Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

The US Army and the

Media in the 20th Century

Robert T. Davis II

Occasional Paper 31
Front cover: World War I Poster Collection. “Knowledge Wins: Public Library 

Books Are Free” by Dan Smith, American Library Association, 1914–1918. 

University of North Texas Libraries. http://digital.library.unt.edu/data/govdocs/

atoz/02/meta-dc-1806.tkl
Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

Robert T. Davis II

Occasional Paper 31

The US Army and the 

Media in the 20th Century
First Printing: July 2009

CSI Press publications cover a variety of military history topics. 

The views expressed in this CSI Press publication are those of the 

author(s) and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, 

or the Department of Defense. A full list of CSI Press publications, many of them available for downloading, can be found at: 

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/CSI/RandPTeam.asp.

The seal of the Combat Studies Institute authenticates this document as an 

official publication of the CSI. It is prohibited to use CSI’s official seal on any 

republication of this material without the expressed written permission of the 

Director of CSI.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Davis, Robert T., 1976-

 The US Army and the media in the 20th century / Robert T. Davis II.

 p. cm. -- (Occasional paper 31 / US Army Combined Arms Center)

 Includes bibliographical references.

 1. United States. Army--Public relations--History--20th century. 2. United 

States. Army--Press coverage--History--20th century. 3. Armed Forces and mass 

media--United States. 4. United States--History, Military--20th century. I. U.S. 

Army Combined Arms Center. II. Title. III. Title: U.S. Army and the media in the 

20th century. IV. Title: United States Army and the media in the 20th century. 

 UH703.D385 2009

 659.2’9355009730904--dc22

 2009020829
iii

Foreword

The Combat Studies Institute is pleased to present Occasional Paper 

31, The US Army and the Media in the 20th Century, by Dr. Robert T. 

Davis II. Dr. Davis surveys the US Army’s approach to media relations 

from the Spanish-American War to the first Gulf War. The relationship 

between the Army and the media is considered in the broader context of 

the US Government’s approach to information management. Given the 

growing importance of information operations in 21st century warfare, this 

study provides a succinct overview of how the US Army has approached 

its relations with the media over the previous century.

The study highlights the recurrent tension that exists in both the Army 

and the US Government’s information management writ large. This tension 

arises from the need for operational security and effective deception and 

psychological operations and the need to provide transparency to secure 

public acceptance and support for military operations. The long-running 

debate over how the Government’s information management should be 

organized and operated reflects this tension. Thus, since World War I a 

number of bureaucratic manifestations of information management have 

been tried in wartime, including the Committee on Public Information, the 

Office of War Information, the Psychological Strategy Board, the United 

States Information Agency, and, most recently, the Office of Global 

Communications. With the exception of the United States Information 

Agency, whose tenure spanned the period from 1953 to 1999, all the other 

manifestations of bureaucratic information management rose and fell 

during the wars in which they were created. The growing pains of these 

organizations sometimes colored the Army’s relationship with the media.

The need for units in the field to participate in information management 

is a major challenge for future operations. This study reminds us that those 

commanders who have gone out of their way to engage the media have, 

in many cases, had the greatest success with information management. 

CSI—The Past Is Prologue!

Dr. William G. Robertson

Director, Combat Studies Institute

v

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank my fiancé, Becky Miller, for tracking down a number 

of useful books and editing an early draft of this manuscript. The staffs 

of the Truman and Eisenhower Libraries were generous of their time and 

resources. I appreciate the efforts of my editor, Ms. Elizabeth Weigand, 

in preparing my manuscript for publication. A special thank you to Dr. 

William G. Robertson, Combat Studies Institute Director and Combined 

Arms Center Command Historian; former CSI Director Colonel Timothy 

R. Reese; and Mr. Kendall D. Gott, Supervisory Historian, Research 

and Publication Team, for allowing me to see this project through to 

completion.

vii

Contents

Page

Foreword .................................................................................................iii

Acknowledgments .................................................................................... v

Chapter 1. Introduction ............................................................................ 1

Chapter 2. Military-Media Relations through World War I ..................... 5

Spanish-American War ...................................................................... 9

Philippine-American War .................................................................11

World War I ...................................................................................... 15

Chapter 3. World War II ......................................................................... 29

Army Hour ...................................................................................... 33

Military-Media Relations in North Africa, the Mediterranean, 

and Europe ................................................................................ 36

Chapter 4. Murky Waters: Military-Media Relations and 

Limited Wars...................................................................... 47

Korean War ...................................................................................... 53

Vietnam ........................................................................................... 58

Grenada ........................................................................................... 63

From the First Gulf War to the Global War on Terrorism ............... 65

Chapter 5. Conclusions .......................................................................... 75

Glossary ................................................................................................. 79

Bibliography .......................................................................................... 81

Appendix A. Documents Relating to US Government Information 

Policy ............................................................................... 89

Appendix B. Chronology ..................................................................... 123

Appendix C. US Government Communication/Information 

Departments and Agencies ............................................ 125

About the Author .................................................................................. 127

Figures

1. Pershing’s Crusaders .......................................................................... 20

2. President Roosevelt’s Information Soup, circa fall 1941 ................... 30



Chapter 1

Introduction

The area of freedom contracts and enforcement of 

restraints increases as the stresses on the stability of 

government and of the structure of society increase.

Frederick S. Siebert1

Cynics, I know, describe “PR” as a maternity gown 

designed to hide the true figure of fact. Undoubtedly, as 

abused by those who cover up or mislead, public relations 

can be stigmatized as mere propaganda or outright 

mendacity. Properly practiced, however, some form of it 

is necessary in a republic where the citizens must know 

the truth.

Dwight D. Eisenhower2

This study surveys how the US Army communicated its missions to 

the American public during periods of conflict within the context of the 

national policy toward information management. The phrase “information 

management” is used to suggest a host of interrelated terms to include 

censorship, information operations, information warfare, propaganda, 

public affairs, public information, psychological operations, psychological warfare, and strategic communications. The Army has always found 

its contribution to the US Government’s information management policies 

challenging. With operational security a key objective of military planning, 

military commanders strive to deny information to the enemy. Information 

management, broadly speaking, serves two purposes. One purpose is to 

effect domestic morale. The second purpose is to undermine the enemy 

or enemies’ morale and operational effectiveness. The proper relationship between these two functions has generated a long-running tension 

regarding the proper nature of the US Government writ large and, more 

specifically, the Army with regard to information management. On several 

occasions, specific practices of information management have blurred the 

distinctions between its two functions, which frequently leads to a domestic backlash against those information management structures and practices that develop in periods of tension. In almost all cases, it has been 

the preference of Government and military authorities to stress the importance of information management. At the same time, as Abraham Lincoln 

rightly noted in one of his celebrated debates with Stephen Douglas, 
“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; 

without it nothing can succeed.”3 In the contemporary era, the traditional 

institutional interest in information management has had to contend with 

the growth and proliferation of modes of information dissemination. New 

media technologies have exacerbated the classic tension between the 

military’s natural tendency to maximize the management of information 

to enhance security and effect the enemy versus the American public’s 

desire for information. This study focuses primarily on one element of the 

broader theme of information management—the relationship between the 

US Army and the media in the period since the Spanish-American War.

