35

p Speaking in the British Parliament on June 8,1982, the US President, Ronald Reagan, officially announced a crusade against communism—"the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history".^^1^^ Some Western political leaders with their characteristic passion for exaggeration, assessed Ronald Reagan’s speech as the most important presidential statement since the Second World War.

p Presenting himself to Western Europe as the ideological leader of the capitalist world, as Winston Churchill was during the initial period of the cold war, Ronald Reagan called upon the West "to foster the infrastructure of democracy"^^2^^ within the framework of the crusade, i.e., promote the establishment and development of press, labour unions, political parties, scientific and cultural centres loyal to the United States. In other words, he claimed the right to global interference in the internal affairs of other states by putting forward a programme in which the United States could achieve its imperial ambitions and objectives. The crusade has been launched along four main directions: development of information services abroad, "Public Diplomacy", "Project Democracy" and "Democracy Programme".^^3^^

p Besides interference in the internal affairs of the socialist countries, the new initiative was definitely aimed at fostering pro-American democracy in the Third World through the open 36 financing of political parties, labour unions and newspapers. Officials involved in the project said it was intended to place political aid to developing countries on the same level as military and economic aid.^^4^^ Bernard Gwertzman, a New York Times correspondent, naively believes or deliberately asserts that "until now, American financing of democratic forces abroad has been small, except for AFL-ClO assistance to labour unions. The Central Intelligence Agency has provided covert aid to political parties and newspapers.”^^5^^

p Concerning Project Democracy, the West German magazine Der Spiegel wrote in April 1983: "In February the Reagan Administration started implementing Project Democracy, the execution of which will require 85 million dollars over the next two years. This money will be expended on indoctrinating future political leaders now studying at American universities, and establishing pro-American labour unions and parties in countries where they do not exist as yet. This means Third World countries and communist states...”^^6^^

p In order to find ways to impose “democratic”, i.e., proWestern, development on communist countries, the US Department of State convened in Washington in the autumn of 1982 a conference to which about 50 experts, government and CIA officials, journalists and emigres were invited. For example, present at the conference were Melvin Lasky, editor- inchief of the CIA-financed magazine Monat, dissidents Vladimir Bukovsky and Jiri Pelikan. The task of executing Project Democracy has fallen to the USIA.

p Marie-France Toinet, a researcher for the French fondation nation ale des sciences politiques and director of research at the Paris-1 radio station wrote that anyone reading the document Project Democracy must be tempted to ask whether its objective is to prove the superiority of the American model over all others—communist and non-communist.^^7^^ To this question The Washington Times replied curtly that the American democracy can serve as a model for setting up and strengthening democratic institutions.

p In March 1977 the French magazine Le Monde Diplomatique published an article by Maurice T. Maschino devoted to the study of the relationship between the concepts of capitalism and democracy. This article was based on the research carried out by a group of sociologists, historians, economists and lawyers. It said in part: "The power won in the name of freedom uses the same freedom in order to impose its dictatorship on the people. Great principles are trampled underfoot as soon as they are proclaimed.”

37

p “Well-intentioned principles have been proclaimed," declared lawyer Jean Cosson, "they were written down in constitutions and, of course, ignored; beyond any doubt the rights of capital prevailed over the rights of citizens; in reality the nations were ruled by the wealthiest people... Capitalism did not promote the execution of social democracy: nor did it establish an economic democracy... Capitalism no longer needs democracy.”^^8^^

p While announcing the programme of "fostering the infrastructure of democracy", the United States is using it as a cover to lay the legal foundations for covert and overt interference in the internal affairs of other states, to split, disintegrate, reshape and reorientate political, public, labour, youth and religious organizations and even the system of education, primarily in countries which have chosen to develop independently of the United States.

p As regards the psychological methods of influencing the population in those countries, a method of direct suggestion is being applied.

p In accordance with Project Democracy, the USIA tries "to convey a more accurate picture of the character and values of the United States" through scholarships, American studies institutions, English teaching and book programmes.^^9^^

p The implementation of Project Democracy also provides for influencing the present and future leadership in the East European and developing countries. In particular, this job is being done by methods of propaganda which advertize the viability of NATO, the values of Western democracy and the most important areas in the political, scientific, social and cultural development of the United States. According to Project Democracy, the USIA has begun to devote a great deal of attention to gathering relevant information about the leaders of various countries and their probable successors.

p The fourth element in Reagan’s strategy is Democracy Programme, which is more specific. When the government machinery regarding issues of Public Diplomacy was in the making, the Special Planning Group under the Chairmanship of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs put forward a proposal on setting up a semi-official National Endowment for Democracy. There are many funds in the United States. Why was another one needed?

