Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXVIII, Part 2, Organization and Management of Foreign Policy; Public Diplomacy, 1973–1976

94. Address by the Director of the United States Information Agency (Keogh)¹

New York, November 14, 1973.

Information and Modern Diplomacy

What in the world is the United States Information Agency?

In the world, it is a multifaceted tool of modern diplomacy with a well-defined role in U.S. foreign policy.

In the United States, it is so little known and understood among the general public that even well-informed people are uncertain about what it is and what it does.

When I was nominated to be Director of USIA a little less than a year ago and my friends came around to congratulate me, I soon discovered that many of them were not quite sure just what it was that I was going to do. Some thought I was going to run the CIA, while others thought surely U.S. Information must have something to do with the Library of Congress. Some were as confused as the distraught woman who called our Paris office in an effort to determine the whereabouts of her husband, who had failed to return to their hotel after a night on the town. She thought that surely the U.S. Information Agency ought to know what he was up to.

This lack of information about the Information Agency is largely the result of legislation which specifically forbids the USIA to disseminate within the United States the information and media products it distributes abroad. There is a sound rationale for this legislation. Its aim is to prevent USIA from becoming an internal propaganda force in the service of a sitting administration. Yet its effect has been to keep the American public too much in the dark about what USIA does. We are now trying—by strictly legal means—to throw some light on the subject.

My interest in attempting to inform the rest of the world about the United States goes back a good many years. This interest was cultivated in the trips abroad that I took during my incarnation as an editor of Time.² I recall flying from Honolulu to Sydney, Australia, a decade ago and stopping on the way at Nandi in the Fiji Islands. I walked into the lobby of the quite modern airport and saw a booth with a sign that read Fiji Chamber of Commerce. An attractive Fiji girl was in charge of the booth. Using up some of that airport waiting time, I struck up a conversation with her.

“Are you going to stay here long?” she asked, in a polished British accent. “No,” I said, “we will leave just as soon as the crew gets the plane serviced. This is just a stopover.” “Where are you from?” she asked. At that point, I drew myself up with some pride and I said, “I’m from the United States—from New York City.” She seemed thoughtful, even puzzled, for a moment and then she said, “Ah, yes, New York City. I think that’s where one makes a stopover on the way to London.”

It was on this same trip, I recall, that I hired a car and driver so that my wife and I could travel through the outback surrounding Brisbane. It was a warm afternoon in January, and as we came to a small town I suggested to the Australian driver that we stop for something to drink. Searching for a place along the street, I saw a familiar sign and said, “Well, there’s a Coca Cola sign. Let’s stop there. It looks just like home.” The driver turned to me with what seemed genuine surprise and said, “Oh, do you have Coke in the States, too?”

Experiences such as these—and others with more depth but less anecdotal value—tended to punctuate my feeling that a strong information program is of great importance to the United States. This is not a new idea. From the time of the American Revolution the United States has employed information activities in one way or another to produce an impact in other countries. The merits of the American cause were argued abroad in the 18th century by a talented team of communicators, headed by a wily old PR man named Benjamin Franklin. During the Civil War the Union actively sought support from antislavery elements in Europe. At one point, Abraham Lincoln even addressed an open letter directly to the people of England.

If the history of American efforts to influence foreign opinion is a long one, doubts about the importance or even the existence of public opinion are equally venerable. The Declaration of Independence, we recall, enjoins us to show a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. Dean Acheson wrote in 1965: “World opinion simply does not exist on matters that concern us.” In his column a short time later, Walter Lippmann replied:

It is fashionable in certain circles to dismiss scornfully a serious concern about what foreign nations think of us. This is a reaction to the naive and often silly American wish to be loved by everybody. But the reaction has gone much too far. For it is not true that in the real world of affairs a great power, even the strongest, can afford to ignore the opinions of others. It must have friends who trust it and believe in it and have confidence that its power will be used wisely.

It was precisely to nurture such friendships that USIA was established in 1953 as the first separate U.S. Government information service with a mission of presenting the American case abroad during times of relative peace. Through the two decades of USIA’s existence, the nature of its mission has evolved with the times. It is evolving now—perhaps more than ever.

