of the story into the information ecosystem. This war of bits and bytes is ultimately a war of perceptions. There is a “tremendous symphony” playing globally right now that involves the government of Russia as well as private sympathizers (e.g. private citizens acting on their own or with encouragement) that is drowning out the Georgians. The Russians cannot have information superiority unless they deny their adversary the ability to communicate, and then they can propagate their message without a counter-narrative, truthful or not. The cyber attacks are muzzling Georgia to prevent opportunities to portray the Russians as anything but “peacekeepers” and “defenders.”

(H/T on the AP article to Jeff Carr)

A book for the aspiring architect of USIA 2.0

~ Matt Armstrong

OverseasInformation “Brookings Report Sees Flaws in U.S. Information Service” was the page 2 headline in the Washington Post on December 13, 1948. The report, Overseas Information Service of the United States Government by Charles Thomson, looked at the information activities during World War II and more importantly, immediately after. It was published shy of eleven months after the Smith-Mundt Act was passed. In reflecting on the “unprecedented instruments of world propaganda” created by the U.S. Government for the war, Thomson notes the “machinery” was not new, but the scale of peacetime engagement was new.

The Declaration of Independence was issued out of a decent respect for the opinion of mankind, as a means of explaining and justifying the historic step then taken. Benjamin Franklin was our first cultural ambassador, and our diplomatic service has traditionally dealt with the problem of representing America fairly to influential persons and groups in other countries.

A change, he notes, is the increased importance of engaging a larger segment of the population instead of the “influential persons” in and near government. In line with this, he suggests the information service should be “closely related to foreign policy and foreign relations.” It is also to be an “instrument of national interest and national strategy, although not confined to short-run operations or effects.”

Thomson explored many of the models currently under discussion today by the many groups looking at creating “USIA 2.0.” The range of possibilities start from a wholly government agency to a public corporation. For each, he explores the shift from one to another from capabilities to capital costs.

He also makes several recommendations to be addressed at the time. These included some of the following amendments to the Smith-Mundt Act:

  • “The authority to disseminate information abroad should be broadened to include the distribution of any information, whether about the United States or not, which furthers the purpose of the act.”
  • “The policies governing release of material used in the information service should be broadened to authorize release to the general public at any time after use. What is safe for foreign audiences to get should be safe for our own people.”
  • The “two Advisory Commissions [one was for information activities and the other for exchanges of persons, these were later combined into the single U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy] should be abolished and replaced by a larger single commission, able to give the Secretary of State comprehensive advice covering the whole problem of how to run information and cultural relations activities in the interest of the country.”
  • Eliminate the emphasis of the U.S. role in the United Nations. “This is the sort of decision which must be left to current considerations. For example, our United States role in Palestine policy is hardly one to be proud of; our information service should not be required to overemphasize vacillation and weaknesses.”

Thomson also recommended a Board of Visitors, a joint subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to be the main liaison point between Congress and an “information program liable to lose domestic perspective in its concentration on foreign objectives.” This Board would analyze on behalf of Congress the reports of the Advisory Commissions and the Secretary of State.

In discussing the U.S. information space, he reminds the reader of the propaganda environment within the U.S. but he is one of the few that reminds us of the Congressional response to these activities: Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. He was fully aware foreign information services (“other propagandas”) were active within our borders. He sought to temper the concerns of many, including those in Congress, that they must “compete with the information activities established in this country, which possesses a press and motion picture industry second to none.”

Many of the questions being asked today are, as I’ve noted before, are similar to those of the past. The only difference today is that over the last several decades we’ve forgotten the importance of engaging people in favor of governments. In the 1940s, the reality of the “war among the people” was acute.

The dust jacket notes the book presents “a detailed history of the operations of the information services of the U.S. Government, the volume is invaluable to librarians, radio specialists, publicists and to every serious student of the subject.” I agree. The cover scan above is from my copy.

Rethinking Smith-Mundt: a look back at its purpose

~ Matt Armstrong

Small Wars Journal published my paper “Rethinking Smith-Mundt” in which I researched the historical record, scholarly books and articles and media reports surrounding the information activities portion of the US law commonly referred to as the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. After two years (1946-1947) of debates, testimony, amendments and a European fact finding trip, the Act was passed in January 1948. The result was legislation that institutionalized America’s international engagement. It mandated controls and oversight to improve the quality of America’s international broadcasting and as well as cultural and educational exchanges. To the modern reader, the concerns of the 80th Congress are remarkably similar to those of the 110th, right down to the public statements. However, the 80th Congress had deeper concerns than today’s Congress and managed to deal with a far more comprehensive package than being considered today.

