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p One of the most eloquent testimonies of the role which the war of ideas plays in international relations is the significance the ruling circles of the imperialist powers attach to it. Since the Second World War they have built up a huge propaganda machine.

p A machine to serve foreign political propaganda is not something new, of course. It achieved considerable dimensions during the two world wars. Nazi Germany had a large propaganda apparatus. In the period between the two world wars some propaganda institutions were set up in Britain (for instance, the British Broadcasting Corporation and the British Council). In the USA such institutions were established on the eve of World War II. But all this, including even the bulky propaganda apparatus of the nazis, can hardly be compared with the volume of modern imperialism’s propaganda effort or the size of the machine through which this effort is made.

p Today this machine is a highly complex mechanism. First and foremost, it consists of the apparatus belonging directly to the monopolies dominating the mass media (the press, films, radio, television, and so on) and also to monopoly organisations specialising in the dissemination of information and ideas abroad. Then there is a ramified government propaganda apparatus, both official and, for various political considerations, camouflaged. Lastly, there is the growing conventional foreign policy apparatus consisting of diplomatic institutions, intelligence agencies, institutions handling foreign trade and economic relations, and so forth. This is only natural because the foreign policy of the imperialist powers is increasingly intertwining with the war of ideas. Moreover, it requires ideological backing since this policy is itself a vehicle used by imperialism to fight for people’s minds throughout the world.

p Today propaganda functions of one kind or another are assumed by all or almost all forms of international contacts, including tourism and cultural exchanges, to say nothing of the overseas activities of the imperialist monopolies.

p The complex structure and the diverse functions of the 200 various links of this system foster the trend towards concentrating the ideological aspects of the entire propaganda apparatus serving foreign policy and international relations in the hands of the imperialist governments and monopoly organisations. In turn this leads to the appearance of new departments and institutions.

p Such, in general outline, is the picture of the fairly complex and mobile machine, which is rapidly developing and changing in line with imperialism’s attempts to adapt itself to the changes taking place in the world.

p All the big (and some of the small) capitalist countries today have a foreign political propaganda machine. But attention is, of course, attracted mainly by the foreign political propaganda machine in the USA, not only because it is larger than the foreign political propaganda machines of all the other capitalist countries taken together but also because by analysing it we can distinctly trace the basic principles underlying the organisation and operation of the imperialist apparatus of foreign political propaganda.

p Imperialist, particularly US, propaganda for foreign consumption is conducted by conventional means of ideologically influencing the masses (the press, radio, films and so on) that belong directly to the monopolies. Therefore, the measures designed to create the most favourable conditions for the expansion of these monopolies, which export their ideological products (films, books, journals, newspapers and so on) in growing quantities, form a major element of the USA’s propaganda activities abroad.

p All these newspaper, book-publishing and film monopolies derive large profits from the export of their products. Nevertheless, this is not simply a matter of the commercial activities of the various firms and companies or of normal cultural exchanges between countries, exchanges that are part of peace-time relations between states, but, notably, of organised foreign propaganda. This was generally recognised by American researchers soon after the Second World War. For example, in a volume entitled Public Opinion and Foreign Policy, edited by Lester Markel, we are told that "all private activities affecting public opinion abroad have, in effect, a propaganda aspect.... Although this activity is privately financed, it is a fundamental part, in some 201 countries the most important part, of the whole complex of activities which can help to make Americans better understood abroad."  [201•* 

p It is precisely from this angle that US Government circles regard the activities of American monopolies in disseminating newspapers, journals, books, films, TV programmes and so on abroad.

p The scale of this activity has grown to immense proportions. For instance, the Paris edition of International Herald Tribune is published for a large foreign audience. The journal Time and many other periodicals also have foreign edition.  [201•**  Reader’s Digest has a particularly large international circulation (over 17 million copies).  [201•*** 

p Associated Press and United Press International are a major channel of “private” propaganda. The former agency serves more than 3,000 periodicals, and radio and TV stations in 80 countries, and also 1,700 newspapers and 2,500 radio and TV stations in its own country.  [201•****  United Press International has over 6,500 clients, of whom more than 2,000 are in foreign countries. UPI maintains 151 branches in the USA and 110 abroad  [201•*****  staffed by 10,000 employees and with an annual salary and operations midget of over 48 million dollars.  [201•******  AP and UPI meet the rising cost of operations by increasing the price for their services (for instance, in February 1969 foreign clients had to pay 11 per cent more for AP services and 10 per cent more for UPI services).  [201•*******  Apprehensive lest the rising prices will reduce the clientele of these agencies, the report of the Republican Coordinating Committee, published in connection with the 1968 presidential elections, recommended subsidising 202 AP and UPI so that the developing countries could afford to buy their services.  [202•* 