Communications Channels and Activities

What is the mission of the U.S. Information Agency? As I see it, the mission is to support U.S. national interests by:

—Conveying an understanding of what the United States stands for as a nation and as a people and presenting a true picture of the society, institutions, and culture in which our policies evolve;

—Explaining U.S. policies and the reasons for them; and

—Advising the U.S. Government on the implication of foreign opinion for the formulation and execution of our foreign policy.

To do this we use all available means of communication.

The largest element in USIA is the Voice of America, the radio arm of the Agency. It broadcasts in 36 languages around the world to an adult audience of many millions.

USIA produces or acquires some 150 films and television documentaries annually for showing overseas. The vast majority of these productions are acquired from commercial sources. In addition, a variety of special-targeted programs and many newsclips are produced for foreign television. We also help television and film producers from other countries who want to do pieces about the United States.

We radioteletype texts of official policy statements and interpretive material to 127 overseas posts five days a week. Receiving the texts of such papers on an almost immediate basis is often of crucial importance to U.S. representatives in dealing with both the governments and the media in the host countries.

Special articles written by our staff and reprints from U.S. publications are regularly mailed to posts for placement in local media and for background information and use by Embassy officers.

We publish magazines in 27 languages and distribute them in 100 countries.

Every year we build and circulate abroad some 50 exhibits about life in the United States.

We maintain or support almost 300 libraries in information centers, reading rooms, and binational centers in 98 countries. These libraries are used by about 12½ million people each year.

The educational and cultural exchange programs which USIA administers abroad for the State Department form another vital element in the effort to communicate with people around the world.

Of course, the most important and effective means of communication we have is the personal contact between our officers in 109 countries and local opinion leaders. I recall Edward R. Murrow’s remark, when he held the position that I now occupy,³ that USIA could easily and immediately transmit information 25,000 miles around the world. The difficulty, he noted, is in conveying it the last three feet. That is the all-important job of our overseas officers.

These various communications channels and activities are brought together in a unified coordinated program by means of Country Plans drawn up by our posts overseas, cleared by the Ambassador, and finally approved by our headquarters in Washington and the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the State Department.

The need for this kind of public diplomacy is widely recognized by the nations of the world. Back in 1954 a British study commission reported:

A modern government has to concern itself with public opinion abroad and be properly equipped to deal with it. . . . The information services must today be regarded as part of the normal apparatus of diplomacy of a great power.

Picking up that cue, other major countries, including the Communist governments, have steadily expanded their cultural and information programs during the last decade. For example, appropriations for the French external cultural and information program reached $430 million in 1971—more than double the 1961 level and more than twice the size of USIA’s present budget. West Germany has increased its spending for this purpose substantially in recent years, and last year it reached $300 million, which is 50 percent more than our budget. While no solid figures are ascertainable, it is estimated that the Soviet Union has expanded its cultural and information programs to the point at which it is spending almost $1 billion annually, an effort that dwarfs the U.S. commitment for this purpose. While all this has been going on, USIA resources have been shrinking. In real dollar terms, the USIA budget for this year is approximately the same as it was in 1953.

This imbalance, to put it mildly, keeps us on our mettle.

New Tasks and New Techniques

In recent years, the environment in which we operate has changed tremendously—in both technological and political terms. This inevitably conditions our tasks as well as our methods of functioning.⁴

One change has been the extraordinary expansion of new techniques and channels of communication. Technical developments such as transistor radios, satellite telecasting, video cassettes, videotape recordings, computer data banks, and so on, have been matched by the expansion around the world of television and radio networks, news agencies, and non-media channels of communication involving business, tourism, and professional and scholarly contacts.

In this general area, I would like to mention just one of the new devices USIA is using. We call it the electronic dialogue. The first step in this process is the taping or filming of a speech or statement by a high government official or a distinguished leader from the private sector or academe discussing the discipline in which he or she is expert. A USIA post overseas will then gather that country’s leaders in the field under discussion—men from government, the private sector, and academic life. They will watch the tape or film and then through a special international telephone connection will question and discuss the subject with the speaker for as much as an hour or more. On important matters of U.S. policy in which the other country has a mutual interest, we have found this to be a highly effective means of communication.