The purpose of “Rethinking Smith-Mundt” is to see through the haze of misunderstanding surrounding the Act and understand its original intentions. These intentions were not to prohibit the role of government in information engagement but rather to enhance its role, though in very proscribed ways. In fact, the media and the private sector recognized and supported the notion that engaging the world required assets beyond their capacity. The prohibition against domestic dissemination of news by the State Department’s (and later the the United States Information Agency, created five years after Smith-Mundt) was not an outright prohibition but rather an allocation of responsibilities that let private sector media do what it did best and governmental media do what it did best. The wall between public and private was far more porous than we imagine today, something that only becomes clear when we re-examine the debates surrounding the formulation and passage of the Act. Such a re-examination also reveals why such prohibitions are no longer needed today.

The impact of Smith-Mundt in how the United States engages in the modern information environment — call it a War of Ideas or simply the effort of making sure economic and military partners and threats know what you’re doing and why — is significant and felt in obvious and not so obvious ways. Smith-Mundt, as it has been transformed since the 1972 amendment pushed through by Senator J. William Fulbright and reinforced by the Zorinsky Amendment of 1985, bifurcates the global audience not on ideology or a determination of friend or foe but on physical geography. The modern form of the legislation and indeed the modern interpretation transformed the law from the enabler it was intended to be and into a prophylactic of such proportions so as to be out of touch not only with the modern virtual geography but also of the world in which it was written.

It may be that after looking back at the purpose and intent of the 80th Congress, the 110th Congress and researchers might see that new writing new legislation to avoid Smith-Mundt is unnecessary if the law is returned to its original purpose and updated to reflect the changed domestic conditions. The original Act was remarkably flexible and arguably more prepared for the modern information age than some of the bills and even reports in progress may be. It is important to remember that the Act was written for and in response to a telecommunications revolution. The “fast” communications authorized in the information activities part of the legislation as well as the “slow” engagement of cultural and educational exchange were viewed as complimentary and essential to global engagement.  To be sure, the Act was not perfect (arguably the function was improved five years later with the creation of the United States Information Agency), but it was far better than the distorted version most know today.

Download the paper here as a PDF. This paper is a work in progress, so any comments or criticisms or corrections are appreciated.

Rethinking Smith-Mundt

~ Matt Armstrong

Rethinking Smith-Mundt by Matt Armstrong, 28 July 2008, at Small Wars Journal.

Sixty years ago, the elements of America’s national power – diplomacy, information, military, and economics – were retooled with the National Security Act of 1947 and the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. The former has received significant attention over the years and is currently the subject of an intense project to recommend updates. In contrast, the latter, a direct response to the global ideological threat posed by Communist propaganda, has been variously ignored, glossed over, or been subject to revisionism. Smith-Mundt was a largely successful bipartisan effort, establishing the foundation for the informational and cultural and educational engagement that became known as “public diplomacy.”

While today is unlike yesterday, it is worthwhile to look back on the purpose of Smith-Mundt and the debates surrounding the dissemination prohibition that has taken on mythical proportions. The modern interpretation of Smith-Mundt has given rise to an imaginary information environment bifurcated by a uniquely American “iron fence” separating the American media environment from the rest of the world.

Domestic influence op

~ Matt Armstrong

The Navy discusses it plan at USC Galrahn at Information Dissemination discusses a Navy domestic “influence operation.”  I’ve referred to this outreach before, noting the Hodes Amendment would prevent such activities.  Galrahn suggests preventing this might be a good thing, at least in the absence of a strategic purpose. 

The “Conversations with the Country” became random seminars in various cities for the purpose of involving the American people in the discussion of the Navy and maritime strategy. It was never intended to influence the development of the strategy, we learned that here and here (PDF) which exposed the process for what it was: a think tank process that ultimately avoided as many strategic issues as it embraced. The "Conversations with the Country" were essentially intended to be a marketing strategy to connect with the American people with the intent of teaching the Navy’s role towards the national interest, and expanding an understanding of why the Navy is important to the nation. This outreach marketing attempt to engage the population can only be described as a total failure.

Jesse Helms, RIP, and USIA (updated)

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Got an email from a new blog that’s coming online – Undiplomatic – about the passing of Jesse Helms.  Charlie Brown, the blog’s editor (no other contributors are yet listed, the blog is still coming together according to Brown), offers both praise and criticism of the Republican Senator from North Carolina.