p The export of books has also reached a colossal scale. A private National Book Committee has been formed to push their dissemination.  [202•** 

p American film exports are promoted on a scale that can only be described as imposing. This is explained, above all, by "business considerations": Wilson P. Dizard calculates that exports account for about 50 per cent of the profits of .the American film companies.  [202•***  The export of filmed TV programmes has likewise assumed a huge scale in recent years.. In 1965 American firms earned nearly 125 million dollars from overseas sales of TV programmes and equipment. Moreover, American TV companies (headed by the three major corporations) own or are affiliated with television interests in over 30 countries.  [202•**** 

p The Americanisation of the television industry has gone so far that under pressure from public opinion many countries have lately introduced protective measures: in Canada at least 55 per cent of the TV fare must be homegrown; in Britain only 14 per cent of the programmes may be foreignoriginated; in Japan the Government has established a ceiling on prices for the purchase of foreign programmes in order to make the Jap’anese market unprofitable for foreign companies.  [202•***** 

p Since the Second World War the United States monopolies have regarded their export of journals, books, films and so on not only frojn the standpoint of direct commercial benefits but also from the standpoint of political interests. This is seen in the drive for ideological expansion and in the readiness to renounce part of the profits and even make considerable outlays for foreign political propaganda.

p Notable in this respect are the foundations set up by the monopolies to finance activity not connected with the 203 extraction of profit (as a matter of fact, it does not cost much to set up these foundations because they are exempt from taxation). In the United States today there are over 30,000 foundations. Of these, according to statistics for 1967, 249 have assets exceeding 10 million dollars each. Altogether the American foundations operate with assets worth 20,000 million dollars, and their annual allocations for various purposes total approximately 1,500 million dollars.  [203•*  As a rule the foundations finance research, cultural projects and so forth. In recent years they have been increasing their allocations for “projects” linked with overseas propaganda and even subversion.

p An idea of this aspect of the activities engaged in by the American foundations is given by the example of the Ford Foundation, a giant in its field, which operates in the sociocultural sphere. Its assets add up to 3,000 million dollars and its annual “disbursements” amount to nearly 300 million dollars.  [203•**  The anti-Soviet Free Russia Foundation was set up on funds provided by the Ford Foundation. Moreover, it has subsidised the propaganda and subversive Free Europe organisation.  [203•***  It helps overseas American-operated educational institutions, grants scholarships for foreign students studying in the USA, finances propaganda publications and so on. In 1968, for example, the Ford Foundation’s international division had a budget amounting to 68,500,000 dollars (i. e., one-third of the Foundation’s total budget), while the list of organisations receiving subsidies from it shows its interest in the mass media for information and propaganda. Prominent in this list are the International Association for Cultural Freedom, the International Press Institute, the Broadcast Institute of North America and the Centre for Educational Television Overseas.  [203•****  True, compared with the period when the cold war was at its height, the Ford Foundation has recently shown more interest in matters of another kind, linked with cultural exchanges and support for individual measures designed to ensure the extension of the East-West dialogue (the Pugwash 204 movement, the Dartmouth conferences and so forth). This may be explained by the fact that there has been a certain demarcation in the American business world. Some American businessmen are now more than ever anxious to avert a thermonuclear war. Moreover, the directors of some foundations have evidently felt the need to react to pressure from public opinion, which criticises the support given by the foundations for aggressive policies.

p The US monopolies, moreover, devote much attention to problems linked with American investments and business in foreign countries. These investments are, as everybody knows, steadily growing. Suffice it to say that between 1950 and 1966 American private investments overseas increased from 11,500 million dollars  [204•*  to 54,000 million dollars,  [204•**  while in 1970 they were estimated at 78,100 million dollars.  [204•***  The monopolies and politicians have begun to realise more and more clearly that American business abroad is not "just business" for the "by-product of business in these instances is propaganda, good or bad".  [204•**** 

p In this respect the period since World War II has been crucial. The political aspects and psychological impact of this business activity are animatedly discussed and sometimes even sharply criticised.