The process of developing a formal information management capacity 

within the US defense establishment has taken place unevenly over time. In 

the 19th and early 20th centuries, ad hoc responses in times of crises were 

the norm. During World War I and World War II, more formal mechanisms 

were developed, but in many cases these responses did not survive in the 

postwar period. After American entry into World War I, the Committee 

on Public Information, better known as the Creel Committee, combined 

aspects of censorship and propaganda into a single office. Although the 

Secretaries of State, War, and Navy were all nominally represented in the 

committee’s executive body, in reality it was George Creel, the director, 

who dominated the committee’s outlook. The Creel Committee’s perceived excesses and the poor relations between Creel and Congress led 

to the committee’s rapid dissolution at war’s end. Nevertheless, its legacy 

cast a long shadow over successive presidents’ approaches to the control 

of information.

Though there was intermittent discussion of the need for military censorship in the years leading up to World War II, again, no formal mechanism 

was created until after America’s entry into the war. President Franklin D. 

Roosevelt, aware of the legacy of the Creel Committee, never supported 

the creation of a single information agency. Instead, Roosevelt would ultimately countenance the creation of an Office of Censorship and an Office 

of War Information. The former deliberately eschewed the propagandistic characteristics of the Creel Committee. Like the Committee on Public 

Information, the Office of Censorship and Office of War Information were 

placed under civilian direction. And, like the Creel Committee, both were 

dissolved shortly after the end of the war (in both cases, by Executive 

order of President Harry S. Truman).

In the aftermath of World War II, the armed services retained public 

affairs roles. These roles were important tools of the military occupations 

in Germany, Japan, Austria, and Italy; moreover, they also retained 

the function of communicating with the American public. The rapid 
demobilization of the Armed Forces showed many leaders the need to 

educate the public about the continued requirements for national security. 

In this climate, the US Army established an Army Information School 

at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. During the heated controversy over 

roles and missions that characterized the scramble for appropriations in 

the late 1940s, there was a short-lived attempt by Secretary of Defense 

James V. Forrestal to create a single Office of Public Information in the 

Department of Defense (DOD). As was the case with many facets of 

defense unification, however, the Office of Public Information did not 

live up to Forrestal’s original hopes, and the individual Services retained 

considerable autonomy in the direction of their public affairs efforts for 

many years.

With the outbreak of the Korean War, military public relations entered 

an uncertain era. The limited wars fought by the US military during the 

Cold War took place in more ambiguous settings than the “good war.” 

These wars would challenge the ability of Army information management 

to fulfill its mission in often-difficult circumstances. The interest in strategic communications during the Global War on Terrorism, which included 

an attempt to establish an Office of Global Communications in the White 

House, demonstrated a very traditional (à la 20th century) attempt at information management. Its antecedents were found in the Creel Committee, 

the Office of War Information, and the Psychological Strategy Board. In 

addition, improvements in communications technologies would further 

complicate the issue. From television to cable to the internet, communications technologies have continued to increase the ability and speed 

to transmit information from the battlefield to the public, which defies 

the military to continue to shape the information environment of modern 

warfare.

This study analyzes the challenges, means, and practices that have 

constituted the US Army’s response to public relations from the SpanishAmerican War to the Global War on Terrorism. It also alludes to the degree 

to which the Army’s approach to public relations and public diplomacy 

contribute to strategic communications, as it is now understood. In this 

vein, US Army public relations are placed within the wider context of 

the US Government’s evolving policies toward information activities. 

This study does not deal directly with psychological operations, deception 

operations, or electronic warfare; however, it does touch on past methods 

of media coverage, to include discussions of censorship, the use of reporters’ pools, preferential access to senior commanders, and the practice of 

embedded reporters.
Notes

1. Quoted in Betty Houchin Winfield, FDR and the News Media

(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 5.

2. Dwight David Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends

(Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1967), 320.

3. Roy P. Basler, ed., “Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Ottawa” 

(21 August 1958), in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. III 

(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 27.


Chapter 2

Military-Media Relations through World War I

In time of peace, as well as war, editors and reporters 

carry secrets which they have no thought of publishing. 

They suppress items for editorial policy’s sake, or 

which may do harm or unnecessarily hurt personal 

feelings, or in answer to an influential appeal over the 

telephone. There is censorship in the between-you-andme and not-for-publication confidences of public men to 

a group of reporters; censorship in keeping the inside 

view of bruited gossip around a throne or the White 

House from the printed page; and in the whispered 

admonition “But the big boss wants it kept quiet” in 

any human organization. . . . Censorship is in human 

nature, its warrant and excuse in protectiveness. . . . In 

war censorship becomes official, direct, personified, war 

being itself often the product of the subtle underground 

censorship of peace.

Frederick Palmer1

The control of information in theaters of war has always been of central importance to military authorities. The need to control information in 

wartime was reflected in early legislation pertaining to the US Army. Under 

Article 57 of the 1806 Articles of War (in force until 1874), “Whosoever 

shall be convicted of holding correspondence with or giving intelligence 

to the enemy either directly or indirectly, shall suffer death or such other 

punishment as shall be ordered by the sentence of a court martial.”2

 After 

the Battle of New Orleans, General Andrew Jackson briefly imposed martial law on the city and instituted press censorship. When a newspaper 

complained about Jackson’s failure to lift martial law after the signing 

of the Treaty of Ghent, Jackson had the author of the article arrested for 

mutiny.3

The Civil War was the manifestation of deep tensions and contradictions that had existed in the United States since before the founding of 

the Republic. It, as many of the wars of the 20th century, had profoundly 

ideological characteristics. Both the armed forces of the United States and 

those of the Confederacy fought, at least in part, to defend their conceptions of ideal political association. President Abraham Lincoln clearly 

understood the deeply ideological nature of this conflict, and employed his 
own powerful rhetoric to advance and defend the cause of national union 

throughout the war. He served as propagandist-in-chief for the United 

States cause.4

 Within 4 months of the beginning of the Civil War, Lincoln’s 

first Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, issued an Executive order that 

stated:

All correspondence and communication, verbally or by 

writing, printing, or telegraphing, respecting operations 

of the Army or military movements on land or water, or 

respecting the troops, camps, arsenals, intrenchments, or 

military affairs within the several military districts, by 

which intelligence shall be, directly or indirectly, given 

to the enemy, without the authority and sanction of the 

major-general in command, be, and the same are absolutely prohibited, and from and after the date of this order 

persons violating the same will be proceeded against 

under the fifty-seventh article of war.5

When this first attempt at information control proved insufficient, a second Executive order was promulgated by Cameron’s successor, Edwin 

Stanton, the following February. This subsequent order forbade any telegraphic communications relating to military operations that had not been 

previously authorized by the War Department or generals commanding 

armies in the field. Any newspaper that violated this order would subsequently be denied receipt of information transmitted by telegraph and 

prohibited from using railways for distribution.6

 Due to Stanton’s influence, Postmaster-General Montgomery Blair extended this injunction by 

threatening to distribute any newspapers through the mail that violated 

the order. In the case of the Civil War, the limitations of communications 

facilities made this order practical. Stanton appointed Edward Sanford, 

president of the American Telegraph Company, as military supervisor of 

telegrams. To assure tight control over the telegraphic traffic, Stanton had 

the central telegraphic office moved from General George McClellan’s 

headquarters to the War Department in a room directly adjoining his own 

office.7

 Control over the telegraphs provided no definitive resolution to 

military-media relations during the Civil War, however. Members of the 

press always retained the option of carrying their stories themselves or 

sending dispatches by courier. Though slower than being sent by telegraph, the advent of steamships and rail links meant that news could still 

travel faster than in earlier ages.

