United States Information Agency
Based on Wikipedia: United States Information Agency
America's Biggest Secret You've Never Heard Of
Imagine a public relations firm so massive that it dwarfed the twenty largest commercial PR agencies in America—combined. A company with over ten thousand full-time professionals spread across one hundred fifty countries, operating around the clock in seventy languages, spending more than two billion dollars annually. Now imagine that this organization wasn't selling soft drinks or automobiles. It was selling the United States of America.
This was the United States Information Agency, or USIA.
For nearly half a century, from 1953 to 1999, the American government ran what one former director called "the biggest branch of this propaganda machine." Most Americans never knew it existed, and that was entirely by design.
The Problem with the Word "Propaganda"
Before we go further, we need to wrestle with an uncomfortable word: propaganda. In modern usage, it carries almost exclusively negative connotations—we think of Nazi Germany's Ministry of Public Enlightenment, Soviet disinformation campaigns, or authoritarian regimes twisting facts to control their populations. But the word itself simply means the systematic spreading of information to promote a cause or point of view.
The United States government explicitly created the USIA as a propaganda agency. That's not a criticism or an accusation; it's what the agency's own officials called their work. The question isn't whether it was propaganda—it unquestionably was—but rather whether such propaganda was justified, effective, or ethical.
Understanding this distinction matters because it reveals something important about how democracies have historically grappled with the tension between their ideals of open discourse and the practical necessities of international competition.
Born from Fear
President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the USIA on August 1, 1953, during one of the most anxious periods in American history. The Cold War wasn't just a geopolitical competition between the United States and the Soviet Union—it was an existential struggle between two incompatible visions of human society. The Soviets possessed nuclear weapons. They had consolidated control over Eastern Europe. Communist movements were gaining ground in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
American officials faced a peculiar problem. They believed that if people around the world could simply understand what the United States was really like—its values, its culture, its way of life—they would naturally prefer it to Soviet communism. But how do you communicate that to billions of people who don't speak English, who may have never met an American, and who are simultaneously being bombarded with Soviet messaging painting America as a racist, imperialist, warmongering empire?
The answer was to fight information with information.
But Eisenhower understood something subtle about persuasion. He believed that "audiences would be more receptive to the American message if they were kept from identifying it as propaganda." Materials that were obviously promotional would convince few people. But the same viewpoints, presented by seemingly independent voices, would be far more persuasive.
This insight shaped everything the USIA would do.
The Four Pillars of Persuasion
When the USIA launched, it organized itself around four main divisions, each targeting a different medium and audience.
The first division handled broadcasting. In the 1950s, radio was king. Television sets remained expensive luxuries in most of the world, but radios were everywhere. The Voice of America, which had begun during World War II, became the USIA's flagship broadcast operation. By 1967, it was transmitting in thirty-eight languages to an estimated twenty-six million listeners.
The Voice of America occupied an interesting middle ground. Unlike pure propaganda that simply repeated government talking points, the VOA was designed to be a "Voice from America"—presenting American perspectives but doing so credibly enough that listeners would trust it. In 1976, Congress even gave the VOA a formal charter requiring its news to be balanced. This created an inherent tension: how do you promote American interests while maintaining journalistic credibility? The USIA never fully resolved this contradiction.
The second division operated libraries and cultural exchanges. This included the famous Fulbright Scholarship Program, which brought foreign students and scholars to study in America and sent Americans abroad. The theory was simple: personal experience would be more persuasive than any broadcast. A Pakistani scientist who spent a year at an American university, making American friends and seeing American life firsthand, would return home as an informal ambassador for American values.
The third division handled press services. Within its first twenty years, the USIA published sixty-six magazines, newspapers, and periodicals—nearly thirty million copies annually in twenty-eight languages. These publications weren't labeled as American government products. Articles frequently appeared under fictitious bylines like "Guy Sims Fitch," allowing USIA perspectives to circulate without attribution.
The fourth division produced films and documentaries. When efforts to collaborate with Hollywood failed—the movie industry was understandably reluctant to become an arm of government messaging—the USIA simply made its own films.