p A characteristic example is Thomas Aitken’s A Foreign Policy for American Business. Writing that "American businessmen abroad having assumed a responsibility for our country’s image overseas, should not leave this vital area... to our embassy or consulate alone,"  [204•*****  Aitken tries to formulate a "positive policy" by analysing the negative and positive practices of various American firms. Robert L. Heilbroner gives a comprehensive picture of Standard Oil’s operations in Venezuela, where in an effort to offset the revolutionary movement and the rapid spread of antiYankee feeling it increased the deductions from its profits to the country’s budget, raised the salaries for Venezuelans, 205 moved local specialists into executive posts and began training them so that "some day" when the company "steps out" they should be able to take over the management.  [205•* 

p Walter Joyce unfolds a similar picture of the overseas practices of American firms and of their efforts to indoctrinate their local staffs in an anti-communist spirit.  [205•** 

p Among American businessmen interest in this sort of activity has grown in the post-war years to the extent that special agencies have been set up to activate and coordinate propaganda. These agencies include the Business Council for International Understanding, the National Foreign Trade Council and the Latin American Information Committee.  [205•*** 

p US imperialism gives its utmost backing to these private efforts. This backing is by no means confined to co-ordinating the operations of the involved firms and companies with government programmes through USIA’s Office of Private Co-operations.

p Evidence of this lies notably in a whole system of measures of a diplomatic character. Take for example the moves by US diplomacy to pull down the barriers to the broad export of the “ideological” output of the American monopolies. This is being done on the pretext of upholding "freedom of information" (an ideological variant of the "open door" doctrine in trade); begun during the First World War this drive continues uninterruptedly to this day (in the United Nations Organisation as well).

p US diplomacy has recourse, to diverse ways of assisting the ideological expansion of the American monopolies. These include numerous official diplomatic acts, such as the Blum-Byrnes agreement which soon after World War II gave Hollywood a free hand for expansion in France, or the provisions in the vast majority of economic “aid” agreements stipulating favourable terms for the dissemination of American books, magazines, films and other propaganda material. Among these measures and services are the unimpeded issue of passports to representatives of the involved firms, the assistance rendered them by diplomatic missions, and 206 also economic privileges. These privileges merit special attention.

p A law binds the US Government, the Department of State in particular, to protect the profits of these firms and companies. The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, which shall be discussed later, contains a provision (Article 502) banning competition between official overseas propaganda and the propaganda conducted by private American firms. Under this provision the Government has to reduce its information activities whenever "corresponding private information dissemination is found to be adequate".  [206•*  This provision was reaffirmed in 1957 by a Congress decision, which prohibits government propaganda agencies from extending their press services where they "would prevent private US concerns from selling corresponding services."  [206•** 

The private firms disseminating books, films, magazines and other propaganda material in foreign countries found they needed economic assistance especially on account of the chronic dollar shortage and currency exchange difficulties in these countries. In 1948, to overcome these difficulties the US Government began allocating substantial funds to guarantee the conversion into dollars of the money received in foreign currency from the sale of books, magazines, newspapers and films. These purposes were served by the US Government’s Information Media Guarantee Programme.  [206•***  In this sphere the" monopolies receive considerable assistance from legislation. A typical example is a bill on the distribution of aid to foreign countries under which a sum of 10 million dollars was allocated for the conversion of foreign currency. Moreover, private firms are allocated large sums in order to guarantee them against losses and encourage the export of their products. This is promoted by diverse other measures, for instance, the purchase by the State Department of copyright for the publication of books in foreign countries, financial assistance to cover losses due to unsold exports, and so on.  [206•**** 

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p Significant as the “private” effort is in US foreign political propaganda, the scale, complexity and^size of the expenditures for this propaganda have long ago put on the agenda the question of setting up a Government agency to bear the main burden of organisation and finances.

p The first of these agencies were formed by the imperialist states during the First World War (for instance, Wellington House in Britain, and the Creel Committee in the USA). The Creel Committee launched on active propaganda in close co-operation with the US Military Intelligence Bureau. Propaganda was conducted not only at the front. It penetrated deep into the enemy rear, into Germany, through the dissemination of specially selected information.  [207•* 

p For all practical purposes there was no official propaganda agency in the USA during the period between the two world wars. Such an agency was formed on the eve of World War II. In 1938 President Roosevelt established an Interdepartmental Committee for Scientific and Cultural Co- operation and, within the State Department, a Division of Cultural Cooperation. The Interim International Information Service was set up in 1940. The Office of War Information, which was the principal American propaganda agency during the Second World War, was organised on June 13, 1942. Towards the close of the war it had a staff of 13,000.  [207•** 

p The foreign political propaganda machine was overhauled after the war. As we have already noted, the Smith-Mundt Act was passed in 1948. It was the first law in US history to provide for the formation of a large Government propaganda machine in peace-time. In accordance with Articles 601-603 of this act, an Advisory Commission on Information and an Advisory Commission on Educational Exchange were formed to control the operation of this machine. The function of these commissions was to formulate and recommend to the Secretary of State (the Smith-Mundt Act placed all official overseas propaganda in the hands of the State Department.— G.A.) the policy and programme in 208 information and education. Representatives of many leading monopolies were given seats on these commissions.