Perhaps no military officer in the Civil War typified the stress on 

military-media relations in wartime as General William Tecumseh 
Sherman. Sherman was a complex man whose concern over failure often 

drove him into deep depressions. His fear of failure also drove him to 

control the situation in the field as closely as possible, which led him to the 

conclusion that there was little room for a critical press second-guessing his 

decisions. For Sherman, if war were to be waged successfully, it would be 

best conducted if the press were not present at all.8

 Sherman commanded 

a brigade at the first battle of Bull Run, where raw Union forces suffered 

an early reverse after having been urged “Forward to Richmond!” by 

Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune and the general weight of Northern 

public opinion.9

 This no doubt contributed to his sense that the press’s 

contributions to the war were less than helpful.

In the fall of 1861, Sherman was transferred to the Department of 

the Cumberland to serve under General Robert Anderson. There Sherman 

was charged with helping hold the key border state of Kentucky. While 

inspecting the fortifications on Muldraugh Hill, which protected the landward approaches to Louisville, Kentucky, Sherman was approached by 

F.B. Plympton of the Cincinnati Commercial. Plympton was interested 

in reporting on Sherman’s theater and had gone to the trouble of bringing along several letters of introduction. These letters included one from 

Sherman’s brother-in-law, Thomas Ewing Jr. After glancing at the letters 

of introduction, Sherman abruptly told Plympton to make sure he had himself on the next train back to Louisville. When Plympton protested that he 

was only there to convey the truth of what he saw to the public, Sherman 

dismissed him saying, “We do not want the truth about things; that is what 

we don’t want. Truth, eh? No sir. You take that train to Louisville; we do 

not want the enemy any better informed about what is going on here than 

he is.”10 As the war progressed, Sherman remained hostile to the presence 

of reporters in areas under his command.

Once Union forces had captured New Orleans (April 1862) and 

Memphis (June 1862), Vicksburg, Mississippi, became the last major 

southern redoubt on the Mississippi River. With its commanding position 

on a bluff high above the river, Vicksburg’s capture proved to be a considerable challenge. In early December 1862, Generals Ulysses S. Grant 

and Sherman met in Oxford, Mississippi, to plan a three-pronged assault 

on the city. To help maintain operational security, Sherman issued General 

Order Number 8, which prohibited any civilians, other than the transport 

crews, from accompanying his forces.11 Due to complications, the initial 

three-pronged assault failed to materialize, and Sherman’s troops were 

repulsed when they advanced toward the city on 29 December. However, 

subsequent press reports—ignorant that Sherman’s component was only 

one part of the intended three-pronged attack and eager to vilify Sherman 
for his policies toward the press—took advantage of the failure to resurrect 

charges about Sherman’s mental competence for duty. The abusive press 

criticism grew when it was announced that Sherman was being replaced 

as commander by Major General John McClernand, who, in fact, had been 

appointed by Lincoln to mollify public opinion in McClernand’s home 

state of Illinois.12

Sherman responded by court-martialing Thomas W. Knox, a correspondent for the New York Herald and author of a scathing critique of Sherman’s 

initial assault on Vicksburg.13 Though Knox had violated General Order 

Number 8, providing Sherman with a pretext, John Marszalek argues that 

it was the principle of press exclusion rather than punishing an individual that interested Sherman.14 Sherman wanted to establish the precedent 

that civilians accompanying military forces were subject to military law.15

Knox was charged with giving information to the enemy (see Cameron’s 

August 1861 order above), being a spy, and disobeying orders. Knox’s 

counsel, Lieutenant Colonel W.B. Woods, countered these three charges 

with information provided by Knox. As to the first charge, Woods was able 

to argue that General McClellan had modified the initial Cameron order, 

allowing the press to write about units and give commanders names so 

long as the accounts were written after the fighting had ended. Knox also 

produced at his trial a pass from General Grant. Finally, Woods argued 

that Knox had been unaware of General Order Number 8 until after he 

was on the transport accompanying Sherman’s force. The court-martial 

found Knox not guilty on the first two charges. He was found guilty of 

disobeying General Order Number 8, but the court-martial attached “no 

criminality thereto.” As a result of the decision, Knox was to leave Army 

lines under penalty of arrest should he return.16

Though Sherman was unhappy that the court-martial had seen fit to 

find Knox not guilty on two of the charges and guilty of the third on a technicality, in the end the victory was Sherman’s. Other national newspapers 

did not rally to Knox’s defense. Two reporters, Albert Richardson of the 

New York Tribune and James Mitchell of the New York Times, did plead 

Knox’s case to President Lincoln. Lincoln skillfully deflected their appeal 

by agreeing to write a letter under which Knox could proceed to General 

Grant’s camp, but the final decision on whether Knox could remain in 

the Army’s theater of activity would reside with Grant. Grant sided with 

his subordinate, and Knox moved back to covering the war in the east. 

Because of this famous court-martial of a reporter, which has never again 

been attempted by military authorities, General Sherman helped establish 

a precedent for the accreditation of reporters subject to the approval of 

theater commanders.17
Spanish-American War

The Spanish-American War (1898) marks an exceptional point in the 

history of military-media relations. The jingoistic mood that characterized 

the populace at large and much of the press created a situation in which the 

reporters’ enthusiasm for war reporting eclipsed any need for the military 

to attempt to shape the public’s perception of the war.18 This was, after all, 

the age of the muckraker and yellow journalism. The brevity of the conflict 

and its successful outcome were certainly contributory factors to the generally positive coverage of the war’s actual combat phases. Nonetheless, 

even the Spanish-American War was attended by its own information 

management difficulties. Generally, the criticism that befell the Army was 

aimed at the quality of medical attention given to soldiers and the quality of supplies provided to the forces. Later assessments, however, have 

tended to mitigate these shortcomings given the haste with which the US 

armed forces where propelled into the war.

The public relations difficulties that followed the successful prosecution of the war had everything to do with the nature by which a small 

Territorial Army augmented by volunteers had been rushed off to war. 

Before the Spanish-American War, the US Army had consisted of 25,000 

men scattered in small detachments across the country. By late 1899, the 

US Army stood at 100,000 men, with two-thirds of this force stationed in 

the Philippines, Guam, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.19 That the war had been 

short and decisive was all the better, as the Army was institutionally ill 

prepared to support a large number of troops, either at home or abroad, 

for long. Indeed, after the conclusion of the war, a number of shortcomings in both logistical and medical preparations became apparent.20 As was 

typical of 19th century military campaigns in the tropics, the outbreak of 

yellow fever and malaria among American troops in Cuba threatened to 

be deadlier than had combat with the Spanish.21 The problem first became 

apparent among the Fifth Corps, under the command of Major General 

William R. Shafter, who had recently defeated Spanish forces in Santiago, 

Cuba.