The Puppet Shows of the Cold War
Some USIA projects were stranger than anything a novelist could invent.
Consider "Tales from the Hoja." Between 1953 and 1958, the agency produced twenty-three short films featuring marionettes crafted by puppeteer Mary Chase. These films retold traditional Hodja fables—folk tales popular throughout the Middle East and Central Asia—but with pro-American and anti-communist messages woven into the narratives.
One film presented the ancient parable of the blind men and the elephant, where each blind man touches a different part of the elephant and concludes the animal must be like a snake, a tree trunk, or a wall. The moral in the USIA version? Don't trust limited perspectives—especially Soviet perspectives.
These films remained classified for decades. The National Archives only made them publicly available in 2019, more than sixty years after they were created.
Then there was Project Pedro, a secretly funded operation in Mexico during the 1950s. The USIA produced newsreels that portrayed communism unfavorably and the United States positively, but the American government's involvement was hidden. Mexican audiences watched what appeared to be locally produced news content, never knowing it originated from Washington.
The Films Americans Couldn't See
Here's perhaps the strangest aspect of the USIA's existence: American citizens were legally prohibited from viewing the agency's materials.
The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which authorized American information programs abroad, explicitly forbade their domestic distribution. The logic was that a democracy shouldn't propagandize its own citizens. But this created an absurd situation where American taxpayers funded billions of dollars worth of films, broadcasts, and publications that they couldn't legally access.
Researchers studying American propaganda couldn't even view USIA materials at the National Archives. The agency's work existed in a peculiar blind spot—created by Americans, paid for by Americans, promoting American values, but invisible to Americans.
This restriction wasn't lifted until 2012, more than a decade after the USIA itself had ceased to exist.
The Hollywood Problem
American officials during the Cold War faced an embarrassing contradiction. They believed American culture was superior and that exposure to it would naturally draw people toward democracy and capitalism. But actual American culture wasn't always flattering.
Hollywood films frequently depicted racial injustice, political corruption, crime, poverty, and social dysfunction. These weren't communist fabrications—they were honest artistic expressions of American society. But when Soviet propagandists pointed to Hollywood movies as evidence of American decadence and inequality, they weren't entirely wrong.
The USIA existed partly to counterbalance these unflattering depictions. American officials worried that foreign audiences watching films critical of American society would conclude that America was indeed as terrible as the Soviets claimed. The agency tried to present a competing narrative—not necessarily false, but certainly selective.
This gets at a fundamental tension in democratic propaganda. An authoritarian state can simply ban unflattering content. A democracy that values free expression cannot. The USIA had to promote America in a world where American artists were simultaneously criticizing it.
Nine from Little Rock
Not all USIA productions were propaganda in the manipulative sense. One of the agency's most notable films was "Nine from Little Rock," a 1964 documentary about the nine Black students who integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957 under the protection of federal troops.
The film won an Academy Award.
This might seem like an odd subject for an agency devoted to promoting America's image. After all, the Little Rock crisis was an international embarrassment—images of white mobs attacking Black children circled the globe and provided Soviet propagandists with powerful ammunition.
But the film's approach was clever. Rather than denying America's racial problems, it acknowledged them—and then argued that America's willingness to confront those problems demonstrated the strength of its democratic system. The story wasn't "America is perfect." It was "America is capable of correcting its mistakes."
This represented a more sophisticated form of persuasion than simple boosterism.
The Listening Agency
While most of the USIA's resources went toward broadcasting American messages outward, the agency also served another function that receives less attention: listening.
The USIA regularly conducted research on foreign public opinion about the United States. It ran public opinion surveys throughout the world and issued reports to government officials, including twice-daily summaries of foreign media commentary.
This intelligence function was arguably as valuable as the propaganda function. Understanding how foreign populations perceived America—what arguments resonated, what criticisms stuck, what concerns were emerging—allowed policymakers to adjust both their messaging and their actual policies.
The agency didn't just tell the world about America. It told America about the world's view of America.
World's Fairs and Soft Power
Beginning with the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, the USIA took responsibility for designing, constructing, and operating American pavilions at major international expositions.
