Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Presidential Aides

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy ((GPD))

  • 64 Accesses

Abstract

Since the National Security Council first directed interagency “coordination” of the US government’s foreign information policies in 1947, presidents and their aides have tried repeatedly to create effective coordinating structures, usually when motivated by war and crises. This chapter examines different meanings of coordination and the strengths and limitations of two coordination models. Five cases illustrate a State Department model. Six cases portray an NSC model generally preferred by presidents who, frustrated by bureaucratic infighting, seek to harmonize civilian and military communication at the White House level. Presidential aides constitute a public diplomacy practitioner community, even though they lack characteristics of career services. Failure to create a durable coordination structure reflects persistence in willing the ends of interagency coordination but not the means.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 29.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    “252. Memorandum from the Executive Secretary (Souers) to the Members of the National Security Council,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945–1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, Historical Documents, Department of State.

  2. 2.

    National Security Act of 1947, Pub. L. No. 235, 61 Stat. 496 (1947).

  3. 3.

    Amy B. Zegart, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC (Stanford University Press, 1999), 10, 54–75.

  4. 4.

    National Security Act of 1947.

  5. 5.

    Christopher C. Shoemaker, The NSC Staff: Counseling the Council (Westview Press, 1991), 21–48.

  6. 6.

    David Rothkopf, Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power (PublicAffairs, 2005), 15.

  7. 7.

    Allison and Zelikow, Essence of Decision, 255–313.

  8. 8.

    Zegart, Flawed by Design, 7.

  9. 9.

    Zegart, Flawed by Design, 54–108; Rothkopf, Running the World; R.D. Hooker, Jr., The NSC Staff: New Choices for a New Administration (National Defense University Press, 2016). On staff influence during policy implementation, I am indebted to Michael Schneider, email to author, November 2020.

  10. 10.

    “2. National Security Council Report,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950–1955, The Intelligence Community 1950–1955, Historical Documents, Department of State; “17. Editorial Note,” Intelligence Community 1950–1955.

  11. 11.

    Barrett, Truth is Our Weapon, 244–246, 301.

  12. 12.

    Notes on meeting of National Psychological Strategy Board, October 16, 1950, Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, CIA Library, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-01065A000500130073-9.pdf.

  13. 13.

    “74. Department of State Press Release,” Intelligence Community 1950–1955.

  14. 14.

    “294. State Department Announcement No. 4,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, National Security Affairs, Volume II, Part 2, Historical Documents, Department of State.

  15. 15.

    “303. Extract From a ‘Report on International Information Administration—1952’ to the Secretary of State from the Administrator of IIA (Compton) December 31, 1952,” National Security Affairs, Volume II, Part 2.

  16. 16.

    On the short and checkered history of IIA, see Cull, United States Information Agency, 71–80.

  17. 17.

    USIA’s General Counsel, memorandum, “Arguments Supporting the Director’s Participation in the NSC,” n.d. [circa 1980], author’s copy; 1973 Twenty-Sixth Report, US Advisory Commission on Information, US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy Reports, 11; 1980 Annual Report, US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy Reports, 17; 1982 Annual Report, US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy Reports, 13; Telling America’s Story to the World: Problems and Issues (US General Accounting Office, 1974), 2.

  18. 18.

    Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1977, Section 2, 91 Stat. 1636 (1977).

  19. 19.

    “30. Memorandum From the Director of the United States Information Agency (Reinhardt) to all USIA Heads of Offices and Services,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XXX, Public Diplomacy, Historical Documents, Department of State.

  20. 20.

    “35. Memorandum From the Director of the United States Information Agency (Reinhardt) to the President’s Assistant for National Security (Brzezinski),” Volume XXX, Public Diplomacy.

  21. 21.

    “Mission of the International Communication Agency,” Pub. L. No. 95–426, Sec. 202, October 7, 1978.

  22. 22.

    Cull, United States Information Agency, 362–363.

  23. 23.

    William Rugh Oral History, interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, ADST, Arlington, VA, 82–83; Cull, Decline and Fall, 43–46; 1991 Annual Report, US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy Reports, 14.

  24. 24.

    Maura Harty to Under Secretary [Charlotte] Beers, Assistant Secretary [William] Burns, and Assistant Secretary [Lincoln] Bloomfield, memorandum, “Task Forces Organized for War on Terrorism,” with attachment, “Public Diplomacy Task Force,” October 26, 2001, author’s copy.

  25. 25.

    David Arnett, email to author, November 25, 2019.

  26. 26.

    Harty, “Task Forces Organized;” Janice Brambilla, “Public Diplomacy Task Force Needs Volunteers,” email, October 12, 2001, author’s copy; Maura Harty to Chiefs of Mission, “Task Forces Organized for War on Terrorism,” October 26, 2001, author’s copy.

  27. 27.