Observation one:  Senator Helms was actually quite good on certain human rights questions, particularly those regarding China and Cuba. …

Observation two:  it’s hard picking the worst thing Senator Helms ever did, but one that should rank in the top five — one that most people overlook — is his willful destruction of the United States Information Agency. …

But abolishing the USIA was not a one-man show.  There was more to it than a choice by President Clinton, even if it was his desk where the buck ultimately stopped.  There was the USAID director who had the guts to fight for his agency and the USIA director who did not.  There was also the co-star in the form of a Secretary of State who may have later acknowledged her complicity was her biggest mistake.

It should be noted that Senator Helms succeeded where the equally, if not more, legendary Senator Fulbright (D-AR, and as I just learned a fraternity brother of this blogger) failed.  The 1972 Amendment to Smith-Mundt was, in fact, the best Senator Fulbright could do in his attempt to abolish USIA.  According to Nick Cull, Fulbright demanded that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty “should be given an opportunity to take their rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics.” But they escaped with the creation of the Board for International Broadcasting, the predecessor to the Broadcasting Board of Governors.  According to contemporary news accounts, votes he brought to the floor as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee were losing and losing not on merit but on personality.  He had lost support, an especially bad situation for a Chairman.  The New York Times would remark on the “eclipse of Senator Fulbright and the weakening of the Foreign Relations Committee” and wonder if the Senator would support the pending Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty when he couldn’t count on the support of the Administration or of his own committee.  Soon after he remarked that he would not even bring something up for a vote because he knew it wouldn’t pass.

While he lost the battle and his next election, he won the war against USIA as he adjusted perceptions of USIA and Smith-Mundt, the Act he never fully supported.  His conflict with USIA was openly reported in the papers and explored by Nick Cull in his forthcoming book on the history of USIA, as well as by Stacey Cone in her 2005 “Pulling the Plug on America’s Propaganda: Sen. J.W. Fulbright’s Leadership of the Antipropaganda Movement, 1943-74” in the journal Journalism History.

It’s also noteworthy, for the detail oriented reader, that the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy has no authority by law over the Fulbright scholarship board.  (Nor does it have any authority on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, but that’s another story and one that is conceptually foreign to modern Americans.)

Addendum: An interesting footnote to this: a colleague John Brown notes these two Southern Senators, one Republican and one Democrat, were both opposed to civil rights legislation.

Fulbright served as chairman of the Senate banking and currency committee (1955–59) and, as chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee (1959–74), he conducted frequent open hearings to educate the public and to reassert the Senate’s influence in long-range policy formulation. An outspoken critic of U.S. military intervention abroad, Fulbright opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), the landing of marines in the Dominican Republic (1965), and the escalation of the war in Vietnam. However, Fulbright could be conservative as well; he voted against civil-rights legislation in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1974 Democratic primary in Arkansas, he was defeated for the senatorial nomination by Dale Bumpers. He wrote Old Myths and New Realities (1964), The Arrogance of Power (1966), The Pentagon Propaganda Machine (1970), The Crippled Giant (1972), and The Price of Empire (1989).

Jesse Helms forever changed North Carolina politics and the conservative movement. The former senator did it without ever changing much about himself.

There is perhaps no better example of Helms’ unwavering commitment to his beliefs than on the issue of race. Helms was a staunch opponent of the nation’s civil rights movement, where he joined the likes of Alabama Gov. George Wallace and South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond in a fight to keep outsiders from meddling in what he called “the Southern way of life.”

Here’s some cocktail trivia for you.  Senator Buckley, the one who showed a USIA film on his TV show for his constituents that ultimately led to the 1972 amendment, was to be Senator Helms’s candidate at the 1976 Republican National Convention to replace Ronald Reagan if Reagan kept his “too liberal” of a running mate, Senator Richard Schweiker (R-PA).

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If Smith-Mundt really applied to the entire government…

~ Matt Armstrong

FDIC Influence Op

If Smith-Mundt really applied to the entire government, regardless of the letter of the law, the spirit of the law, or even Congressional intent, as some would seemingly have it, then the FDIC must stop running the magazine ad at the left obviously intended to manage your perception of the banking system. 

Ridiculous, isn’t it? 

American Progress: Build a National Consensus on Development and Dump Smith-Mundt

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

USAID U.S. national security is dependent on more than physical security secured through military or law enforcement powers.  It is also dependent and based on capacity building, economic development, humanitarian aid, and global health issues.  Public diplomacy is necessarily involved in all of these for the purpose of strengthening the country. 

To this end, the Center for American Progress laments the “restrictions” imposed on the U.S. Agency for International Development by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 in enlisting the support of Americans to understand AID’s valuable and worthwhile mission. 

