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In 1948, the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act (Smith-Mundt Act; Public Law 80 402) was signed, which established the charter for U.S. overseas information and cultural programs. The Smith Mundt Act of 1948 was an outgrowth of two previous administrations: President Wilson's Committee on Public Information (CPI), America's first official government propaganda program, which sold the American public on entering World War I; and President Truman's Campaign of Truth programs designed to combat Soviet propaganda. The U.S. government's official propaganda mouthpiece overseas, the U.S. Information Agency, operates under the authority of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948.
The headquarters of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) are just two blocks from the Washington, D.C. Mall and the National Air and Space Museum, the most visited museum in the world. But this government agency, which receives about U.S.$ 1 billion a year from U.S. taxpayers, is no tourist attraction. In fact most Americans have never heard of it. Part of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, its work is intended for an overseas audience, and a U.S. citizen is better off going abroad to learn how it implements its motto: "telling America's story to the world." Why? Because the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 authorizes the dissemination of U.S. foreign-policy information abroad but prohibits the dissemination of the same material within the United States. Coming on the heels of an American-led war against Nazi totalitarianism, the original intent of the law was to avoid any appearance of the U.S. government doing to its own population what had been done by defeated Axis powers. USIA's adherence to the domestic ban of the Smith-Mundt Act blocks out important information to the U.S. public about its government's foreign-policy objectives. What is the story of America's official storyteller?
USIA likes to call its particular branch of foreign affairs "public diplomacy," a euphemism for propaganda. The encyclopedia definition of the latter term is "instruments of psychological warfare aimed at influencing the actions of human beings in ways that are compatible with the national interest objectives of the purveying state." But USIA prefers the euphemism, because it doesn't want the U.S. public to think that its government engages in psychological warfare activities, and because, among the general public, "propaganda" is a pejorative catch-all...