p The bill on the National Endowment for Democracy, Sec. 402(a), reads: "The Congress finds that there has been established in the District of Columbia a private, nonprofit corporation known as the National Endowment for 38 Democracy... which is not an agency or establishment of the United States Government.”^^10^^

p The Reagan Administration and Congress believed that the establishment of a non-government, semi-official fund could solve the problem of aiding political parties abroad without causing them any harm in the process. In their view, there are few respectable foreign parties which can openly receive small sums from the US Administration, while an independent fund subsidized by private persons and the state could be acceptable.

p Commenting on the Democracy Programme, Christopher Hitchens asked in The Washington Post: "Is the Reagan Administration as confident about ‘democracy’ as it claims?"¹¹ And what exactly is democracy to Reagan?

p Partly, Ronald Reagan gave a very revealing answer to this question at a press conference on May’ 14, 1984. The President was asked: "...Senator Helms has said that the United States bought the election in El Salvador. Could you tell us, please, exactly what was the financial involvement of the CIA and other Government agencies?”

p The President answered: "I don’t think that there was any attempt by any agency of the United States Government to participate in a partisan fashion in that election. There has been overtly, not covertly, aid given to labour unions, to trade associations, within the very framework of the programme that I announced before the British Parliament a couple of years ago, and that is the idea of trying to help democracy by strengthening those organizations within a country that lead toward democracy...”^^12^^ According to Reagan, it appears that democracy means giving aid overtly (through the Democracy Programme), rather than covertly (through the CIA).

p Professor Stanley Hoffmann, Chairman of the Centre for European Studies at Harvard University, believes that "if the United States wants to propagate democracy, it should do it by example..." But what example is the United States giving today?^^13^^

p US analysts concerned with the study of the Soviet Union and American-Soviet relations think that the United States and world peace are threatened in the 1980s by an American political disease, Sovietophobia, which "endangers democratic values, distorts budgetary priorities and threatens national security by enhancing the prospect of nuclear war".^^14^^

p During a short period in the 1960s and early 1970s Sovietophobia was declining due to the positive influence of detente and to illusions harboured by influential circles in the 39 United States that the transition from confrontation to . cooperation with the USSR would automatically lead to a weakening in the national-liberation struggle and a fall in the political activity of the working-class movement, which in reality is historically inevitable and not controlled by the Soviet Union.

p At the same time, expressing extreme right-wing views and wishing to substantiate the record-high level of military expenditure ideologically, the new US Administration has launched an unprecedentedly fierce psychological war against the countries of Eastern Europe. This war is the result of the violent reaction of the right-wing conservative ruling circles in the United States to the steady weakening of US positions in the world and the rapid disintegration of the US empire.

p Indeed, the US economic and political hegemony of the first postwar decades has been undoubtedly and irretrievably undermined. The main economic centres of the Western world—the USA, Western Europe and Japan—have become fierce competitors. That is why the general strategy of the present Administration in Washington is aimed at attempting to restore US positions in the modern world.

p The dangerous and reckless striving to attain superiority over the Soviet Union in the field of nuclear arms and space weapons as the basis for restoring the world political and economic supremacy of the United States is one of the most important elements of Reagan’s foreign policy. It is also aimed at destroying the world socialist system and returning the developing countries, if not to the old colonial status, then at least to greater economic and political dependence.

p The current wave of the US propaganda offensive, based on the myth of the "Soviet military threat", pursues the following main objective: by whipping up chauvinism, creating an atmosphere of war hysteria and one of a "besieged camp" at home, to resurrect the spirit of McCarthyism, making it impossible for the public to express their discontent. This will then ensure a new round in the arms race.

p Faced with the strategic tasks of regrouping and strengthening the positions of US business, mainly of the military-industrial complex, both at home and abroad, the Reagan Administration has begun to play more on ideological motifs and started a psychological war against states whose political forms of goverment it dislikes, especially the USSR and the other countries of Eastern Europe.

p In particular, in his secret Directive 75 issued in early 1983, President Reagan instructed his Administration to exert a steady influence on the internal political life in the USSR. The 40 Directive was drawn up by Richard Edgar Pipes, Professor of History at Harvard University, who was born in Poland. A strong opponent of detente. Pipes was until recently on the National Security Council under the Reagan Administration as an expert on Eastern Europe.^^15^^ The Directive stipulates, on the one hand, a firm, realistic and US security-oriented economic policy with regard to the USSR and, on the other hand, a growth in subversive propaganda and the expansion of Public Diplomacy.

p The document is virtually a direct continuation of National Security Decision Document 68 which laid down the foundations for the cold war and envisaged drawing the USSR into the arms race, wearing it out economically and stepping up clandestine activities and psychological warfare.

p On January 14, 1983, Ronald Reagan signed another secret Directive—National Security Decision Document 77— on the establishment of a Special Planning Group under the Chairmanship of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The Group included the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Director of the USIA, Administrator of the Agency for International Development, Director of the White House Communications Office, and other officials.

p The new propaganda agency consists of four committees: the International Political Committee headed by Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; the International Information Committee headed by Gilbert Robinson, then Deputy Director of the US Information Agency; the International Broadcasting Committee headed by Robert B. McFarlane, then Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs; and the Public Affairs Committee under the joint leadership of Robert McFarlane and David Gergen, Director of the White House Communications Office.

p The Group’s basic task is to improve the general coordination of efforts in the field of information with the intention of opposing the USSR’s peace offensive and to work out recommendations for neutralizing through propaganda such problems as the movement for freezing nuclear arms in Western Europe and the USA. This document gives the Administration in Washington freedom to carry out psychological and clandestine propaganda operations abroad and on US territory.

p The ideologization of US foreign policy and the strengthening of the apparatus of psychological warfare abroad are being stepped up by the United States. In 1983 Ronald Reagan signed Directive 84 making it binding on the federal employees to take a lie-detector test and an oath not to 41 divulge any occupational and state secrets and providing for the perpetual censorship of the texts of statements and publications of federal employees having access to classified information. Former VOA Director John Chancellor described this action as "the most sweeping and dictatorial censorship directive in the history of the American government".^^16^^

p Three years have passed since Ronald Reagan announced a “crusade” against the USSR. Perhaps the Administration in Washington has introduced some amendments to its policy? The answer is yes, new elements have been introduced. Today Washington combines an openly militaristic position- ofstrength policy with demagogic assertions that it is ready to improve its relations with the USSR. But such statements by the US Administration run counter to practical experience. First one, then another member of the Administration calls for stepping up the ideological offensive against the Soviet Union, arousing hatred and suspicion towards the Soviet people and deliberately complicating the improvement of relations and mutual understanding between the USSR and the USA.

p Increasingly sophisticated means are being used in the psychological war against the USSR, and the special secret services are playing an extensive role. As the ideological function of the American state (formulation of the aims and methods in implementing US foreign policy) grows in significance, the specific weight and influence of the propaganda bodies in the execution of foreign-policy objectives is increasing accordingly. What Charles Wick does as USIA Director is fully in keeping with Reagan’s efforts to politicize and ideqlogize US foreign policy within the framework of his “crusade”. The US Administration’s intention to "foster the infrastructure of democracy", proclaimed by Ronald Reagan in his speech in the British Parliament, has become one of USIA’s main concerns since 1983. But even before that, i.e., in 1981, Charles Wick made a proposal to the President that aggressive US propaganda abroad should be intensified as a challenge to the Soviet Union and "Marxist societies" in general. The socalled Project Truth proposed by Wick and later endorsed by the National Security Council formed the backbone of the "total ideological war" started by the Reagan Administration after the example of this kind of war in the 1950s and early 1960s.

p According to Wick, Project Truth has been necessitated by the fact that the United States has ignored the USSR’s " propaganda offensive" for too long, thereby putting itself in an unfavourable light in the eyes of the rest of the world. By using 42 propaganda tricks, Washington has attempted to lay the blame for the low popularity of its aggressive position-of-strength policy on the Soviet Union, with the allegation that the latter gives the world public a distorted picture of US foreign-policy objectives and actions.

p The New York Times noted that, according to USIA officials. Project Truth is designed quickly to provide its foreign departments with counter-propaganda at times when there are rumours and news reports about US activities, which are to be presented as false.

p One of the direct objectives of Project Truth is to stop the frustration by the public of the aims of the NATO alliance, especially in Europe.

p In order to help US propaganda convince the Europeans of the need to deploy US medium-range missiles on their territory and find arguments for the struggle against West European pacifists, Wick toured several West European capitals. He talked to statesmen, primarily foreign ministers and heads of propaganda departments, and persuaded them that there was a need to step up anti-Soviet propaganda and implement Project Truth on a broad scale.

p As part of the project, the USIA sums up and analyses the trends of Soviet information activities abroad, and if Soviet information does not agree with US foreign-policy objectives, USIA conclusions, headed “misinformation”, are disseminated through all USIA channels, including the Voice of America. The USIA has set up a special information service, which lays particular stress on positive information in its reports about the United States abroad. In order to ascertain the tendencies in the development of public opinion abroad, the agency uses the services of an archconservative organization headed by the editor of the Commentary magazine Norman Podhoretz. The USIA publishes a monthly Soviet Propaganda Alert which is sent to all US embassies and agency departments abroad.