World's fairs might seem like quaint relics today, but during the Cold War they were serious arenas of ideological competition. The Soviet pavilion at Brussels displayed a full-size replica of Sputnik, the satellite that had shocked America the previous year. The American pavilion had to answer the question: what does American society offer that Soviet society cannot?
The USIA's answer emphasized consumer abundance, technological innovation, and cultural freedom. Visitors could see the latest American automobiles, kitchen appliances, and fashion. They could watch American jazz musicians and modern dancers. The message was that capitalism delivered not just material prosperity but creative vitality.
Whether this persuaded anyone to embrace American values is impossible to know. But millions of people visited these pavilions over the decades, forming impressions of America based on carefully curated experiences.
The End of an Era
The USIA outlived the Cold War by almost a decade, but not by much. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the agency's original rationale evaporated. The great ideological struggle was over. America had won. Why maintain a massive propaganda apparatus without an adversary to counter?
In 1999, President Bill Clinton abolished the USIA. Its cultural exchange and educational functions were folded into the State Department under a newly created position: the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Its broadcasting functions were transferred to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which continued operating Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Liberty.
When it was dismantled, the agency had a budget of $1.109 billion and employed 6,352 people. About half worked in the United States as civil service employees. Roughly a thousand were foreign service officers stationed around the world. The rest worked in international broadcasting or educational programs.
The agency was gone, but its legacy operations continued. Voice of America still broadcasts today. The Fulbright Program still sends scholars across borders. American embassies still operate public diplomacy programs.
Was It Propaganda? Was It Wrong?
The USIA forces us to confront uncomfortable questions about the boundaries between legitimate public diplomacy and manipulative propaganda.
On one hand, much of what the agency did was defensible. Educational exchanges genuinely benefit participants and foster international understanding. Broadcasting accurate news to populations living under censorship serves humanitarian purposes. Presenting American culture and values to foreign audiences isn't inherently deceptive.
On the other hand, the agency explicitly sought to conceal its role. It published articles under false names. It funded seemingly independent productions in foreign countries. It was designed, in Eisenhower's own words, to persuade without being identified as propaganda.
Some critics, particularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s, argued that operations like Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe remained propaganda even after the Cold War ended—that calling American government broadcasts "news" when they were designed to advance American interests was fundamentally dishonest.
Defenders countered that the agency's work was always more transparent than Soviet equivalents, that it promoted genuine values rather than fabrications, and that democracies have a right—perhaps even a duty—to explain themselves to the world.
This debate has no clean resolution. But knowing that it happened matters. For nearly fifty years, the American government operated one of history's largest persuasion machines, and most Americans had no idea.
The Echoes Today
The USIA is gone, but the challenges it addressed remain. How should democracies communicate their values in a world of competing narratives? How do you counter disinformation without becoming a disinformation source yourself? When does public diplomacy cross the line into manipulation?
These questions have only grown more pressing in the age of social media, when information warfare can be waged by anyone with an internet connection. Russia's Internet Research Agency, China's "wolf warrior" diplomacy, and countless other state-sponsored influence operations represent the descendants of Cold War propaganda—updated for a digital world.
The United States still engages in public diplomacy, though the term "propaganda" is studiously avoided. State Department programs, international broadcasting, cultural exchanges, and digital outreach continue under various bureaucratic umbrellas. The fundamental impulse—to tell America's story to the world—remains.
Perhaps the most valuable lesson from the USIA's history isn't about propaganda techniques or organizational structures. It's about the gap between how nations see themselves and how others perceive them. The agency existed because American officials recognized that being a great power wasn't enough. You also had to be understood. You had to be persuasive.
That remains true today. The methods change, the technologies evolve, the adversaries shift. But the fundamental challenge of communicating across cultures, of making your values comprehensible to people who don't share your assumptions, endures.
The USIA tried to solve that problem with two billion dollars a year and ten thousand employees. Whether they succeeded is a question historians still debate. But that they tried—and that most Americans never knew—tells us something important about the hidden machinery of international politics.