Presidential leadership must be followed by assertive public engagement on the part of civilian development agencies. No one can tell the story of America’s global commitment to sustainable development and its contributions to our security better than the people who do the work every day. Yet their ability to do so is restricted by Section 501 of the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (the Smith-Mundt Act), which functionally restricts the ability of USAID to use public dollars to tell its story inside the United States. This legislation should be amended or repealed so that USAID, just like the Department of Defense, can tell the American people about the value of its work and continue to build public support for it.

There’s one problem: USAID is not covered by Smith-Mundt, nor is the Department of Defense.  USAID’s failure in public diplomacy that engages a global audience, including Americans, is not a result of a Smith-Mundt prophylactic.  The truth is USAID operates independently America’s public diplomacy efforts.

The 2003 GAO Report on U.S. Public Diplomacy, based on a GAO survey of State’s public affairs officers, gives a better context on the institutional ills of American public diplomacy. Some of the most important elements of this GAO report were survey questions not referenced by the report or its conclusions.  For example:

  • [Does the public affairs officer] Coordinate with USAID or the US Military?
    • 42% "very much" to a "great extent" with USAID
    • 59% "very much" to a "great extent" with the U.S. military

The Center for American Progress’s statement is yet one more reason we must have a symposium on Smith-Mundt to discuss Congressional intent and what the Act actually covers.

See Also:

 

An example of the Smith-Mundt firewall

~ Matt Armstrong

From Pat Kushlis at Whirled View:

Shhh. This delightful children’s book may – or may not – be off-limits to Americans. So let’s pretend you didn’t hear about it from me. But it’s a best seller in the Philippines.

I first learned about Inang Bayan’s New Clothes from one of the few informative articles I’ve come across of late in State the State Department’s in-house magazine so I sent out feelers to see if I could obtain a copy.

Don’t ask how I got it but I did.

That’s best kept part of my “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – because of an outdated law known as Smith-Mundt that restricts Americans’ access to learning what our taxpayers’ dollars are supporting overseas. Thanks to the Internet, however, you can at least see American Ambassador Kristie Kenney on the US Embassy’s webpage reading from the book to a group of Filipino girls in 2006 when it first appeared. It then took over a year for the story to appear in State – but better late than never.

Suffice it to say that I’ll bet you never dreamed that US government money would help finance a story about two Filipino girls – Feliza and Nurhana, one Christian and the other Muslim – who live in Mindanao, work in a dress shop after school and despite their families’ religious differences are best of friends.

Read the rest at Whirled View.

Looking beyond Al-Hurra and into American Information Activities (updated)

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

The Al-Hurra hubbub is symbolic of a larger problem of how we perceive and practice our information activities (or propaganda if you wish, which is a pejorative only to Americans).  While I have not yet watched the 60 Minutes piece, I did read Craig Whitlock’s Washington Post article and have some observations on the larger debate. 

(On the CBS News/Pro Publica, see the BBG’s response here and a related 20 June 2008 PowerPoint here.)

The Al-Hurra shines a light on the transformation of American information activities from active and aggressive participants in the struggle for minds and wills to something much more passive, a beauty contest perhaps.  This change, I argue, began happening even before “public diplomacy” was coined in 1965 as borders were established and, more importantly, we realized people actually listened to what we had to say. 

Gone are the days when Edward R. Murrow could confidently state his staff could go up against any major media agency.  Too often the emphasis is not on building trust and legitimacy with listeners but quick ratings and a resulting lack of editorial control and confused programming. 

We must empower intelligently select editors and staff and empower them.  Audiences come if the product is useful and interesting.  Al-Jazeera English, for example, is useful and interesting.  It is noteworthy that AJE is, I’m told, increasingly the news station of choice, displacing CNN, in one prominent government news agency.  If you build it, they will come. 

A while back I met and talked with Norm Pattiz and he was convinced that music attracted listeners.  In other words, if they came for the music, they’ll stay for the news.  But I believe there’s a reason Westwood One radio stations aren’t the template for international news agencies. 

While we argue over the quality of programming, we cite a law that prevents us from monitoring, which in fact was intended to address the quality issue in the first place. 

Dear Reader: my apologies if you had the misfortune of reading an earlier copy of this post. 

Filling in the gaps of ITP’s article on Smith-Mundt and the Defense Department

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Two weeks ago, I spoke to a reporter from Inside the Pentagon, a subscription only news service.  We had a long conversation on the phone as I explained to her the salient (and not so salient) points of the Smith-Mundt Act.  The purpose of her investigation was talk about legislating (or creating a rule for) an exception from Smith-Mundt for the Defense Department. 

The second article (there is a third due soon) for which I was interviewed is below the fold.  However, let me throw out some comments now.  Feel free to jump and read the article and come back. 

First, let’s start with the facts that have been seemingly lost to history. 

Fact: the Defense Department is not covered by Smith-Mundt. 