On 3 August 1898, Shafter wired the War Department to inform them 

that 75 percent of the recently victorious Fifth Corps had come down with 

malaria and was now in actuality an “army of convalescents.” Though 

Shafter had reported some earlier cases of yellow fever and malaria, 

throughout July his dispatches had indicated that his unit remained combat effective. The Army had made some recommendations to rotate sick 

troops home by establishing a rest and recreation camp, subsequently 

named Camp Wikoff, at Montauk Point on the eastern end of Long Island. 
10

However, initial plans called for rotating small detachments of the unit 

through the camp. Preparations for receiving large numbers of troops, 

let alone the entire Fifth Corps, had simply not been prepared prior to 

Shafter’s dispatch.22

Accompanying Shafter’s dispatch were supporting letters from his 

division commanders and brigadiers that were generally quite blunt as to 

the conditions of their troops.23 These materials, leaked to an Associated 

Press correspondent at Shafter’s headquarters, appeared the following 

day on newspaper front pages around the country. The resulting public 

furor about supposed Army callousness unfortunately contributed to the 

decision to send all of Fifth Corps’ troops to Camp Wikoff on the hopes 

that preparations could be completed before the troops arrived. This did 

not happen. Instead, the Army was left with a public relations disaster as 

sick troops arrived at a camp where the infrastructure and medical facilities were simply overwhelmed. With the camp located in Long Island, 

only a short train ride from New York, the sad condition of Fifth Corps 

was exposed to the full glare of public scrutiny. Of the 21,000 troops who 

passed through the camp, 257 died.24

The bad press that resulted from the travails of Fifth Corps was further 

exacerbated by the actions of Commanding General of the Army Nelson 

Miles. Miles publicly aired a number of his own grievances with Secretary 

of War Russell A. Alger and later charged that the Army had distributed 

tainted beef, with the implication of malfeasance. Miles opened the dispute with Alger publicly while he was leading the campaign in Puerto 

Rico.25

 He informed W.J. Whelply of the Kansas City Star on 11 August 

that Secretary Alger had undermined his authority, charged that the War 

Department had ignored his plans for handling the yellow fever epidemic, 

withheld ships and troops from his Puerto Rico expedition (some Fifth 

Corps forces had been earmarked to Miles as reinforcements before they 

were all ordered back to Montauk Point), and garbled his communiqués 

when releasing them to the press.26

As a result of the general criticism leveled against the Army, Secretary 

of War Alger formed a commission to investigate the conduct of the war. 

Grenville M. Dodge, a retired Civil War general, agreed to serve as head 

of a commission, known henceforth as the Dodge Commission. The 

Dodge Commission conducted extensive hearings from October through 

December.27 When Miles testified in late December, he resurrected his 

public campaign against Alger and Commissary General Charles Eagan, 

who he implied were responsible for tainted beef, which was “one of the 

serious causes of so much sickness and distress on the part of the troops.”28
11

Eagan would subsequently ruin his career in an impassioned defense of 

his actions, and ultimately the Dodge Commission would find the charges 

against Miles largely unfounded. In the end, the much publicized dispute 

between Alger and Miles did neither man much credit and only served 

to heighten domestic criticism of the Army. In the immediate term, the 

Dodge Commission’s report accomplished little, but its findings would 

soon provide grist to the efforts of Alger’s successor as Secretary of War 

Elihu Root, who would initiate wide-ranging reforms of the US Army.29

However, before these reforms took shape, the Army became involved in 

a difficult war subduing Filipino insurgents who opposed US annexation 

of the territory. Rather strained military-media relations accompanied this 

episode.

Philippine-American War

The Spanish-American War in the Philippines ended with US forces 

in occupation of the capital of Manila, but with much of the interior under 

the control of the Filipino nationalist and miscellaneous regional forces 

who had been fighting an insurgency against the Spanish since 1896. In 

the 5 months after fighting against the Spanish ended, the US forces and 

Filipinos nervously eyed each other while the future of the Philippines was 

determined by negotiations in Paris. The US forces that had been dispatched 

by President William McKinley to the Philippines had been initially sent 

under vague instructions. When the Eighth Corps landed south of Manila 

on 25 July, it numbered approximately 12,000 men. The US Army forces 

had only rough parity with the Spanish forces in Manila, compensated by 

Commodore George Dewey’s squadron in Manila Bay. After the Spanish 

had been defeated, however, the Eighth Corps faced a rather different 

challenge. The simmering tensions between Filipino nationalists, led by 

Emilio Aguinaldo, and the US troops who occupied the city broke into 

full-scale conflict on the night of 4 February 1899.30 Though both sides 

would later claim the other was responsible for the outbreak of fighting, 

the most recent scholarship on the Philippine-American War points out 

that there is little indication either side was seeking the outbreak of hostilities at that time.31 Once fighting broke out between Filipino nationalists 

and US forces, however, the shortage of US manpower, exacerbated by 

the toll of disease in tropical campaigns, severely impeded the subsequent 

conventional campaign. Nonetheless, within a year US forces would have 

control over most of the major towns of the Philippines. Defeating the 

Filipino forces proved a more difficult challenge, perhaps not surprisingly 

given the combination of geography (7,000 islands covering 500,000 

square miles) and politics (Democrat-nominee William Jennings Bryan 
12

was running against President McKinley in 1900 on an anti-imperialist 

platform, which encouraged Filipino resistance until the results of the US 

election were known).32

Major General Elwell S. Otis was serving as military governor with 

command of the Eighth Corps at the time of the outbreak of hostilities.33

Otis was a veteran of the Civil War, subsequently trained in law at Harvard 

University, who went on to a distinguished career in the US Army. This 

included having been selected by General Sherman to serve as the first 

commandant of the School of Application for Cavalry and Infantry at Fort 

Leavenworth, Kansas. Otis later served as commander of the Regular 

Army’s 20th Infantry Regiment, commander of the Departments of 

Columbia and Colorado, and second-in-command of the original expedition to the Philippines, for which he was widely credited with the successful deployment of the Eighth Corps to the Philippines.34 Despite his 

distinguished record and considerable organizational gifts, Otis’s relation 

with the press was often strained. Even before the Eighth Corps departed 

San Francisco for the war with Spain, some of the press had developed 

a negative attitude about the future commander.35

 This should not suggest that military-media relations on the whole were not fairly good in 

the early phase of the Philippine-American War. Many of the correspondents in the Philippines shared the general imperialistic outlook of the 

public at large and reveled in the adventure of covering the Army in the 

field. Frederick Palmer, who would later serve as press censor to General 

John Pershing in World War I, would recollect that many of his fellow 

correspondents would participate in combat operations “out of sheer fellowship.”36 Clearly, objectivity was not yet the overriding concern that it 

would become to later generations of journalists.

When fighting broke out between the Filipino and US forces on 4–5 

February 1899, General Otis was confident that American forces would 

prevail. On 6 February, the Boston Daily Globe carried an article that 

stated “every confidence is felt . . . that Gen. Otis is the master of the 

situation.”37 The relative ease with which US forces drove the Filipino 

forces out of the environs of Manila soon prompted Otis to assume that 

Filipino resistance would quickly be broken. This in turn encouraged his 

subsequently parsimonious requests for resources and troops. When the 

Filipino resistance proved to be more resilient than was initially thought, 

this parsimony became one point of criticism on which the press fastened. 