Some critics of USIA take the position that in this day of rapid and saturated communication there is no longer any need for a U.S. information effort. Why, they ask, is it not possible to just let the regular news media take care of all that?

There are very fundamental reasons why the news media—here or abroad—cannot be expected to perform the information function for the U.S. Government. By its very definition, news is the unusual. The media, which are essentially and properly commercial enterprises, tend to highlight the special, the spectacular, and the bizarre, with a heavy tilt toward the negative. The broad sweep of the normal ongoing endeavors, developments, and achievements of a society do not make very exciting headlines or bulletins. The news media have no desire to be the platform for official statements or explanations of U.S. policy. Replying to foreign critics is not their job. Nor have they any financial incentive to attempt to communicate with people in closed societies or underdeveloped nations. As a result, it is often a confused and distorted image of the United States that reaches foreign eyes and ears and becomes an element in the balance sheet of our foreign relations. A continuing effort to explain the facts and underlying principles of our actions and policies and to correct the willful or unintentional distortions about our country abroad is the daily and vital task of USIA.

The task has become more complicated as the political atmosphere in which we function has changed. Some quite rapid changes have brought new opportunities as well as new problems. While a new climate for relations with the Soviet Union and China has been developing, there has been an undeniable erosion of old relations with some of our major allies. New problems have arisen; perceptions of national interest are changing. In Western Europe there is a generation of adults with no memory of World War II and the contribution of the United States to the defense and subsequent reconstruction of their countries.

This changed American relationship with Europe was aptly explained by Congressman Benjamin Rosenthal of New York as he was speaking to a group of parliamentarians from the Common Market countries. He said that too many Americans still seemed to believe in “grandmotherly diplomacy—the idea that we have a delightful, charming, dependable and unique relationship with Europe because all of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers came from Europe. We can’t rely on our grandmothers anymore. We must rely on ourselves.”

Fostering Dialogue With Eastern Europe

As our government seeks to resolve differences through negotiations and engage former adversaries and old friends in constructive dialogue, USIA must attempt to foster a better and more extensive understanding of our purpose and policies. We must simultaneously listen attentively to the views and opinions of others, for an important part of our job is to make U.S. policy-makers aware of the attitudes, aspirations and fears of other nations on issues of mutual concern.

It is obvious that the policy of negotiation rather than confrontation, and the reality of détente, have presented the United States and the world with new opportunities for constructive dialogue which the USIA is in a unique position to foster.

In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the officials and the people are much more receptive to our traveling exhibits than before. During 1973 we have shown eight major exhibits in six countries in that part of the world, dealing with American approaches to research and development, outdoor recreation, progress and the environment, educational technology, and auto life—an exposition of the way the automobile has affected the social, industrial, and environmental aspects of American life.

More than 2¼ million people visited these exhibits. The Soviet Union not only cooperated with us in staging these exhibits but, for the first time, even accorded them a guarded measure of favorable publicity. In addition, we also displayed nine exhibits of American fine arts in five Eastern European countries.

In September I went to the Soviet Union to open our exhibit on outdoor recreation in the city of Irkutsk. The reception we were accorded in Moscow, Leningrad, and Irkutsk could not have been more cordial. The Soviet officials and people that I met gave the genuine impression that they were deeply interested in wider informational and cultural exchanges with the U.S. Government. Some of the officials may not have been entirely comfortable with the idea, but there seemed to be no question of their interest.

In Irkutsk, a city in the heart of Siberia, a city with a tradition of 300 years and a present that is filled with dramatic growth, our exhibit was the center of intense interest. It was welcomed with the greatest warmth by the Mayor of Irkutsk, a 50-year-old local patriot deeply concerned about the growth and development of the city where he was born. He had visited the United States, especially the Pacific Northwest. As he showed us the illuminated chart of the plan for his city’s development, he expressed one great goal to make Irkutsk just like Seattle. I firmly believe that the importance of this kind of communication to the future of international relationships—indeed, to the future of civilization—cannot be overestimated.