Fact: Smith-Mundt was not a law to prevent propaganda, but rather Public Law 402 institutionalized information activities (propaganda) as well as creating the capability to counter adversarial propaganda. 

Despite our conversation emphasizing both the above and more, she opened her article buying into the popular, if immensely wrong, perception about a law designed to prevent misperceptions.  So, to fill in some of the blanks and to add some important context left out of the article, “Smith-Mundt Act Causes Confusion For DOD, Prompts Talk Of Revision.”

No where was the Act itself discussed.  Again, it was not an anti-propaganda law, but a law to make permanent, institutionalize, and raise the quality of cultural and education exchange and information activities.  There’s a reason the official name of the Act was the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948.  The domestic dissemination provision, dissemination being a very key work, was to a) prevent a Government News Agency from crushing domestic media, and b) not an issue because of the good relationship between Government and the media at the time.  The continental U.S. was an ideological battleground, even if not with the same level of contestation as in Europe and elsewhere around the globe.  On the whole, the “partnered” domestic media didn’t have the international reach the U.S. needed to increase its “whisper”.  It is arguable that because of the cozy relationship, once U.S. media could adequately reach international audiences, the government news agency would slip away. 

There was an important third reason for the prohibition against domestic dissemination: Senators and Congressmen frequently alleged the State Department was infested with Communists and the risk that cultural, education, and information programs under there watch would be too soft on communism.  The concern that State would be sympathetic to enemy positions risked, in the minds of many, undermining the President and the Government.  In other words, a key pillar of the dissemination prohibition was a distrust of the State.  Thus, as it is now laughable to think a U.S. government news agency could push aside domestic media, we’re left with the argument behind the prohibition that State is infested with sympathizers of the enemy’s message.  As the Defense Department has become a key communicator for the United States, this means that, if we blindly accept the prohibition, “Defense and State are full of al Qaeda sympathizers — because we can’t trust what they’re going to say to the American public.” 

By the way, the 1972 Amendment that tightened the restrictions against domestic dissemination wasn’t the result of a domestic influence campaign, but the product of a tug-of-war between the USIA and an angry Senator J. William Fulbright (yes, that Fulbright) who was attempting to eliminate America’s ability to broadcast overseas. 

Misunderstanding Congressional intent was complete with PDD-68, which finally killed the USIA, and was formed by a lack of knowledge and investigation into the 1972 amendment and later the Zorinsky Amendment (which is conceptually similar to the Hodes Amendment). 

The article also captures, but does not expand on, the indirect effect of Smith-Mundt.  In the interview with MAJ Matt Morgan, note the influence of Smith-Mundt, as it conceived today, and the friction it adds.  It’s also noteworthy that in light of his comments, his boss raised the issue that visiting members of Congress to Task Force 134 did not know what was going on. 

Imposing present day concepts onto the past isn’t restricted to the media or Congress.  Academia is equally susceptible.  The only substantial investigation into Smith-Mundt to date seemingly ignores the historical works cited failing to acknowledge what they said, and sometimes more importantly, didn’t say.  

To be sure, this isn’t a simple subject.  Critical is understanding the role and importance of information, a lesson we’re re-learning albeit slowly. 

The global information environment is, surprisingly enough, global. 

More to come.  Read the 5 June 2008 article after the fold. 

Last word on this for now: if propagandizing the American public is really a concern, let’s talk about campaign season, Harry and Louise-style ads, post cards from the IRS reminding us to thank someone for a check we may or may not receive, and for Heaven’s sake, prevent the Air Force from speaking publicly about Cyber Command and distributing its operations. 

Continue reading “Filling in the gaps of ITP’s article on Smith-Mundt and the Defense Department
“ →

Why we serve: to be prohibited by the Hodes Amendment

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Briefly, under the Hodes Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2009, Why We Serve should be considered an illegal influence operation.  Is this the intended effect? 

For some, maybe Why We Serve is undue influence, which is seemingly the issue Representative Hodes and others are concerned about.  Some might think this is the modern equivalent to Why We Fight, the World War II made for American soldiers.  Later some of the films, not all, were shown to American audiences. 

A provocative question on which I’m not “spilling ink” on right now.  Your thoughts are, as always, appreciated.

Censoring the United States, Preventing Domestic Discourse

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Part three of converting the National Defense Authorization Act of 2009 (NDAA) into a haphazard and piecemeal restructuring of America’s global information activities.  Part One was on the Strategic Communication Management Board.  Part Two was about creating a national strategy for public diplomacy and strategic communication.  Part Three is about censoring the domestic discourse because the media failed its responsibilities. 

By a voice vote last week, an amendment (PDF) by Representative Paul Hodes (D-NH) was attached to the NDAA.  The potential impact of the Hodes Amendment could be extreme and more reaching than the author and its supporters intend.  The amendment is based on the mistaken belief that one can — and apparently must — inform without influence and that information can be stopped at the water’s edge.

Briefly, while other parts of the NDAA puts the Defense Department in the lead of U.S. strategic and tactical communication, this amendment makes it clear that this international communication will actually be extra-national communication. 

The amendment’s first and last paragraphs:  

No part of any funds authorized to be appropriated in this or any other Act shall be used by the Department of Defense for propaganda purposes within the United States not otherwise specifically authorized by law.

DEFINITION.—For purposes of this section, the term ‘‘propaganda’’ means any form of communication in support of national objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, or behavior of the people of the United States in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly.

This language will do more to bifurcate America’s conversation with the world than most anything else could possibly imagine.  Already, as a result of the Smith-Mundt Act, the U.S. is prohibited from speaking to Americans with the same voice it speaks for foreign publics.  As the Defense Department has become the primary public diplomat for the United States, purposefully and through lack of empowering State through leadership and funds, the impact will be severe.  This legislation, as worded, prevents most Public Affairs functions which are, in fact, intended to influence the American public to influence Congress and the Executive Branch.  The most innocuous examples of this include recent efforts of both the Navy and Air Force to redefine their roles to the American public to influence Congress.  At the other end, it will mean the adversary (terrorists, insurgents, other states) speaks to Americans without a counter-narrative or meaningful and effective efforts to counter-misinformation.  It also means what the U.S. says to foreign audiences is unfit for American eyes and ears.   

Perhaps the solution isn’t just realizing the value of information, but realizing physical threats can be the same as informational threats that can debilitate through perception and disruption.  

More to come.

See also:

Required Reading: The Spectacle of War by Andrew Exum

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

Read Andrew Exum’s excellent The Spectacle of War: Insurgent video propaganda and Western response (or PDF version here) at Arab Media & Society.  Andrew describes what I call precision-guided media to mobilize supporters through a combination of traditional media such as radio and television, to New Media like websites, discussion boards, YouTube, and SMS.  Modern insurgents have moved well beyond the international sympathy of the Zapatista to, as Andrew describes, fostering and relying on a re-interpretation of nationalism to mobilize and elicit responses near and far.
An excerpt:

A key difference between the kind of insurgent propaganda broadcast by Hizbullah in the 1990s and the kind broadcast by the insurgents of Iraq is that whereas the propaganda broadcast by Hizbullah was often aimed at its enemy, Israel, the propaganda broadcast by the insurgents of Iraq is neither aimed at the Americans nor, for the most part, Iraqis. As evidenced by the languages in which BaghdadSniper is available, much of this propaganda is aimed at inflaming young Muslims spread from Lahore to London. It’s having an effect, too. A recent study by al-Qaeda expert Jason Burke demonstrated that insurgent propaganda videos on the internet had played a significant role in the radicalization process of young British Muslims convicted of planning or carrying out attacks on civilian targets in the UK.

Audrey Kurth Cronin describes the process by which young Muslims are radicalized via insurgent propaganda on the internet, a kind of “cyber-mobilization” revolutionizing warfare to the degree that Napoleon’s levée en masse revolutionized continental warfare at the end of the 18th Century. When the armies of Napoleon marched across Europe, France’s enemies were caught off-guard by the size of the armies and the way in which they were quickly raised from the whole of the population. In the same way, the militaries and security services of traditional nation-states in the West and Middle East could be surprised by the way in which jihadist armies are raised and deployed, drawn as they are from the disaffected children of the Egyptian middle class and the residents of the slums of Paris and London both. For both, the insurgent propaganda functions as a kind of empowering “call to arms.” British journalist Amil Khan, who has worked extensively with radicalized youths in the UK, says the following:

These videos give you an alternative narrative. Instead of feeling like your community is powerless or weak, they give you the sense that ‘your people’ can be strong – and even stronger than the world’s leading powers. It’s a seductive alternative to the self-image many Muslims, you and old, have that their community, the umma, couldn’t organize a picnic much less challenge the world’s only superpower.

One of the most important take-aways from Andrew’s article is what he doesn’t talk about.  He describes strategic communication by the insurgents that incorporates violent, military footage.  But the political-military objectives have a socio-political foundation based on socio-economic disenfranchisement and cultural, religious, and ethnic connections.  Andrew, naturally, focuses on the American military response to adversarial propaganda and misinformation, but what about the State Department and the other non-military information assets in the United States?  Those are not, unsurprisingly, mentioned.  Why?  Because the Defense Department is the only institution funded and staffed to address adversarial propaganda and misinformation.  It also has the educational float to send its experts to its own educational system for extended periods to devise new doctrine and train the future cadre of practitioners.