p As regards the foreign political propaganda machine in the shape established by the Smith-Mundt Act, it was soon subjected to a series of reorganisations. A major reshuffle was conducted in 1953 in accordance with the recommendations of the Psychological Warfare Committee headed by the New York banker Jackson. Following this reshuffle the United States Information Agency, set up on August 1, 1953 through the merging of the propaganda divisions of the State Department, the Mutual Security Agency and the Technical Co-operation Administration, and also of the propaganda offices of the US authorities in West Germany, Austria and Japan, became the main organ of the official foreign political propaganda machine. USIA was subordinated to the President through the National Security Council, and it became the duty of the Secretary of State to "direct the policy and control the content of a programme for use abroad".  [208•* 

p The following figures give an idea of the scale of USIA’s activities: its budget in the 1968 fiscal year totalled 186,300,000 dollars and it had a staff of 12,000.  [208•** 

p The backbone of this organisation is the Information Centre Services, which maintains 301 propaganda centres in 111 countries. These centres are staffed by 1,200 Americans and 5,300 people employed locally; USIA runs 223 libraries and reading rooms; its information centres arrange lectures, concerts and showings of films (according to American estimates, these showings are annually attended by up to 350 million people in 120 countries).

Every week the agency publishes 400,000 leaflets and pamphlets in 47 languages and distributes them in 115 countries. In 90 countries it distributes 24 monthly journals published in 29 languages with a total printing of 1,300,000 copies. In 1966 USIA subsidised the publication of 799 books (including translations) with a printing of six million copies.

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p Through USIA sponsorship 2,082 TV stations in 94 countries relay American television programmes. The local press receives a daily USIA news bulletin of 12,000 words.

p The Voice of America, one of the principal propaganda vehicles, is under USIA jurisdiction. It has 41 transmitters in the USA and 61 transmitters abroad relaying programmes in 38 languages for 845 hours a week. According to American estimates, the Voice of America has a daily audience of 25 millions. Moreover, USIA controls RIAS (in West Berlin) which conducts radio propaganda against the German Democratic Republic.

p USIA propaganda is mainly for overseas consumption, but the agency does not leave even the American people in peace. This has evoked protests from a number of competent people, who know the worth of its propaganda creations.

p Noting that USIA’s publications are clearly propagandistic, Senator J. William Fulbright declared that the agency’s secret book subsidies were "most objectionable, entirely contrary to our traditions".  [209•*  At a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Fulbright told one of the agency’s directors: "USIA is not authorised to propagandise the American people. If you’d said that the books were published by USIA, it would be one thing—but not to do so is doubly subversive of our system."  [209•**  During a House of Representatives hearing on USIA’s annual 6,000,000 dollar "book development" programme, Congressman Glenard P. Lipscomb of California asked the then USIA director Leonard Marks: "Why is it wrong to let the American people know when they buy and read the book that it was developed under government sponsorship?" To which Marks replied cynically: "It minimises their value”, and went on to explain, "If we say this is our book, then the author is a government employee in effect. It changes the whole status of the author."  [209•*** 

p Protests of this kind had no effect on USIA’s practices. A typical case involved Israel’s General Moshe Dayan, who travelled to Vietnam at USIA expense to write a series of articles for the newspaper Maariv. Naturally, these articles gave a sympathetic view of American policy. They were 210 reprinted by the Washington Post, which did not inform its readers of the arrangement with the USIA.  [210•* 

p Although US official foreign political propaganda is being increasingly centralised, USIA is not its only vehicle. It is handled also by a number of other government departments.

p One of these is the Department of State, which in addition to directing USIA activities carries out some specific functions in overseas propaganda. After the 1953 reorganisation, the Department of State which until then had jurisdiction over the principal outlets of official overseas propaganda (including the Voice of America and the information centres), retained control of "educational exchanges”. This function was to be performed by a special department controlled by an advisory commission appointed by the President. Inasmuch as the "export of culture" was placed mainly in the hands of USIA, the competency of this department was reduced mainly to scientific exchanges and "exchanges of personnel”. This covers the conclusion of agreements, the organisation of exchanges in the scientific sphere, which is acquiring immense significance today, and the invitation of foreign students, cultural workers and other persons. Although this activity is not direct propaganda, it has certain propagandist aspects. As Lester Markel noted, the US "must also try to build in foreign countries a corps of specialists who can help explain the United States to their fellow citizens".  [210•** 

p A large section of the foreign political propaganda machine is under the direct control of US military agencies and until 1953 it was used to influence public opinion in West Germany, Austria, Japan and South Korea. However, even after the reorganisation the War Department retained its overseas propaganda apparatus. Moreover, it has a large say in the general planning and direction of propaganda.