    “Public Diplomacy Annex to Situation Report Number 073, Overnight Issues from Abroad,” n.d. [circa October 2001], author’s copy; “Public Diplomacy Annex to Situation Report Number 089, Overnight Issues from Abroad,” n.d. [circa October 2001], author’s copy; Bruce Gregory, working paper, “Task Force 1 Public Diplomacy—Monitoring Al Jazeera 24/7,” October 16, 2001, author’s copy; Peter Baker, “In Pakistan, U.S. Joins Battle on Publicity Front,” Washington Post, November 21, 2001.

  28. 28.

    Kenton Keith Oral History, interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, ADST, Arlington, VA.

  29. 29.

    Hughes volunteered this point during a meeting with the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication, September 6, 2007, author’s recollection.

  30. 30.

    Department of Defense, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication (2004), 60–62; Department of Defense, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication (2007), xiii, xvii, 94–95.

  31. 31.

    Quoted in Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War (St. Martins, 1997), 19.

  32. 32.

    Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 16–17; Wolfe, Freedom’s Laboratory, 66–68.

  33. 33.

    Quoted in “59. Memorandum from Robert J. Hooker of the Policy Planning Staff to the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Nitze),” Intelligence Community 1950–1955.

  34. 34.

    Harry S. Truman, “Directive Establishing the Psychological Strategy Board,” June 20, 1951, American Presidency Project.

  35. 35.

    Davison, Magruder, Wisner, and Stevens are quoted in “Psychological Strategy Board (PSB),” memorandum of conversation held in the CIA Conference Room, May 16, 1951, Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, CIA Library, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400010025-1.pdf. Marshall is quoted in Gregory Mitrovitch, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (Cornell University Press, 2009), 62.

  36. 36.

    Quoted in Scott Lucas, “Campaigns of Truth: The Psychological Strategy Board and American Ideology, 1951–1953,” The International History Review 18, no. 2 (May, 1996): 288.

  37. 37.

    Quoted in Osgood, Total Cold War, 44.

  38. 38.

    Gordon Gray Oral History, interviewed by Richard D. McKinzie, Harry S. Truman Library.

  39. 39.

    Quoted in Mitrovitch, Undermining the Kremlin, 71–72.

  40. 40.

    Charles Burton Marshall Oral History, interviewed by Neil M. Johnson, Harry S. Truman Library.

  41. 41.

    Hart, Empire of Ideas, 161–163; Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The U.S. Crusade Against the Soviet Union (Manchester University Press, 1999), 144–147; Lucas, “Campaigns of Truth,” 289–294.

  42. 42.

    Quoted in Lucas, “Campaigns of Truth,” 288–289.

  43. 43.

    “157. White House Press Release,” Intelligence Community 1950–1955.

  44. 44.

    Elmer Staats, “Operations Coordinating Board: A Descriptive Statement of the Organization, Functions, and Procedures of the OCB,” September 1955, Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, CIA Library, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80B01676R002700040035-3.pdf.

  45. 45.

    On the structure and activities of the OCB, see Osgood, Total Cold War, 85–88; Wolfe, Freedom’s Laboratory, 93–94; and Shawn J. Parry-Giles, “The Eisenhower Administration’s Conceptualization of the USIA: The Development of Overt and Covert Propaganda Strategies,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 24, no. 2 (Spring, 1994): 263–276.

  46. 46.

    Loomis Oral History, interviewed by “Cliff” Groce.

  47. 47.

    Management of Public Diplomacy Relative to National Security, National Security Decision Directive Number 77 (January 14, 1983).

  48. 48.

    U.S. International Information Policy, National Security Decision Directive Number 130 (March 6, 1984).

  49. 49.

    Carnes Lord, “The Past and Future of Public Diplomacy,” Orbis 42 (Winter 1998): 56.

  50. 50.

    On Lord’s influence on public diplomacy, see Giles Scott-Smith, “Aristotle, US Public Diplomacy, and the Cold War: The Work of Carnes Lord,” Foundations of Science 13 (2008): 251–264.

  51. 51.

    Walter Raymond, Jr. to National Security Advisor William C. Clark, memorandum, “The Asia Foundation,” December 15, 1982, cited in Robert Parry, “Reagan Documents Shed Light on U.S. ‘Meddling,’” Consortium News, September 13, 2017, https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/13/reagan-documents-shed-light-on-u-s-meddling/. On Raymond’s NSC activities, see Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, “Iran-Contra’s Untold Story,” Foreign Policy, No. 72 (Autumn, 1988): 3–30; Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, “Reagan’s Pro-Contra Propaganda Machine,” Washington Post, September 4, 1988; and Robert Parry, America’s Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison to Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to Barack Obama (The Media Consortium, 2012).

  52. 52.

    Parry, “Reagan Documents Shed Light.”

  53. 53.

    Thomas Blanton, ed., Public Diplomacy and Covert Propaganda: The Declassified Record of Ambassador Otto Juan Reich, March 2, 2001, National Security Archive, George Washington University, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/; Comptroller General of the United States to Jack Brooks and Dante Fascell, September 30, 1987, National Security Archive, George Washington University, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/04287.pdf.

  54. 54.

    Lord, “Past and Future,” 68, n. 40.

  55. 55.