On 12 February, Otis cabled the War Department and informed them of 

his belief that if those reinforcements already dispatched (a force under 

General Henry W. Lawton was en route) were available, it would “probably end [the] war or all determined active opposition in twenty days.”38
13

Otis initially foresaw a war against the insurgents that would be relatively 

brief and undemanding of manpower. The arrival of more Regular Army 

troops became an important issue, as the terms of service for the Volunteer 

units were tied to the official end of the Spanish-American War.39 Otis’s 

rosy view of the war at this stage may have been geared toward reassuring those Volunteers present that the fighting would quickly be over once 

the US forces had convinced the Filipinos that they were overmatched. 

In any case, overly enthusiastic reports soon appeared in US papers. On 

18 March a New York Times front page headline proclaimed “CLIMAX 

AT HAND IN THE PHILIPPINES.”40 The article was purportedly based 

on the positive situation reports that Otis cabled to the War Department, 

which suggested that the Filipino resistance might suddenly collapse. In 

fact, it would be 3 more years before President Theodore Roosevelt would 

proclaim an end to the fighting in the Philippines, and even then there were 

sporadic campaigns until 1913. At the same time as the New York Times

printed Otis’s rather positive assessment of the situation, a more critical 

story, telegraphed from Hong Kong—beyond the reach of the US military 

censors in Manila—suggested a rather different story. Oscar Williams, a 

US consul, was quoted as saying that he “didn’t expect to live to see the 

end of the war.” The Filipino insurgents, rather than being on the verge of 

collapse, were said to be encouraged by the practice of the US forces retiring to their own lines after engagements.41 This latter report was symptomatic of the growing divergence between Otis and the press correspondents’ 

views of the war.

By mid-July, with no collapse in the Filipino resistance, the press’s 

comments about Otis’s leadership were turning more critical. Reporter 

James Creelman charged, “Unless Gen. Otis is removed and a competent general put in command, the whole campaign will be a failure.”42

Increasingly, the press corps in Manila (never more than a score of correspondents) found cause for complaint in Otis’s censor. After two meetings 

between Otis and the press corps failed to rectify the situation, the members of the press corps again went around Otis’s censor by dispatching a 

note to Hong Kong for transmission back to the United States. On 18 July, 

a number of papers in the United States carried the letter that denounced 

Otis’s censorship policy and the way he portrayed the war in his official 

reports.43 When pressed for his version, Otis argued that the press correspondents had been denied permission to cable stories that claimed 

“official reports sent misrepresented conditions.” Otis argued that his own 

reports contained no deliberate misrepresentations, and sometimes bordered on being “too conservative.” When he had pushed the press corps 

to offer specific instances in which he had misrepresented the situation on 
14

the ground, they countered by arguing that it was not the situation reports 

but rather Otis’s conclusions they felt were unwarranted.44 Despite the 

criticism leveled against General Otis in the press, President McKinley 

never wavered in his support of Otis.45 Despite the ongoing hostility of the 

press corps, Otis would remain in command until 5 May 1900, stepping 

down at his own request when he felt confident that the guerrillas were 

nearly defeated.46 However, it would take another 2 years, under the direction successively of Major General Arthur MacArthur and Major General 

Adna Chaffee, before the Filipino resistance would subside.

Though small-unit actions had been an element of the fighting in 

the Philippine-American War from its beginning, Filipino forces did not 

formally resort to guerrilla warfare until late November 1899.47 It is this 

phase of the Philippine-American War that has been the subject of the 

greatest disapprobation. Allegations of atrocities and torture by American 

soldiers—Filipino forces carried out similar activities—dogged the US 

military during the campaigns in the Philippines. The conflict between 

Commanding General Miles, President Roosevelt, and Secretary Root 

exacerbated public criticism of the American occupation. The summer of 

1902 was the climax of a number of highly publicized courts-martial of 

US military figures in the Philippines.48 In March 1902, news broke that 

two Marines, Major Littleton W.T. Waller and Lieutenant H.A. Day, were 

court-martialed for executing natives on the island of Samar without trial. 

Eventually, both Waller and Day would be acquitted on the grounds that 

they were following orders from their superior officer, US Army Brigadier 

General Jacob H. Smith, who infamously and perhaps apocryphally had 

given the order to turn Samar into a “howling wilderness.”49 These courtsmartial contributed to the widespread disgrace of the Army’s conduct 

of the counterinsurgency in the Philippines, which was only partially 

curbed through the characteristically energetic involvement of President 

Roosevelt. As Brian Linn has argued, “Samar cast a pall on the army’s 

achievement and, for generations, has been associated in the public mind 

as typifying the Philippine War.”50

The Army’s reputation was also ill served by the increasing public 

dispute between Commanding General Miles and Secretary Root. In 

December 1901, Miles made public comments on a decision reached in a 

US Navy Court of Inquiry. Both Roosevelt and Root were frustrated that 

the Commanding General of the Army would insert himself in the affairs 

of another Service, and Roosevelt became sufficiently aroused to instruct 

Root to formally reprimand Miles.51

 Miles, though nominally a Republican, 

was not without political ambitions, and with Roosevelt increasingly 

looking to garner the Republican nomination in 1904, began to position 
15

himself to attract the vote of the anti-imperialist faction of the Democratic 

Party. In the wake of Roosevelt and Root’s reprimand, Miles found an 

opportunity to advance his own political ambitions by embarrassing the 

administration over the question of atrocities in the Philippines. In midMarch, Miles granted an interview to Henry Watterson, whose account 

was published in the Washington Post. It reported that the administration 

had denied Miles permission to conduct an inquiry into the situation 

in the Philippines, hinting that reports of Army misconduct were being 

suppressed.52

 Later that month, Miles testified before the Senate Military 

Affairs Committee against Secretary Root’s proposed Army reform to 

establish a General Staff, calling such a measure subversive to the Army’s 

interests and threatening resignation if it were enacted.53

 Finally, Miles 

was responsible for passing on the report of Major Cornelius Gardener, the 

military governor of Tayabas province in the Philippines, to Roosevelt’s 

critics in the Senate. The report, which Roosevelt supporter Senator Henry 

Cabot Lodge reluctantly allowed to be published on 11 April, spoke of the 

brutalization of the province inhabitants by American soldiers who had 

generated “deep hatred” toward the American occupiers as a result.54

Ultimately, President Roosevelt himself had to organize a campaign in 

defense of the Army’s reputation. Roosevelt requested that Lodge provide 

the Senate with ample evidence of Filipino atrocities against American 

troops. The President also saw to it that General Smith was dismissed 

from the Army, though the court-martial in Manila had only admonished 

him for excessive zeal when it returned its verdict in mid-July. Lodge’s 

Senate defense, the decision to dismiss Smith, and President Roosevelt’s 

declaration on 4 July 1902 that the Philippine “insurrection” was officially 

over did a good deal to mute the storm of criticism that the courts-martial 

and General Miles had stirred up over the previous months.55 Though 

there was much discussion in the press about Miles being forced to resign, 

Roosevelt ultimately chose simply to announce that on Miles’ 64th birthday 

he would be retired from Service. Despite a distinguished record in the 

Indian Wars of the latter 19th century and a career stretching back to the 

Civil War, Roosevelt and Root saw to it that Miles’ retirement ceremony on 

8 August 1903 was coldly formal and lacked any of the normal trappings 

that traditionally accompanied the retirement of senior generals.56

World War I

Before the United States entered World War I, there had been considerable discussion of the issue of censorship. American newspapers carried 

numerous stories regarding the censorship policies of the belligerent states 

after the outbreak of fighting in Europe. When President Woodrow Wilson 
16

decided to launch a punitive expedition into Mexico in response to Pancho 

Villa’s attack on Columbus, New Mexico, the US Army imposed censorship on its field activities.57 Drawing on this experience and the example of 

the European belligerents, the War College Division of the General Staff 

created a plan of censorship to be put in place should the United States be 

drawn into the European conflict.58 Ultimately, President Wilson authorized the creation of a Committee on Public Information, which combined 

censorship and propaganda functions under civilian, rather than military, direction. The Committee on Public Information became increasing 

unpopular with congressional critics of the President, and was dissolved 

quickly after the end of the war. Revelations in the 1920s and 1930s about 

the extent to which belligerent governments attempted to manipulate public opinion through propaganda campaigns created a longstanding hostility 

among the American public toward any attempt to replicate the experience 

of the Creel Committee.

By early 1917, the Wilson administration was moving toward abandoning neutrality and declaring war on Germany. After months of searching for an appropriate response to the resumption of unrestricted submarine 

warfare by Germany, President Wilson requested that Congress approve a 

Declaration of War in his address to a joint session of Congress on 2 April. 

Wilson deployed his typically lofty rhetoric about the purpose of American 

entry into war. At the same time, he advanced several points that are more 

practical. Wilson called for the United States to advance “liberal financial 

credits” to those governments already at war with Germany; fully equip 

the Navy, with particular emphasis on dealing with Germany’s submarines; and the call up of 500,000 men, “chosen on the principle of universal liability to service.”59

 The President also made note in his address 

of the millions of US citizens of German birth and ancestry who lived in 

America, noting that the vast majority were “true and loyal Americans 

as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance.” But given the 

numerous intrigues by the German Government’s agents in the US during 

the period of official United States neutrality, Wilson also threatened that 

“if there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern 

repression.”60 To better communicate the lofty ideals that Wilson attributed to America’s entry into the war and to better ensure the broad support 

of the American people for the war effort, the President soon moved to 

establish an organization to coordinate and disseminate propaganda both 

at home and abroad.

On 12 April 1917, President Wilson tentatively approved the appointment of George Creel as head of a new Committee of Publicity. Creel himself envisioned a body which was to oversee the US Government’s efforts 
17

at gaining public confidence and stimulating recruitment, while at the 

same time suppressing (Creel disliked the term censorship) information 

that the Government did not want in circulation.61 After a meeting the following day, the Cabinet issued a press release announcing the creation of 

the Committee on Public Information (CPI). It was composed of Secretary 

of State Robert Lansing, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, Secretary of 

the Navy Josephus Daniels, and George Creel who served as chairman.62

Before the ink was dry on the initial authorization, Secretary Lansing 

voiced his concern that the CPI not be perceived as superseding the functions of the State Department. Once the CPI was up and running, Lansing 

remained concerned that the CPI’s publicity campaigns not undermine formal diplomatic communications with foreign governments.63 In late June 

1917, the Creel Committee would come under criticism from the Army. 

This occurred when news of the arrival of the first units of General John 

Pershing’s expedition appeared in print before the Army desired it to be 

made public. Under the presumption that anything sent from France had 

already passed a censor, Creel’s original guidelines to the press had expressly 

permitted the publication of news from received cables.64 Secretary of War 

Baker briefly considered trying to assert War Department censorship over 

incoming cables from France (the Navy Department already had control 

of the telegraph stations), but the situation was cleared up by the use of a 

system of accreditation of reporters to Pershing’s headquarters in France.65

Despite some of the initial friction over the committee’s direction, during 

the slightly less than 2 years of its operation, Creel built the CPI into a 

large-scale propaganda organ.66 The Creel Committee was a chief source 

and the primary disseminator of US propaganda at home and abroad, while 

the US military role in public affairs was largely relegated to its handling 

of censorship in theater.

The attitudes of the Army Expeditionary Force (AEF) commander, 

General Pershing, did not greatly deviate from that of his fellow 

commanders in the British, French, or Belgian Armies. In his memoirs, 

Pershing wrote:

The special purpose of censorship and other precautions 

to prevent the publication of military information was to 

keep the enemy from learning our plans and movements. 

Secrecy gives a commander the possibility of surprising his opponent and the surest road to defeat would be 

to let the enemy know all about one’s preparations. The 

operations of an army cannot be successfully conducted 

under any such open methods. It was impressed upon our 
18

forces and upon the correspondents that every person 

who, either willfully or inadvertently, disclosed facts of 

military value thus gave the enemy an advantage, and that 

such person, if in the army, might actually be responsible 

for the unnecessary sacrifice of his own comrades.67

At the same time, Pershing recognized, perhaps belatedly, that “the suppression of news prevented our people from obtaining a clear and contemporaneous conception of the great and oftentimes brilliant achievements 

of our armies.”68 Pershing’s chief censor and press officer in World War I 

was Frederick Palmer.69 Palmer, an experienced journalist covering worldwide military campaigns, started as a military correspondent in the GrecoTurkish War of 1897.70 He went on to cover the Philippine-American 

War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Balkan Wars. 

In 1915, he became the lone American correspondent accredited by the 

British Government to cover fighting on the Western Front. Once the 

United States entered the war, the New York Herald offered Palmer a lucrative contract to cover the war for $40,000. Palmer turned this down to don 

a major’s uniform with the standard salary of $2,400 per year.71 He was 

charged with supervising the accreditation of correspondents, who had to 

post a $1,000 bond subject to forfeiture if they violated any rules, including the right of the AEF G-2 section to censor their dispatches. Initially 

the press corps was limited to 31 members, but pressure from the media 

soon led to a dramatic expansion of the press corps. At its height, Palmer 

was responsible for overseeing as many as 411 correspondents.72 Palmer 

recognized the selfless nature of the job, writing in his memoirs that “A 

censor can have no friends,” because he was a “professional no-man.” The 

propagandist, by contrast, was a “professional yes-man” whose business 

is to make friends.73

The propaganda effort the Creel Committee organized was reinforced 

by three wartime acts, which placed restraints on First Amendment rights. 

These were the Espionage Act, enacted on 15 June 1917; the Tradingwith-the-Enemy Act, enacted on 6 October 1917; and the Sedition Act, 

enacted on 16 May 1918. The Espionage Act prohibited any type of news 

or report that interfered with US national security, military operations, 

recruitment, or incited mutiny or disloyalty. The Espionage Act gave the 

Postmaster-General authority to ban from the mail any publication that 

did any of the above. The Sedition Act attempted to clarify ambiguities of 

the Espionage Act by spelling out specific speech offenses against the US 

Government, which were prohibited until the act’s repeal in 1921.74 The 

Espionage Act, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in Schenck vs. 
19

United States (1919), remains in effect to this day. The Justice Department 

prosecuted over 2,000 Americans under the provisions of the two acts during the war, securing around 1,000 convictions.75

The CPI was organized into a domestic division and a foreign division. The domestic division was charged with helping to mobilize the 

population of the United States to support the war. One element of the 

domestic operation, known as the Foreign Language Newspaper Division, 

was staffed with 200 volunteers who watched foreign-language newspapers published in the United States for violations of the Trading with the 

Enemy Act.76 The foreign division was split into a Foreign Press Bureau, 

the Wireless and Cable Service, and the Foreign Film Service. CPI’s foreign division established offices in over 30 countries.77

In an era before radio had fully come of age, the CPI was primarily reliant on the printed and spoken word to spread its message, supplemented by media such as the weekly newsreel, which was then very 

popular in American movie houses. World War I was one of the first wars 

that employed the technology of motion pictures. Almost no footage of the 

war ever made its way to American audiences, as the belligerents instituted 

a widespread ban on filming by civilians. The US Army Signal Corps was 

responsible for most of the footage that did make its way into American 

newsreels. Much of the footage shot by the Signal Corps, however, was 

never seen. Many of the images of the war front were considered too stark 

for home-front audiences and were censored by the Creel Committee’s 

Division of Pictures.78 One of the few uses of Signal Corp footage was in 

the propaganda film Pershing’s Crusaders (1918). The film opened with a 

picture of General Pershing flanked by two knights in medieval garb. The 

opening subtitles read, “The world conflict takes upon itself the nature 

of a Crusade. . . . We go forth in the same spirit in which the knights of 

old go forth to do battle with the Saracens.” After this allusion, it transitioned to a message that resonated with the highly moralistic rhetoric of 

President Wilson, stating, “The young men of America are going out to 

rescue Civilization. They are going to fight for one definite thing, to save 

Democracy from death. They are marching on to give America’s freedom 

to the oppressed multitudes of the earth.”79 The film, one of the few of 

its kind produced for American audiences, apparently did little to excite 

audiences.80

Given the heavy censorship of films and photographs, the vast bulk 

of the Creel Committee’s effort was focused on the written and spoken 

word. To a large degree, the Creel Committee’s approach was aimed 

at loading the American media down with facts that were perceived as 
20

Figure 1. Pershing’s Crusaders.
21

aiding the war effort. CPI’s Division of News, the first to be set up and 

put into operation, was responsible for issuing press releases. Once it was 

up and running, the Division of News averaged 10 press releases a day. In 

addition, an official government paper, the Official Bulletin, was printed 

daily, except on Sundays, from 10 May 1917 through 31 March 1919. 

The Official Bulletin included presidential speeches and proclamations, 

information related to casualties, and orders issued by the Cabinet and 

other war-related agencies.81 Daily circulation rose from 60,000 in May 

1917 to 115,000 in October 1918. The Official Bulletin provided anywhere 

from 8 to 40 pages of material that the Creel Committee deemed of value.82

Though the subscription rate was set deliberately high so the Government 

did not appear to be competing with private-media outlets for circulation, 

free copies were distributed to newspapers, Government officials, military 

bases, and posted in approximately 50,000 US Post Offices.83

The Creel Committee’s Division of Civic and Educational Cooperation 

was responsible for producing over 100 pamphlets, which had a combined 

printing of 60 million copies. These pamphlets included titles such as How 

the War Came to America (5,428,000 copies), Conquest and Kultur: Aims 

of the Germans in Their Own Words (1,203,000 copies), German War Plots 

and Intrigues in the United States during the Period of Our Neutrality

(127,000 copies), American Interests in Popular Government Abroad

(597,000 copies), and America’s War Aims and Peace Terms (719,000 

copies).84 One of the most successful CPI programs of the war, which 

developed into its own division, was the volunteer speakers, who became 

known as the Four Minute Men. These volunteer speakers delivered set 

speeches on a range of topics developed by the CPI and spelled out in the 

Four Minute Men Bulletin. The division was so-named as the speaker’s 

were supposed to deliver their speeches in approximately 4 minutes. There 

were eventually Four Minute Men active in all 48 states and US territories. 

Generally, the Four Minute Men addressed audiences in movie theaters 

before the feature film, with the 4-minute time limit imposed to avoid 

overstaying the hospitality of theater owners. In May 1917, there were 

1,500 speakers, with the number growing to 40,000 by September 1918. 

The Four Minute Men’s speeches ranged over topics such as supporting 

bond drives, food conservation, justifying the federal income tax as 

necessary for the war effort, “Why Are We Fighting,” and “Unmasking 

German Propaganda.” George Creel estimated that the Four Minute Men 

gave a million speeches to a combined audience of 400 million listeners.85

The wide-ranging activities of the CPI abruptly came to a close shortly 
22

after the end of the war when Congress moved quickly to dissolve the 

committee.

In the wake of World War I, the American public turned strongly 

against the internationalist, activist vision of America that President Wilson 

and the Creel Committee had so recently championed. Historian David 

Traxel has suggested that the widespread disillusionment with the “Great 

Crusade” was in part so common because Government-sponsored propaganda, in an effort to justify American participation in the war, had built 

up people’s expectations for improvement in the world “out of all proportion to reality.”86 The Senate’s failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, 

including rejection of US membership in the League of Nations, signaled a familiar inward turn of the American polity.87 With the war’s end, 

Pershing’s crusaders would quickly demobilize. Between the Armistice 

in early November 1918 and the end of June 1919, 2,608,000 enlisted 

men and 128,000 officers accepted discharges from the Army. This left a 

mere 130,000 men under arms to supervise potential American occupation 

responsibilities in Germany and elsewhere.88 Retrenchment in defense, a 

familiar pattern in the annals of the US Army, became the order of the day. 

From the Washington Naval Conference in 1921–22 to the ratification of 

the Kellog-Briand Pact by the US Senate in January 1929 (in which the 

United States and numerous other nations renounced war as an instrument 

of national policy), disarmament, not defense, was most prone to stir public interest.

When the Army was in the news in the interwar period, often as not 

it garnered little public good will. On two occasions during the interwar 

period, the Army found itself at the receiving end of rather negative publicity. The celebrated court-martial and subsequent conviction of air power 

enthusiast General Billy Mitchell in 1925 provided an example for many 

officers of the danger to one’s career of too open an expression of personal 

views. The personal role of Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur in breaking up the Bonus March in 1932 also did little to endear the Army to the 

public. Between these public affairs difficulties and the general climate of 

US public hostility to propaganda in the interwar period, it is perhaps apt 

to accept the description of Barnet Oldfield, a public relations officer who 

gained wide experience in World War II, as characteristic of the interwar 

US Army’s approach to public affairs:

Prior to 1939, the Army had been content to carry on 

quietly at its posts, a rather clannish society to which few 

people paid attention. Seldom did top commanders make 

utterances which would muster headlines, nor did any want 
23

to do so. In almost any emergency the policy was to play 

dead or dumb, or both. In all those easy, delicious years, the 

intelligence officer—by professions and nature the most 

secretive and non-communicative man on the staff—was 

considered the logical man to meet the press, if and when 

they came calling, God forbid! The main function of the 

intelligence officer in those days was to draft the enemy 

situation when maneuvers and exercises were being held, 

and he frequently treated press queries as the field manual 

said he should answer enemy interrogation—by giving 

only name, rank and serial number.89

With the approach of World War II, it became apparent to many senior 

officers in the Army that a much more proactive approach to public affairs 

was necessary to make sure the Army was ready for the massive challenges it would face.
24

Notes

1. Frederick Palmer, With My Own Eyes: A Personal Story of Battle Years

(Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1933), 339.