Today, as Andrew points out by omission, American public diplomacy wears combat boots as civilian institutions languish, engaged in a kind of neutered beauty contest more typical of the end of the Cold War than the beginning.  For the entire twentieth century, strategic communication that targeted foreign and domestic public opinion had been a civilian function.  From the Committee for Public Information in World War I, the Office of War Information and the Voice of America in World War II, through the United States Information Agency and the numerous language radio stations and other State Department public diplomacy missions such as cultural exchange, strategic and tactical communication, was the responsibility of civilian institutions.  This was called public diplomacy even though, in the words of Edward Gullion, propaganda was “the nearest thing in the pure interpretation of the word to what we were doing.”

In examining America’s ability to react and respond to insurgent propaganda, Andrew rightly calls Smith-Mundt into question as a functional barrier to Defense Department operations (Andrew, thanks for the shout out, by the way).  Andrew is correct in attributing DOD inaction on Smith-Mundt, but it should be characterized as a DOD interpretation of the Act.  This interpretation, which is unevenly and at times illogically invoked, is surprising to many on the public diplomacy side of American strategic and tactical communication, especially United States Information Agency veterans.  I noted in a post some six months ago that former Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy (and Public Affairs) Karen Hughes was surprised to learn just a couple of months before leaving office that DOD believed itself to be covered by Smith-Mundt.

In describing the imperative for U.S. acknowledgement of the problem, Andrew could have written the following:

As important as any fact in the field of foreign policy today, and perhaps much the most important, is the fact that the Insurgents have declared psychological war on the United States, all over the world.  It is a war of ideology and a fight unto the death.

Andrew didn’t write that, though.  Replace Insurgents with Russians and you have a quote attributed to Ambassador Averell Harriman in October 1946.  This was the thinking behind Smith-Mundt: to create and make permanent the  institutions to fight the war of information.  Ironically, Smith-Mundt was passed sixty years ago to address the very failure Andrew discusses.  The Act was not intended as the prophylactic most think of it as today, especially those in DOD.  The purpose of Smith-Mundt was to institutionalize and make permanent civilian strategic and tactical communication capabilities through truthful information propagation, education, and cultural exchange to counter misinformation.  Today, this capacity is too often absent and incapable in the contested spaces to warrant barely a footnote by Andrew on Radio Sawa.  As he notes, our messages are too often silenced on the take-off because of fears of influencing instead of informing.  The messages are too often shaped by how they’ll play in Iowa than in the target audience.  Or, they are just plain bad and counterproductive.  This was what Smith-Mundt fixed.

There is more on the Smith-Mundt issue to come.

For now, go read Andrew’s article.  It is your weekend or Monday assignment.

See Also:

Exploiting the holes in the bubble: understanding Smith-Mundt’s barriers

~ Matt Armstrong

Last week, Pat Kushlis of Whirled View asked if the Internet made Smith-Mundt moot.  To which, Kim Andrew Elliott responded that short-wave penetrated the apparent bubble of Smith-Mundt’s prohibition against domestic dissemination of Voice of America broadcasts.  VOA programs frequently received call-ins to its radio shows from Americans and didn’t hesitate to put them on the air. 

It is important to recall that our modern interpretation of Smith-Mundt as an overarching prophylactic protecting Americans from Government propaganda was not its primary purpose.  On the contrary, arguments of the 1940s and 1950s indicate minor transgressions of a Government news service, which VOA was, into the American domestic sphere was acceptable to those who sought to improve America’s “whisper”.  The impact to commercial media, from CBS to mom and pop operations, was small enough to not be competition and to not risk undermining the U.S. government with messages sympathetic to America’s adversaries, the two pillars of the prohibition on domestic dissemination.  

Smith-Mundt is not made moot by the Internet.  It was already moot with the rise of global media.  Further, it is arguable that Smith-Mundt was intended to disappear once American media was capable of broadcasting globally, a reality that is now decades old. 

Our unique law, not one other industrialized democracy has a similar law, implies our government lies to overseas audiences (for it can only tell the truth to Americans) and also prevents the U.S. government from explaining its own taxpayers what it does overseas (or telling others for fear the message seeps into the U.S.). 

More important are the modern information barriers attributed to Smith-Mundt and the root causes of Smith-Mundt.  A thoughtful analysis results in a dichotomy.  The former demand dumping the Act while the latter requires updating it to fix our contemporary communications (strategy and message) with the world, which was the purpose of the Act in the first place.  Neither fix would address domestic influence operations by the U.S. government, nor should either address such.  This is dealt with in other legislation and more importantly, by elected officials and their political appointees. 