p It should be borne in mind that every service of the armed forces—the Army, the Navy and the Air Force—has its own psychological warfare division and also its own schools for the training of propagandists (Fort Bragg, Fort 211 Riley and elsewhere). These divisions are now in the reserve, so to speak. They will be brought up to full capacity in the event of war for the conduct of propaganda for the troops and population of enemy and neutral countries. However, they conduct propaganda in peace-time as well in areas where US troops are stationed and at US military bases.

p Moreover, the War Department has a large network of radio stations (Armed Forces Radio and Television Service), which broadcast their own propaganda programmes to foreign countries or relay Voice of America broadcasts.

p The US military have at their disposal 250 radio and 34 television stations outside the USA, and according to American estimates the audience of these stations is 20 times larger than the audience of the Voice of America’s Englishlanguage programmes. Even many American researchers point out that this gives the military rights which are not provided them by law and that a large part of the propaganda apparatus is beyond civilian control. One of these researchers, Tristram Coffin writes: "The radio-TV stations lack any ’overall guidance’... the commanding officer can order a station to broadcast anything he chooses, or delete whatever dispLeases him. There is no system to monitor broadcasts for political bias, error, or conformity with established national policy."  [211•* 

p Lastly, in co-operation with the Central Intelligence Agency and a number of other bodies, the Army directs some of the organisations conducting “black”, i.e., chiefly subversive, propaganda.

p Naturally, the CIA’s propaganda activities are shrouded in even greater secrecy than those of the War Department. It is official knowledge that the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA’s predecessor, had a Morale Operations Branch,  [211•**  which engaged in subversive propaganda. It is also known that these functions have passed to the CIA, which has a secret operations department.

p In recent years, write two American journalists who had made a study of this question, the CIA and USIA "have begun commissioning their own works and subsidising 212 their publication and dissemination—without disclosing to the American people that they are being exposed to officially sponsored propaganda. Subscribers to the respected journal Foreign Affairs who read in 1966 a learned treatise by George Carver defending the Johnson Administration’s Vietnam policy were not told by the editors if, indeed, the editors knew—that Carver was emloyed by the CIA. Americans who bought a book called The Truth About the Dominican Republic by Time magazine correspondent Jay Mallin had no way of knowing that this was ’the truth’ according to USIA, which carefully selected the author, paid him, revised his manuscript, and arranged for its commercial publication in the United States. Another Mallin effort, Terror in Vietnam, was also sponsored by USIA."  [212•* 

p The CIA has direct or indirect control of a number of radio stations and is in virtual control of “black” and “grey” broadcasting. To say nothing of its monitoring service, it operates secret transmitters which broadcast allegedly in the name of the opposition forces, of the " resistance movement" of one country or another. One of these transmitters, on Suon Island, specialised in subversive propaganda against Cuba and played an active part in the abortive landing in the Bay of Pigs. CIA has built a secret radio station also in the Lebanon.  [212•** 

p According to the American journalists David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, many of these radio stations operate as private enterprises or are a sort of hybrid financed by private corporations while remaining under the CIA’s operational guidance. One of them is the already mentioned World Wide Broadcasting System, whose services in organising a counter-revolutionary revolt in Guatemala in 1954 were acknowledged in a letter of thanks from the Guatemalan dictator Castillo Armas.  [212•*** 

p The United States Intelligence stage-manages the activities of larger propaganda (and, in parallel, espionage and subversive) organisations that have been set up by the US imperialists as “private” or “non-governmental” but which, 213 in fact, are part of the Government psychological warfare machine.

p Here mention should be made, first and foremost, of a complex of organisations in the Crusade for Freedom " movement”. This “movement” was initiated by a group of leading monopolists (such as Lawrence Giannini of the Bank of America and Arthur W. Page of the Chase National Bank), representatives of the military (for instance, General Lucius D. Clay, who, at the same time, represents the board of directors of the Continental Can Company and the Chemical Bank and Trust Company), prominent politicians (Dulles, Eisenhower and others), representatives of the clerical li te (for instance, the Catholic Cardinal Francis J. Spellman), pro-fascist parties and organisations (for instance, George N. Graig, National Commander of the American Legion) and others.  [213•* 

p The purpose of this “movement” is to collect funds and institute a number of propaganda organisations with the aim of facilitating the “liberation” of socialist countries, in other words, of restoring capitalism in these countries and subordinating them to the imperialist powers, above all the USA.

p The largest of these organisations, the Free Europe Cornmi ttjee (set up in 1949), specialises in propaganda and subversive activities against the European socialist countries. Formally it is financed privately, through contributions from individuals, and various foundations and organisations (including the Boy Scout organisations). "As to whether these contributions actually pay most of the bills for the massive enterprise...,” Gordon, Falk and Hodapp comment, "remains anyone’s guess. The Free Europe Committee has never opened its books to public scrutiny."  [213•** 

p Officially, the Committee is an American private organisation acting not on behalf of the USA but in the name of the "resistance forces of socialist countries" (Free Czechoslovakia, Free Hungary and so on). This precarious status fails the test of criticism. It is no secret that the funds for this huge organisation come from the large United States monopolies and from the US government budget. Similarly, 214 there is no doubt that its overall direction is in the hands of the US State Department and the CIA.

p Structurally, it consists of live operating arms.

p The best-known of these is Radio Free Europe, a colossal enterprise employing 1,600 people (1,100 in Munich, 100 in New York and 400 at the relay station in Portugal). It has 28 powerful transmitters for broadcasts in six languages (Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Rumanian and Bulgarian). The service is on the air for almost 3,000 hours a week, which, Gordon, Falk and Hodapp write, makes "it just about the most active broadcasting system in the free world—probably busier than either the British Broadcasting Company^?s combined foreign and domestic services or the Voice of America".  [214•*  Robert T. Holt says that Radio Free Europe "like NATO, is an instrument of American foreign policy—a ’non-official’ instrument, to be sure, but in terms of concentrated effort in a given area, a propaganda instrument that is unprecedented in American history".  [214•** 

p The Committee’s other arms are the Communist Bloc Operations (whose official function is to publish, on behalf of emigres, a magazine called East Europe, which is printed in over 20,000 copies), the Free World Operations, the West European Operations (which, officially, are supposed to facilitate “research” on East European problems), and the Exile Political Organisation.  [214•***  The activities of these arms of the Free Europe Committee are not publicised but one can get a fairly good idea about them from items that now and again slip into the press. For example, John L. Martin quotes John Scott, roving editor of Time magazine, who reported that that organisation had more employees on its news gathering staff than Associated Press, Time Inc. and The New York Times put together. Its research and evaluation departments, Scott noted, were larger and more effective than "those of any except half a dozen governments".  [214•**** 

p It is therefore not easy to say what takes precedence in the Committee’s activities—espionage, the organisation of 215 a counter-revolutionary underground or propaganda. As regards the latter, it is of a very specific nature, being a striking example of “black”’, subversive propaganda. This had become so obvious (especially after the 1956 events in Hungary) that, as we have mentioned earlier, the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, on whose territory, under an agreement with the USA, the Committee has its main centres, found itself in a very ticklish position. A special inquiry was instituted but it yielded no results. The Free Europe Committee’s activities and the part that it played in the counter-revolutionary rising in Hungary evoked a wave of indignation also in the USA and the West European capitalist states. Public pressure was so great that the Free Europe Committee found itself compelled to publish a series of books, pamphlets and articles in an effort to exonerate itself.  [215•* 

p Some prominent political figures in the USA have lately become sharply critical of the activities of the Free Europe and Liberty radio stations. They justifiably feel that the continued operation of these radio stations and the fact that they are financed by the US Government threaten the relaxation of tension and, as Senator Fulbright has noted, create foreign policy problems, not the least-of which concerns the scale of US interference in the internal affairs of other countries. Fulbright has a legitimate case when he says that these "radios should be given an opportunity to take their rightful place in the graveyard of cold war relics".  [215•** 

Early in the 1950s an attempt was made to set up an organisation along the lines of the Free Europe Committee for propaganda and subversive activities against the socialist countries in Asia. Called the Committee for a Free Asia, it engaged mainly in radio propaganda against China. However, it quickly disintegrated and in 1955 was renamed the Asia Foundation. According to John L. Martin its primary concern today is to arrange for the education of Asian students.  [215•*** 

216

p Lastly, the third organisation of this type is the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism founded in 1951 specially for propaganda and subversive activities against the peoples of the Soviet Union. The sources of its finances are even more thinly veiled. In fact, there is even no pretence of collecting private donations. Yet its expenditures are considerable. Suffice it to say that Radio Liberty (formerly called Radio Liberation) operates under its aegis. According to American researchers, its transmitters (capacity totalling over 1,500,000 watts) are more powerful than those of any other Western propaganda agency. Located in the Federal Republic of Germany, Taiwan and elsewhere, these transmitters broadcast in 17 languages of the peoples of the USSR about 1,600-1,700 transmissions a week. Radio Liberty has a staff of some 1,000 people.  [216•* 

p In addition to those named above, the “liberation” organisations set up in the United States include numerous associations of counter-revolutionary emigres. Affiliated with them are organisations, set up in West Germany by the American occupation authorities, for espionage and propaganda against the German Democratic Republic. Among the latter are the Anti-Inhumanity Group and the Free German Jurists.

p Thus, many of the propaganda and espionage-propaganda organisations operating as “private” agencies were formed by the US Intelligence, the military and the State Department for subversive activities in other countries (primarily in socialist countries).  [216•**  Had this activity been carried on by official agencies the US Government would have had no reputation to speak of.

p Moreover, US imperialism has a large number of propaganda agencies masked as “private” for somewhat different reasons. The point is that US propaganda has discredited itself in the eyes of other countries. It therefore found it 217 needed an additional screen for itself and for its sources. To this end it began to set up an increasing number of “private”, “public” and international organisations.

p One of them is the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which specialises in propaganda for intellectuals in Western Europe, Asia and Latin America. In the same bracket is the Peace and Freedom organisation which engages in provocative anti-communist propaganda in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and other West European countries. According to data published in Le Monde in 1955, in France alone this organisation received over 2,000 million francs annually from the US and French governments and from individual capitalists.  [217•*  Pro-American propaganda agencies have been formed in Britain. Some “international” religiouspolitical organisations, for instance, Moral Re-Armament, founded by the American priest Frank N. D. Buchman,  [217•**  and the Missionary Corps, have been set up as part of the psychological warfare complex.

p Hundreds of Philanthropic societies (of the Care type), cultural organisations and Right-wing trade unions are used for foreign political propaganda. The US Government’s overseas propaganda network thus has many adjuncts. This “plural” structure of the propaganda machine has convinced advocates among propaganda experts. Richard Grossman, for instance, writes that an "apparently untidy organisation ... is always the guarantee that the enemy feels he is listening, not to propaganda, but to honest men honestly and simply telling him the truth".  [217•*** 

p The fact that in these cases the question of co-ordinating and centralising the operaiton of this huge propaganda machine becomes particularly acute is quite another matter. To meet this requirement the Psychological Strategy Board was set up under the US State Department in 1950. In 1951 it was replaced by the Psychologiacl Warfare Board, which was subordinated to the National Security Council.

p In President Truman’s statement, when this supreme psychological warfare agency was formed, its functions were determined as planning, co-ordinating and conducting 218 psychological operations within the framework of current policy.

p From official statements one could infer that a dual purpose was pursued when this Board was formed: first, to direct the huge, ramified psychological warfare apparatus (both government and private) and the psychological activities of other divisions of the US foreign policy machine that were being increasingly drawn into propaganda activities; and, second, to ensure the most effective propaganda for the military plans of the US imperialists. The implementation of this function was guaranteed by the very composition of the Board, which in addition to representatives of the State Department included representatives of the War Department and the CIA.

p On the recommendation of the Jackson Committee the name of this agency was changed to Operations Co-ordinating Board in 1953.

p After the Second World War when many of the actions and even guidelines of US foreign policy became more and more patently propagandist^, the US ruling circles fqund themselves faced with the urgent problem of co-ordinating foreign political propaganda. Above all, this applied to the various economic, scientific and technical aid programmes, beginning with the Marshall Plan and ending with the Alliance for Progress and Peace Corps programmes.

p The same may be said of many purely political acts and programmes, notably those designed to show the USA’s peaceableness and "good will" towards the developing states of Asia and Africa. Moreover, domestic political measures (for instance, measures designed to demonstrate the "success" of the Civil Rights movement and the "war on poverty" in the USA itself) are frequently also geared to the aims of foreign political propaganda.

p Today one can clearly discern the trend to give the Government total control of all forms of international relations with other countries (foreign trade, cultural relations, tourism, and so forth) pursuing more than the aim of adapting them to the. interests of foreign political propaganda.

p The USA, as we have already noted, has an incomparably larger foreign political propaganda machine than all the other imperialist states. Nevertheless, in the general pattern of the ideological struggle unfolding in the world, the 219 efforts of these states, especailly of the USA’s chief partners in the North Atlantic bloc, constitute a factor that can under no circumstances be ignored. This is evidenced also by the foreign political propaganda apparatus set up by these countries.

p Its main links and organisational principles are modelled on the US pattern. However, it has its own specifics that are linked with concrete conditions (for example, initially FRG propaganda was quite clearly oriented against the GDR, while British propaganda devotes special attention to countries which were once part of the British Empire).

p NATO, too, has its amalgamated propaganda agencies: Political Advisory Committee, Committee for Information and Cultural Relations, the Secretariat’s Political and Information Subdivision and the Press Department.  [219•*  In addition, NATO has a substantial reserve propaganda apparatus that can be activated in the event of war.

p All the other imperialist powers, including the "medium" and the "small", began to engage in foreign political propaganda after the Second World War. Even traditionally neutral Sweden and Switzerland have foreign broadcasting services and have set up Army psychological warfare agencies against the event of "emergencies".  [219•** 

p Among the small countries conducting foreign political propaganda one of the most active is Israel, which has formed a large propaganda machine to serve its aggressive policies and disseminate Zionist ideas.