Perhaps of the greatest significance in our new communications relationship with the Soviet Union is the fact that the U.S.S.R. no longer jams the Voice of America. After five consecutive years of steady jamming, the electronic blockade ceased last September 10. This presented us with a new and vastly larger audience within the Soviet Union than we had before. When I was in the Soviet Union, the Voice of America was coming through loud and clear in Moscow, in Leningrad, and in the heart of Siberia. An American correspondent living in Moscow told one of our officers that Russians he knows now consider it an “in” thing to listen to the Voice and do so openly at home and even on the street. Our spacemen in Moscow on the Apollo–Soyuz project have been told by their Russian counterparts that they and others in the scientific community now regularly listen to the Voice. The Russian-speaking guides with our traveling exhibits report a vast increase in VOA listenership.

While détente has thus given us new and welcome opportunities for communication with the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, it would be naive—indeed, fool-hardy—for us to assume that all differences between our countries are about to be wiped out. Clearly there is no end to competition either in the political sphere or in the realm of ideas. General Secretary Brezhnev [Leonid I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]⁵ himself said of the new relationships: “The successes of this important matter do not signify in any way the possibility of relaxing the ideological struggle.” In this struggle, while we eschew polemics and the rhetoric of the cold war, we must meet international competition by insuring that a clear and balanced picture of the United States and its policies gets through abroad, both to those who make decisions and the public at large.

In larger focus, the opportunities and challenges presented by this set of circumstances were placed in historical context by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger when he said:⁶

We are at one of those rare moments where through a combination of fortuitous circumstances and design man seems in a position to shape his future. What we need is the confidence to discuss issues without bitter strife, the wisdom to define together the nature of our world, as well as the vision to chart together a more just future.

Information Support for Economic Programs

In another way, changing world circumstances have placed new demands on the foreign affairs structure of government. As national priorities shift, USIA is shifting the emphasis of its own programs to lend information support to new foreign affairs objectives. Toward this end, and while still carrying on our larger and traditional role, we have launched a program to help improve the U.S. balance of payments in trade and tourism. I have called on Agency personnel in more than 100 countries to support the trade and promotion programs of the Departments of State and Commerce. We seek to portray the United States as an attractive place to visit, and we report on scientific and technical achievements, including the research and development of new techniques and products. USIA officers abroad will inform local businessmen about U.S. products and services available. Our organization will carry on an intensive effort to keep the U.S. position strong in the world trade. We look forward to closer cooperation with the private sector in this effort.

We see this part of our mission as going beyond the issue of the balance of payments—as important as that issue is. President Nixon recently expressed the wider view when he said:⁷

. . . trade leads to communication between peoples, not just governments but peoples. . . . I believe that as we increase communication between peoples at all levels, the opportunity of discussing differences rather than fighting about differences is greatly increased.

Recently an old friend of mine—a journalist—looked at me with an expression that can only be described as pity. “You must be having a terrible time,” he said. “How can you possibly find anything good to say about the United States these days?”

That point of view touches on a phenomenon that I believe is of the greatest significance for the picture of the United States which we deliver to the rest of the world. We must be careful not to be so obsessed with the short-term negatives in our society that we are blinded to the long-lasting positives. In telling America’s story to the world, USIA does not try to say that this is a society without troubles. It would be ridiculous for us to do so. Hardline propaganda is a relic of the past. We try to explain what is happening in the United States in a way that is factual and with a perspective that places events in the context of the general thrust of the American society.

What was on my friend’s mind, of course was that subject that seems so all-encompassing: Watergate and related matters. On our news programs on the Voice of America we report the story of the Watergate affair fairly and factually. We do not, however, deal in rumor, hearsay, speculation, or anonymous accusations. When I set that policy some of my old friends in the news media complained that I had turned censor and was somehow suppressing the truth because I would not allow rumor, hearsay, speculation, and anonymous accusations to run at full stream on the Voice of America. It seemed to me the only responsible policy for the Voice to follow in reporting this story to the rest of the world.