Focusing exclusively on America’s ability to put out information and counter misinformation for foreign audiences ignores the real tools of shaping public opinion to the detriment of our ability to participate in the modern struggle.  If one’s goal is to protect the American public from influence by its government, then such an effort must address and start with inward-facing activities such as the purpose and practical function of the President’s Press Secretary to Administration officials appearing on Sunday news programs to postcards from the IRS indicating a forthcoming check to the Air Force and Navy speaking directly to the public to explain their relevance (the Air Force with its cyber-push and the Navy’s touring universities). 

The holes are there and information seeps in, but not all of it.  Yet at the same time, other information is blocked for fear of influencing, intentionally or not (usually not), Americans, regardless of truth.  The Internet amplifies the issue, making the law that much more silly.  It also demonstrates the need for a new law that facilitates America’s counter-misinformation capability, just as Smith-Mundt did sixty years ago this year. 

There are holes, but they are the gaps in our capabilities that Smith-Mundt’s foremost purpose was to fill, not the tertiary prohibition that became the sole purpose of the Act in our modern interpretation. 

See also:

Another chance to raise Smith-Mundt: Is the State Department and President Bush “legitimizing” the actions of the enemy by continuing to use “jihadi”?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 5 Comments

Briefly, you probably already know that the State Department approved the change in terminology recommended by the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC), which in turn was based on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report, “Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims.” 

Yesterday, Jeffrey Imm, at Counterterrorism Blog, notes the State Department Country Reports on Terrorism 2007, released this week, wasn’t updated to reflect the new lexicon. 

…it is apparent that these new guidelines are not being reflected in the State Department annual terrorist report and in comments from President Bush.

In the April 2008 State Department Country Reports on Terrorism 2007 released today, anyone can clearly see the use of the terms “jihad”, “jihadist”, “jihadi”, “mujahedin / mujahadin”, “caliphate”, “Islamist” — as nouns describing enemy terrorist activity and ideology (not just in the titles of Jihadist groups’ names).

Such usage can been easily found in the Microsoft Word version of the State Department report:
– “jihad”: pages 63, 75, 81, 107, 126, 127, 174, 187, 272
– “jihadi(s)”: pages 10, 93, 94, 103, 107, 122
– “jihadist”: pages 116, 117, 120, 121
– “Islamist”: pages 17, 52, 62, 75, 87, 93, 95, 122, 188, 271, 291

These references are clearly describing State Department counterterrorist analyst descriptions of enemy terrorist individuals, activity, and ideology. For example, such phrases in the annual State Department terror report as: “promoting jihad and recruiting potential suicide bombers” (p. 75), “a recruitment network for foreign jihadis” (p. 93), “recruiting jihadists to fight” (p. 117), “numerous cells dedicated to sending Jihadi fighters” (p. 122), “AQ leadership has called for jihad against UN forces” (p. 174) — don’t sound like a view of “jihad” as a “spiritual struggle”.

Moreover, in President Bush’s April 28 press conference, he referred to the enemy as “jihadists” – to an assembled press corps that never asked him a single question about the remark.

In last week’s reported NCTC memorandum and DHS report on the proper terminology in describing the enemy, the NCTC is quoted stating that “[n]ever use the terms ‘jihadist’ or ‘mujahedeen’ in conversation to describe the terrorists…calling our enemies ‘jihadis’ and their movement a global ‘jihad’ unintentionally legitimizes their actions.” As described in last week’s article on this subject, I pointed out that this viewpoint challenges many of the key passages in the 9/11 Commission Report.

This raises a (humorous) question that Imm asks:

Does the NCTC and DHS now think that the State Department and President Bush are “legitimizing” the actions of the enemy by using such terms?

Why is this humorous?  A motivating factor behind Smith-Mundt was the fear that the State Department would undermine the President and the United States by being too soft or even sympathetic to the enemy propaganda.  Between this example, which is somewhat excusable for reasons of the bureaucracy but still should have been prevented, and Senator Tom Coburn preventing the confirmation of Jim Glassman as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, is it any wonder we need to revisit Smith-Mundt?  So much of what brought about the Act sixty years ago is repeating itself today.

I recommend reading Jeffrey Imm’s whole post, The Continuing Debate Over “Jihadists” As The Enemy, that includes a discussion on why nouns and verbs are so important.  See also Jim Giurard’s post on the same here.

UPDATE: For the original DHS docs, see this post (h/t CT Blog).

(H/T Steve at COMOPS)