As a matter of fact, it is hard to consider this machine in isolation from US imperialist propaganda. Present-day Zionism is not only the ideology of Israel’s ruling circles but also a ramified system of organisations and political practices of the big Jewish bourgeoisie which has ranged itself with the monopoly circles of the USA and other imperialist powers. Zionism’s main components are bellicose chauvinism and anti-communism. To this day the World Zionist Organisation, founded in 1897 and based in the USA, is Zionism’s chief organisational and ideological centre with financial resources equal to those of the world s largest monopoly associations.

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p The Zionists publish 1,036 periodicals in 67 countries. Zionist ideas are actively propagated by the Israel Broadcasting Station, which until recently called itself Voice of Israel. In addition to 42 hours of broadcasting for its own country it broadcasts programmes in 10 European languages, in Arabic and in several African languages.

p The Zionist leaders attach the utmost importance to having agents or “sympathisers” in the central press of different countries, in the foreign editorial staffs of radio stations, in the film industry and in television. The methods used by the Zionists in the American press, particularly in The New York Times, one of the largest newspapers in the United States, are closely scrutinised by Alfred M. Lilienthal in The Other Side of the Coin, which was published in the USA in 1965.

In 1963 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee devoted two hearings to the Zionist movement and found that large sums of money donated by Americans to the Israel Fund had been remitted back to the USA and paid out to organisations and individuals engaged in conditioning Americans in favour of Israel. This money, as was ascertained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee headed by Senator J. William Fulbright, was used for the "cultivation of editors”, for the placement of articles on Israel in some of America’s leading magazines, for radio and TV programmes sympathetic to Israel, and for subsidising trips to Israel by "public opinion moulders".  [220•*  These hearings revealed to many unsuspecting donators that part of their donations were being used to influence Congressmen and American public opinion and to intensify propaganda appeals for more donations.  [220•** 

p The size and growth of the foreign political propaganda apparatus of the imperialist powers are evidence of the significance their ruling circles attach to the ideological struggle, particularly on the international scene. Properly speaking, the first reaction of the imperialist bourgeoisie 221 to failures and setbacks in this struggle was to increase the size of the propaganda apparatus and allocate further funds for its reorganisation.

p But even the best propaganda apparatus can only disseminate ideas and propagate policy. It cannot create them. This, as many Western observers admit, is one of imperialism’s central difficulties in the war of words.

p A bare intensification of the propaganda effort can sometimes lead to an undesired result. Such, in the opinion of many experts, is the case with the export of American films. In 1961 Edward R. Murrow, then head of USIA, admitted that these films, most of which deal with crime, violence, horror and sex, were prejudicing America’s prestige.  [221•*  To some extent this is true of cultural exchanges as a whole. Raymond Aron, a French sociologist who cannot be suspected of Left-wing sympathies, wrote, for instance, that anti-American attitudes found expression in the hostility to American culture which other peoples get to know more and more as American propaganda becomes increasingly active.  [221•** 

p The same result is observed in many cases of student exchanges. People invited to study in the imperialist countries with a view to making them friends of these countries often become confirmed enemies of imperialism. It is no secret that many of the leaders of the national liberation movement were educated in Britain, France or the USA. They had personally come up against racial discrimination and had grown disillusioned not only with the white " benefactors" but with capitalism itself.

p The organisers of imperialist propaganda are even more disappointed by the contacts with the population of foreign countries arising out of mass tourism and business trips abroad. This is particularly true of the USA; the men Washington grooms as envoys of "good will”, aptly labelled as "ugly Americans”, frequently strew "little ulcers of ill will along their jet trails".  [221•*** 

p The propagandist exhibitions held abroad, radio 222 broadcasts and so on frequently evoke a reaction that is the very opposite to what the organisers expect.

p While bearing all this in mind, we should assess the consequences of the establishment of this huge imperialist foreign political propaganda machine in its close relation to other measures, namely, the intensified efforts to improve propaganda methods and evolve new and more subtle propaganda tactics, and the efforts to conceal the most vulnerable points of its ideology, policies and way of life and, at the same time, to find and turn to use the weakness of its adversary.

If all these measures are regarded in a body the expansion and improvement of the foreign political propaganda apparatus will be seen in a somewhat different light, as activity compelling all opponents of imperialism to be more vigilant, step up their efforts in the war of ideas and work out the most effective forms, ways and methods of waging this war.