In explaining what is happening in this country as a result of the Watergate affair, we try to make the point to our overseas audiences that what they are seeing and hearing is this free and open society working out a problem. Charges against people in high places have been brought forward and extended largely by the free press. These charges are being investigated by the legislative branch, through the Senate select committee, and by the judicial branch, through the grand jury system. The interplay of all these forces in our society—the free press, the executive branch, the legislative branch, the judicial branch—is being carried out very much in public. Ultimately the problem will be resolved. Whatever remedial steps may be necessary will be taken, and the society will move on. While some of our friends abroad are appalled at what they see as a nation publicly destroying its own image, our unhysterical explanation of the free and open working of this society strikes a remarkably positive and calming reaction among the sophisticated in some lands where such openness is unknown.

While it seems at times difficult to avoid being obsessed with the negatives that batter our eyes and ears here at home, we at USIA cannot lose sight of the fact that the problems faced on many issues in many other countries make our own seem relatively minor. Take, for example, the omnipresent matter of the cost of living and inflation. It is a fact of life that a typical factory hand in Britain, France, or West Germany—to cite some of the most prominent—must work approximately twice as long as one in the United States to buy a home, a car, a washing machine, a television set, or a dozen eggs. As for inflation, the increase in the consumer price index from July 1972 to July 1973 was less in the United States than in any major developed country. Shortages? Our complaints about shortages would be incomprehensible to many relatively advanced societies of the world which have never known the plenty we have come to consider a right.

In these volatile days, we even hear now and then that our country is adrift on the international seas. But what country was it that served as the catalyst in the effort to bring peace to the Middle East—however difficult and unending that effort might be? Which country is it that, amidst new tensions, was able to maintain and move toward greater development of its new relationships with old adversaries with approaches for lasting peace?

Keeping as clear a perspective as we can, we at USIA see our foreign communications activities as part of a permanent long-range process whose effects are cumulative. Whether our officers are broadcasting on the Voice of America, or editing a magazine in Arabic, or scheduling a performance by Duke Ellington in Moscow, or setting up an exhibit in Bulgaria, or arranging a lecture by a Fulbright professor in New Delhi, or assisting a French TV producer to plan a series on American environmental programs, or giving the facts about U.S. trade policies to a Japanese editor, it is all part of the same effort: the extremely important work of explaining our country and our people, of correcting or minimizing misunderstandings that clog or contaminate relations between the United States and other countries.

These day-to-day contacts give substance to the continuing dialogue with foreign audiences. By providing facts and points of view and the human dimension of personal relations, we broaden and strengthen this discourse. Collectively and cumulatively these efforts affect attitudes and shape perceptions of the United States.

On the occasion of his 75th birthday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas expressed a view with which I am in wholehearted agreement, although I am sure that if I were privileged to sit in deliberations with the Justice he and I might find ourselves on different sides of many more limited issues. Justice Douglas said: “I think the heart of America is sound, the conscience of America is bright and the future of America is great.”

This is the vision of the United States that we want to share and make comprehensible to the people abroad so that in our relations with other nations distortion and doubt will be replaced by confidence, respect, and understanding.

1. Source: Department of State Bulletin, January 21, 1974, pp. 57–63. Keogh delivered his address before the New York Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
2. Keogh was on the staff of Time magazine from 1951 to 1968, serving as assistant managing editor from 1961 to 1968 and then becoming executive editor in 1968.
3. Edward R. Murrow was Director of USIA, 1961–1964.
4. An internal USIA report, “U.S. Government Overseas Communication Programs: Needs and Opportunities in the Seventies,” prepared by Barbara M. White in July 1973, also concluded that the international environment had altered overseas communications and recommended adaptive measures. The White report is in the National Archives, RG 306, Records of the USIA, Historical Collection, Subject Files, 1953–2000, Entry A1 (1066), Box 13, Policy, U.S. Government Overseas Communication Program, 1973.
5. Brackets in the original.
6. For Secretary Kissinger’s address before the Third Pacem in Terris Conference at Washington on October 8, 1973, see Bulletin of Oct. 29, 1973, p. 525. [Footnote in the original. Kissinger’s address is printed as Document 19, Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, vol. XXXVIII, Part 1, Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1963–1976.]
7. For President Nixon’s remarks before the President’s Conference on Export Expansion at Washington on Oct. 11, 1973, see Bulletin of Nov. 5, 1973, p. 553. [Footnote in the original. Nixon’s remarks are also printed in Public Papers: Nixon, 1973, pp. 863–867.]