    Walter Raymond, Jr., memorandum for the record, “Organization of Public Diplomacy,” August 15, 1988, author’s copy.

  56. 56.

    Lord, “Past and Future,” 58.

  57. 57.

    1983 Annual Report, Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy Reports, 14.

  58. 58.

    Malone, Political Advocacy, 74–76.

  59. 59.

    David I. Hitchcock, U.S. Public Diplomacy (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1988), 20–26.

  60. 60.

    Richard A. Best, Jr., The National Security Council: An Organizational Assessment (Congressional Research Service, 2011), 20; Mary Ellen Connell, “Coordinating the Information Instrument of National Security Strategy,” student paper, National War College, April 1992, author’s copy; Michael Pistor to David C. Miller, February 28, 1990, author’s copy.

  61. 61.

    Rothkopf, Running the World, 309–316; Best, National Security Council, 20–22.

  62. 62.

    Organization of the National Security Council, Presidential Decision Directive/NSC-2 (January 20, 1993).

  63. 63.

    Managing Complex Contingency Operations, Presidential Decision Directive/NSC 56 (May 1997).

  64. 64.

    Jamie Frederic Metzl, “Rwandan Genocide and the International Law of Radio Jamming,” American Journal of International Law 91, no. 4 (October 1997): 628–651.

  65. 65.

    Department of Defense, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Managed Information Dissemination (2001), 12–20; Nicholas J. Cull, “How We Got Here,” in Seib, Toward a New Public Diplomacy, 38–42.

  66. 66.

    International Public Information (IPI), Presidential Decision Directive/NSC 68 (April 30, 1999).

  67. 67.

    Ben Barber, “Group Will Battle Propaganda Abroad,” Washington Times, July 28, 1999; Ben Barber, “Information-control Plan Aimed at U.S., Insider Says,” Washington Times, July 29, 1999; Ben Barber, “White House Says Information System Not Aimed at U.S.” Washington Times, July 30, 1999; Helle Bering, “Professor Albright Goes Live,” Washington Times, August 4, 1999.

  68. 68.

    Cull, “How We Got Here,” 42.

  69. 69.

    Department of Defense, Managed Information Dissemination, 26.

  70. 70.

    George W. Bush, “Executive Order 13283—Establishing the Office of Global Communications,” January 21, 2003, American Presidency Project.

  71. 71.

    Condoleezza Rice, memorandum, “Establishment of the Strategic Communication Policy Coordinating Committee,” September 10, 2002, author’s copy; Department of Defense, Task Force on Strategic Communication (2004), 25–26; U.S. Public Diplomacy: Interagency Coordination Efforts Hampered by Lack of a National Communication Strategy (US Government Accountability Office, 2005), 11–13.

  72. 72.

    Stephen J. Hadley, “Establishment of the Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communications Policy Coordination Committee (PCC), April 8, 2006, author’s copy; U.S. National Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication,” Policy Coordinating Committee (PCC) (June 2007), https://2001-2009.state.gov/documents/organization/87427.pdf (accessed May 19, 2023).

  73. 73.

    Karen Hughes, “Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy: Interagency Coordination,” remarks at Department of Defense Conference on Strategic Communication, July 11, 2007, US Department of State, Archive Websites.

  74. 74.

    U.S. Public Diplomacy: Key Issues for Congressional Oversight (US Government Accountability Office, 2009), 20–22; U.S. Public Diplomacy: Background and Current Issues (Congressional Research Service, 2009), 32–34; Department of Defense, Task Force on Strategic Communication (2007), 2–4.

  75. 75.

    Public Law 110-417, Sec.1055; Kristin M. Lord, Voices of America: U.S. Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century (Brookings, 2008), 32–33.

  76. 76.

    “National Framework for Strategic Communication,” The White House, n.d. [circa March 2010], https://man.fas.org/eprint/pubdip.pdf; “Letter from the President to Congress Concerning a Strategic Communications Report,” n.d. [circa March 2010], https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/realitycheck/the-press-office/letter-president-congress-concerning-a-strategic-communications-report; “Update to Congress on National Framework for Strategic Communication,” n.d. [circa 2012], https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=704809. Documents accessed May 8, 2023.

  77. 77.

    Ben Rhodes, The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House (Random House, 2018), 69. The term public diplomacy appears on the dust jacket of Rhodes’ memoir, but nowhere in the book. Readers will look in vain for insights into how he carried out duties he fleetingly described as being “in charge of the sprawling ways the United States reaches foreign publics—from exchange programs to information operations.”

  78. 78.

    Barack Obama, “Executive Order 13721—Developing an Integrated Global Engagement Center to Support Government-wide Counterterrorism Communications Activities Directed Abroad and Revoking Executive Order 13584,” March 14, 2016, American Presidency Project; Mathew C. Weed, Global Engagement Center: Background and Issues (Congressional Research Service, 2017).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

    Bruce Gregory

Authors
  1. Bruce Gregory
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Gregory, B. (2024). Presidential Aides. In: American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension. Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38917-7_13

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation