Public Diplomacy, Propaganda, and International Broadcasting History

Comprehensive flashcard deck featuring 200 vocabulary terms covering historical and modern public diplomacy, psychological warfare, international broadcasting, and propaganda institutions.

Harold Callender

Author of the November 15, 1942 New York Times article "The Voice of America Echoes Widely" detailing WWII international broadcasting.

Elmer Davis

Director of the Office of War Information (OWI) during World War II who declared propaganda's primary purpose was to provide information helping to win the war.

Office of War Information (OWI)

U.S. government agency created during WWII to consolidate and centralize shortwave broadcasting under official federal control.

Garand rifle

The standard U.S. military rifle cited alongside artillery shells, bombs, and tanks as the physical, combat "voice of America" during WWII.

Cordell Hull

U.S. Secretary of State whose speech on July 23, 1942, provided official assurance regarding postwar collective security and economic rebuilding.

Four Freedoms

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's inclusive postwar goals proclaimed globally by American shortwave broadcasts during WWII.

PWD/SHAEF

Abbreviation for the Psychological Warfare Division under Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, directed by Brigadier General Robert A. McClure.

Robert A. McClure

Brigadier General in the U.S. Army who edited the operational account of PWD/SHAEF and authored the foreword to Daniel Lerner's Sykewar.

Daniel Lerner

Social scientist and author cited in Sykewar regarding the lack of interest in psychological warfare among top WWII American officials.

Quincy Wright

Political scholar who defined policy as the adaptation of means to accepted ends or values through finding or influencing opinion.

Propagandist

A highly skilled technician who manipulates a unilateral flow of symbols to modify the behavior of a designated audience toward policy ends.

Psychological Warfare (Sykewar)

A wartime adaptation of propaganda operative against an enemy target where victory is the explicit purpose and stakes involve combat survival.

Hans Speier

Social scientist who formulated the theoretical distinction between limited warfare propaganda and total war morale propaganda.

Limited Warfare

Warfare fought for relative advantage within a balance of power where combat serves to pound diplomatic tables and war aims seek to restore partnerships.

Total Warfare

Warfare characterized by industrial mobilization, trial by combat, and psychological attack directed at whole populations behind the fighting front.

Industrial Mobilization

The complete utilization of civilian labor and economic capacity for modern warfare, creating vulnerability to enemy symbolic bombing campaigns.

Unconditional Surrender

The basic Allied policy context governing the direction and scope of the Sykewar campaign against Germany from D-Day to VE-Day.

Public Law 402

The United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, approved by the 80th Congress on January 27, 1948 (also known as the Smith-Mundt Act).

80th Congress

The U.S. Congressional body that approved Public Law 402 on January 27, 1948, to promote international understanding of the United States.

Erwin D. Canham

Editor and Acting Chairman of the United States Advisory Commission on Information who transmitted its first semiannual report in March 1949.

Mark Ethridge

Chairman of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information who took leave in 1949 to serve on the United Nations Conciliation Commission in Palestine.

Philip D. Reed

Corporate executive who served as a founding member of the United States Advisory Commission on Information in 1949.

Mark A. May

Member of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information who conducted an independent evaluation of USIS operations in nine European nations in 1948–1949.

Justin Miller

Jurist and broadcasting official who served as a founding member of the United States Advisory Commission on Information in 1949.

Smith-Mundt Act

Common name for Public Law 402, authorizing global information and educational exchange programs under the State Department.

International Broadcasting Division (IBD)

The division within the State Department's Office of International Information operating shortwave radio services known as the Voice of America.

International Press and Publications Division (INP)

State Department division providing Wireless Bulletins, photos, feature articles, and magazines like Amerika to overseas field posts.

International Motion Pictures Division (IMP)

State Department division responsible for the procurement, language adaptation, and distribution of informational documentary films.

VOA Poland Audience (1949)

An estimated daily audience of one million listeners reaching over one-tenth of Poland's population despite a ratio of one set per 40 persons.

Oksana Kosenkina Affair

A 1948 Soviet teacher defection in New York whose factual American details were rapidly broadcast across Moscow by VOA listeners.

Magazine Amerika

A richly illustrated, full-color Russian-language magazine published by the State Department for 50,000 Soviet purchasers.

Mobile Units

Trucks outfitted with generators, projectors, screens, and loudspeakers used to show USIS educational films to rural and illiterate populations.

Wireless Bulletin

A daily news transmission compiled in Washington and distributed by USIS field offices to deliver official U.S. policy texts to local editors.

General Jan Smuts

Former Prime Minister of South Africa who publicly protested the closing of the USIS office in South Africa in July 1947.

Section 1005 of Public Law 402

Statutory provision mandating maximum practical utilization of private American press, publishing, radio, and motion picture facilities by the Secretary of State.

Advertising Council

A public service organization of American advertisers that partnered with the State Department to guide corporate informational campaigns abroad.

Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA)

The government agency managing Marshall Plan aid, granted $10 million in 1948 currency-exchange aid to stimulate private U.S. media dissemination.

Harriman Mission

The ECA headquarters in Paris that maintained a 20-person publicity staff working in close liaison with the USIS office.

Reorganization Plan 8 of 1953

Executive order taking effect August 1, 1953, establishing the United States Information Agency (USIA) as an independent foreign affairs agency.

United States Information Agency (USIA)

Independent executive agency created in 1953 to oversee international information programs, educational exchanges, and Voice of America broadcasts.

United States Information Service (USIS)

The overseas operational network of USIA posts, libraries, and public affairs offices working out of U.S. embassies and consulates.

Lillian D. Anderton

Reference Librarian at American River College who authored the 1967 academic study "U.S.I.S. Libraries: A Branch of U.S.I.A."

John F. Kennedy Library-USIS

USIS library facility established in Cairo inside a former Egyptian mansion donated after a previous USIS library was sacked.

McCarthy Investigations (1953)

Congressional committee inquiries led by Senator Joseph McCarthy that targeted alleged subversive personnel and books in USIS overseas libraries.

Interlinear Texts

Bilingual books formatted with English and local language translation alternating line-by-line, stocked in USIS libraries to overcome reading barriers.

SEATO Headquarters

Southeast Asia Treaty Organization base located in Bangkok, Thailand, which stimulated intense local student interest in international trade and law.

Chui-Tse Hung

Local USIS employee in Hong Kong awarded first prize for an American product window display in Kowloon during American Goods Week.

Central Intelligence Group (CIG)

Interim U.S. intelligence organization that issued Report ORE 2 in July 1946 analyzing global Soviet foreign propaganda radio broadcasts.

Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS)

Government agency monitoring, translating, and analyzing foreign open-source radio propaganda transmissions.

TASS Agency

Official Soviet telegraph agency providing continuous multi-language international news feeds via Hellschreiber and morse code.

E.A.M.

Greek Left-wing coalition whose statements and delegation visits to Moscow were heavily promoted by Soviet foreign radio broadcasts in 1946.

Erdem

Radio Moscow's primary Turkish-language commentator during 1946 who regularly attacked the Turkish government's electoral freedom.

Tabriz Radio

Powerful Soviet-installed transmitter operating in Iranian Azerbaijan that beamed intensive anti-Iranian and anti-British propaganda in multiple languages.

Free Germany Committee

Wartime Soviet-sponsored exile organization whose prominent radio role was replaced after WWII by the Soviet-controlled Berlin Radio.

Aracil

Pseudonym of a Spanish literary figure delivering forceful anti-Franco commentaries on Radio Moscow's transmissions to Spain and Latin America.

Zaibatsu

Pre-WWII Japanese industrial combines that Soviet broadcasts alleged were being deliberately preserved by U.S. occupation authorities.

Ku Klux Klan

American racist organization frequently highlighted in Soviet international broadcasts to illustrate internal social oppression in the United States.

Atomic Diplomacy

Soviet propaganda term describing U.S. foreign policy as an effort to leverage its nuclear monopoly for world domination.

Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO)

U.S. oil consortium operating in Saudi Arabia that collaborated with State Department and CIA psychological initiatives in the Middle East.

Wahhabism

Strict, austere interpretation of Sunni Islam embraced by the Saudi royal family and utilized in 1950s regional anti-communist outreach.

Mohammed Mossadeq

Prime Minister of Iran who nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951 and was ousted in a 1953 CIA-backed coup.

Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC)

British oil syndicate nationalized by Iran's parliament in 1951, sparking a major Cold War diplomatic and propaganda confrontation.

Ba'thism

Secular Arab nationalist ideology promoting unity, technology, and anti-imperialism, which gained influence in post-monarchical Iraq.

Tale of the Beautiful Red Flower

USIS propaganda brochure in Iran featuring an allegory comparing Soviet communism to a carnivorous plant devouring naive bees.

Greedy Red Pig Poster

USIS propaganda poster distributed in Iraq depicting a grotesque pig with a hammer-and-sickle tail to satirize the Soviet state.

Film Ninotchka

1939 Greta Garbo comedy film screened in 1950s Iraq as anti-communist propaganda that backfired when audiences preferred Soviet frugality to Western luxury.

Avicenna (Ibn Sina)

10th-century Muslim polymath whose millenary anniversary became a major propaganda contest between the U.S. and USSR in 1952.

Islamic Colloquium (1953)

Princeton University conference sponsored by the IIA to foster an intellectual anti-communist moral front between Islam and Western thought.

Bayard Dodge

Former president of the American University of Beirut who solicited private corporate funding for the 1953 Islamic Colloquium.

William Eddy

Former U.S. diplomat and ARAMCO/CIA consultant who advocated enlisting King Abd al-Aziz in a pan-Islamic anti-communist front.

American Friends of the Middle East (AFME)

Private organization utilized by the State Department to sponsor non-attributed educational and political exchanges in the Arab world.

Victor Weybright

Founder of New American Library who worked with U.S. intelligence and information agencies to distribute anti-communist paperback books abroad.

Franklin Publications, Inc.

Non-profit publishing enterprise created in June 1952 with a $500,000 State Department grant to publish translated American books in Arabic and Asian languages.

Datus C. Smith Jr.

Former director of Princeton University Press who served as the first president of Franklin Publications, Inc.

Dan Lacy

Director of the IIA's Information Center Service who received a State Department Superior Service Medal for creating Franklin Publications.

Middle East Defense Organization (MEDO)

Proposed 1950s Western military alliance in the Middle East that faced widespread opposition from Arab nationalist public opinion.

Atoms for Peace

President Eisenhower's 1953 UN initiative promoting peaceful applications of nuclear technology to counter global fear of atomic weapons.

Sayid Amin al-Mumayiz

Iraqi author of America as I Saw It, which the State Department refused to subsidize due to its critical descriptions of American racial prejudice.

Howard Fast

Leftist novelist whose book The Last Frontier, about Native American struggles, concerned U.S. diplomats when published in Iran.

Solomon McCombs

Native American artist whose proposed USIS tour of Iran was postponed to avoid overemphasizing minority themes in public diplomacy.

Malvin Whitfield

African American Olympic gold medalist dispatched by the State Department as a sports ambassador to project racial integration abroad.

George Cameron

University of Michigan professor consulted by the State Department regarding Soviet propaganda and public opinion in Kurdish regions.

Norman Holmes Pearson

Yale literature professor who ran the London counterespionage branch (X-2) of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.

James Jesus Angleton

Longtime CIA counterintelligence chief, nicknamed "the Poet," who edited the literary magazine Furioso during his university years.

Cord Meyer

Chief of the CIA's International Organizations Division who recruited New Critic writers and academics into covert CIA cultural operations.

Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF)

Major CIA-funded anti-communist front organization established in Paris in 1950 to sponsor magazines, conferences, art, and music festivals.

Michael Josselson

OPC officer and founding Executive Director of the Congress for Cultural Freedom who steered its cultural activities in Paris.

Tom Braden

Head of the CIA's International Organizations Division who managed covert funding for the Congress for Cultural Freedom and MoMA exhibits.

Frances Stonor Saunders

British historian and author of Who Paid the Piper? The Cultural Cold War, documenting covert CIA funding of high culture.

Farfield Foundation

A CIA pass-through foundation used to channel secret government grants to literary magazines, writers, and cultural organizations.

Magazine Encounter

Influential Anglo-American monthly cultural magazine published in London, secretly bankrolled by the CIA and MI6 via the CCF.

Magazine Partisan Review

New York anti-Stalinist literary journal co-edited by William Phillips that received covert funding from CIA pass-through foundations.

William Phillips

Co-editor of Partisan Review who sought covert intelligence funding and maintained contact with DCI Walter Bedell Smith.

H. J. "Kappy" Kaplan

Expatriate writer and UNESCO official in Paris approached in 1950 by William Phillips to manage a proposed European edition of Partisan Review.

Magazine Paris Review

Paris-based literary quarterly co-founded by Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton that provided cover for CIA intelligence operations.

Peter Matthiessen

American author and co-founder of the Paris Review who served covertly as an officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Abstract Expressionism

Post-WWII American avant-garde painting movement promoted by MoMA and the CIA as a visual proof of individual freedom in democratic society.

Clement Greenberg

Prominent New York art critic and Partisan Review editor who formulated the leading formalist theories championing Abstract Expressionism.

Jackson Pollock

Leading Abstract Expressionist painter whose large gestural canvases were showcased by Cold War art patrons as a uniquely American icon.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

New York art institution chaired by Nelson Rockefeller that collaborated with the CCF and CIA to exhibit modern American art overseas.