p The US President himself has initiated several psychological warfare campaigns and operations. A few days after he assumed office Ronald Reagan asserted that the Soviet-US political treaties and agreements, such as SALT-II, and the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe were worthless and should be reconsidered. The US President began to undermine detente, alleging at the same time that the Soviet Union had treacherously destroyed detente by building up its military potential.

p Strategic parity is precisely what the US President and the extreme right-wing forces supporting him are against. They 43 strive for an overwhelming superiority in all types of armaments, including space weapons. Stephen F. Cohen, Professor of Politics at Princeton, noted:

p “All evidence indicates that the Reagan Administration has abandoned... the political goals that had shaped American strategic doctrine since the 1940s, for the very different purpose of destroying the Soviet Union as a world power.

p “Thus the Administration’s persistent talk about ’ destabilizing’ and ’prevailing over’ the ’evil empire’, and its apparent unwillingness to negotiate a strategic arms agreement. It means a rejection of nuclear parity for a renewed and impossible quest for superiority...”^^17^^

p The US President is becoming an active participant in the psychological war, which he views as a prelude to nuclear war aimed at the physical destruction of the Soviet Union. In many instances his statements have been sheer lies and misinformation, but they were immediately taken up by the world’s biggest apparatus of psychological warfare. No previous US President has ever used his high position so often for misinforming the Americans and the world public. For example, Reagan accused the Soviet Union of supporting "international terrorism" and stated that the United States would dp everything in its power to discover the nerve centres of this terrorism. The job was assigned to the CIA. US journalists began to turn to the CIA for information about how the USSR supports and feeds "international terrorism". But their attempts to get such information were futile since, as was stated by The Washington Post in February 1981, the CIA dossiers had no evidence to support Reagan’s accusations. But, by issuing such a statement, the US President let the cat out of the bag, for in the subsequent period numerous facts were revealed to the whole world, exposing the acts of terrorism committed by the US special services and the US Administration’s direct participation in international terrorism. We can cite Washington’s fervent support of Israel’s extensive fascist-type terror towards the Lebanese citizens which has been elevated to the rank of state policy. We can also cite the sending of terrorists into Central America for the struggle against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, the rendering of support to "death squads" in El Salvador and the invasion of Grenada.

p A classic example of top-level misinformation with the President’s personal participation in a propaganda campaign based on deception, is the act of psychological subversion and espionage connected with an airliner belonging to Korean Air Lines, which made a flight on the night of August 31- 44 September 1, 1983, from Anchorage to Seoul and was shot down by the Soviet air defence system.

p The flight was planned as a reconnaissance mission aimed at detecting the Soviet electronic air defence system. But it also contained a potential propaganda charge—if the airliner was shot down the United States would launch an extensive propaganda campaign. Everything had been planned in advance. The Soviet Union had only one alternative—to shoot down the plane which had been flying for three hours over a vitally important area of the country. After the US President made a statement condemning the USSR, his Administration began to dramatize the situation and step up the propaganda campaign. In particular, a special group to coordinate the campaign was set up at the USIA. Every day the agency distributed statements and articles to its offices throughout the world. RIAS, RFE and RL joined the campaign. Naturally, the campaign was actively supported by the mass media in NATO countries, especially the BBC, Deutsche Welle and the Voice of Israel.

p However, it is becoming increasingly obvious that Washington had calculated the death of 269 passengers as a possible outcome of the flight long before the plane took off from Anchorage. Evidence, facts and calculations are being published in the press, exposing the criminal provocation of the US President. For example, a book by Japanese journalist Akio Takahasi came out in 1984 entitled The President’s Crime.^^18^^ Using incontrovertible evidence, the author showed that the flight of South Korea’s Boeing-747, which had violated Soviet air space in the region of Kamchatka and Sakhalin on the night of August 31 -September 1, 1983, was a reconnaissance mission of a provocative nature. Akib Takahasi as well as scientists, experts and intelligence officers of various countries proved that the provocation sanctioned by Ronald Reagan had been a twofold operation, that is, it pursued two objectives.

p First of all, the organizers of this crime intended to carry out an extensive reconnaissance operation and gather detailed intelligence about strategically important areas in the Soviet Far East and the USSR’s air defence system.

p Another objective was sharply to intensify tension in the world and create political conditions for implementing Washington’s plans for a military buildup.

The implementation of the provocative propaganda campaign around this tragedy demonstrated that the Western radio centres had attained a new level in the coordination of their 45 efforts. The Reagan Administration has made and continues to make consistent efforts to carry put its propaganda aggression against the Soviet Union on an international scale. By actively involving its allies in the psychological war against the Soviet Union, the United States makes use of the close ties between the radio propaganda centres in the NATO countries and the special services.