2. An Act for Establishing Rules and Articles for the Government of the 

Armies of the United States, Article 57. http://freepages.military.rootsweb.

ancestry.com/~pa91/cfawar.html (accessed 5 May 2009).

3. Jeffrey A. Smith, War and Press Freedom: The Problem of Prerogative 

Power (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), 92.

4. Phillip S. Paludan, “‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’: Lincoln, 

Propaganda, and Public Opinion in the North during the Civil War,” in On the 

Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 

1861–1871, ed. Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge 

University Press, 1997), 357–376.

5. Executive Order, 7 August 1861. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, 

The American Presidency Project [online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University of 

California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/

ws/?pid=70012 (accessed 5 May 2009).

6. Executive Order, 25 February 1862. Woolley and Peters, The American 

Presidency Project.

7. Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times 

of Lincoln’s Secretary of War (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 153–155.

8. John Glen, “Journalistic Impedimenta: William Tecumseh Sherman 

and Free Expression,” in The Civil War and the Press, ed. David Sachsman, S. 

Kittrell Rushing, and Debra Reddin van Tuyll (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction 

Publishers, 2000), 407–408.

9. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New 

York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), 334.

10. John F. Marszalek, Sherman’s Other War: The General and the Civil War 

Press (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999), 37–38.

11. Ibid., 131–132.

12. Ibid., 138.

13. Ibid., 140–141.

14. Ibid., 141.

15. Ibid., 143.

16. Ibid., 144–152.

17. Ibid., 156–159.

18. Indeed, early studies of the Spanish-American War have stressed the 

degree to which the “yellow journalism” of the day pushed the country into 

war. For an example of this, see Marcus M. Wilkerson, Public Opinion and the 

Spanish-American War: A Study in War Propaganda (New York, NY: Russell & 

Russell, 1932). For a more balanced perspective on the role of the press in the 

war, see Charles H. Brown, The Correspondents War: Journalists in the SpanishAmerican War (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967).
25

19. On 2 March 1899, Congress authorized the establishment of a force of 

65,000 Regulars supported by 35,000 Volunteers with enlistment terms of 2 years 

and 4 months. Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army, enlarged 

ed. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), 290, 308; and Graham A. 

Cosmas, An Army for Empire: The United States Army in the Spanish-American 

War (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1971), 308.

20. Weigley, History of the United States Army, 309.

21. Cosmas, An Army for Empire, 251–256.

22. Ibid., 256–257.

23. According to Weigley, this letter was initiated by Theodore Roosevelt 

and Leonard Wood. Weigley, History of the United States Army, 310.

24. Cosmas, An Army for Empire, 258–263. Given the state of medical 

knowledge regarding tropical diseases, this was perhaps a less dire number than 

was perceived at the time.

25. According to Graham Cosmas, Miles “was committed to the theory that 

the Commanding General owed obedience only to the President and that in war he 

should have exclusive control over planning and conduct of operations.” Cosmas, 

An Army for Empire, 62.

26. Ibid., 285.

27. Ibid., 282–283.

28. Quoted in Cosmas, An Army for Empire, 289.

29. Weigley, History of the United States Army, 314–320.

30. The Filipino nationalists had maintained a cordon around Manila since 

the end of fighting with the Spanish in August 1898.

31. Brian McAllister Linn, The Philippine War 1899–1902 (Lawrence, KS: 

University Press of Kansas, 2000), 53–55. Indeed, General Otis initially believed 

the fighting had not been ordered by Aguinaldo, but was initiated by some of his 

more rash subordinates. In his first cable to Washington after news of the attack, 

Otis wrote, “[I] believe that insurgent army attacked contrary [to the] wishes of 

their government.” He repeated this belief in another dispatch on 7 February. 

Correspondence Relating to the War with Spain, Vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Center 

of Military History, 1993), 894–896.

32. US Army troop strength averaged 40,000, with a peak strength of 70,000 

men in December 1900. Linn, The Philippine War, 325.

33. Major General Otis replaced Major General Merritt as commander, 

Department of the Pacific, and military governor of the Philippines on 30 August 

1898. Stephen D. Coats, Gathering at the Golden Gate: Mobilizing for War in 

the Philippines (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006), 

259.

34. Ibid., 69–70.

35. Linn, The Philippine War, 134.

36. Ibid.

37. “Confidence Expressed in Otis,” Boston Daily Globe, 6 February 1899.

38. Correspondence Relating to the War with Spain, Vol. 2, 902.
26

39. Though the US Senate ratified the treaty on 6 February, 2 days after 

the outbreak of fighting with the Filipino nationalists, it was not signed by the 

Spanish regent until 19 March. Nonetheless, the return of the US Volunteer units 

was already becoming an issue. On 3 March, Secretary of War Alger cabled Otis 

informing him that “As rapidly as possible volunteers should be returned upon 

ships that bring regulars to you.” Correspondence Relating to the War with Spain, 

Vol. 2, 922.

40. “Climax At Hand In The Philippines,” New York Times, 18 March 

1899.

41. “Situation at Manila,” Los Angeles Times, 18 March 1899.

42. “Otis is a Fussy Old Man,” Boston Daily Globe, 17 July 1899.

43. For instance, from 18 July 1899, “Newspapermen in Revolt,” Boston 

Daily Globe; “Otis’ Methods May Undo Him,” Chicago Daily Tribune; “Otis’ 

Reports Denounced,” New York Times. The letter was signed by John T. 

McCutcheon and Harry Armstrong of the Chicago Record; Oscar K. Davis and 

P.G. McDonnell of the New York Sun; Robert M. Collins, John P. Dunning, and L. 

Jones of the Associated Press; John F. Bass and Will Dinwiddie of the New York 

Herald; E.D. Skeene of the Scripps-McRae Association; and Richard Little of the 

Chicago Tribune.

44. Otis to Adjutant-General Corbin, 20 July 1899, Correspondence Relating 

to the War with Spain, Vol. 2, 1036.

45. Linn, The Philippine War, 135.

46. Ibid., 206–208.

47. Ibid., 187. Aguinaldo decreed the guerrilla war strategy on 13 November 

1899.

48. In April 1901, a number of trials that revolved around the embezzlement 

of commissary stores began to hit the US papers.

49. “General Smith Admits Charge,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 26 April 1902, 

2.

50. Linn, The Philippine War, 321.

51. This incident and the antecedents of Miles’ breech with Roosevelt and 

Root is discussed in Robert Wooster, Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of a Frontier 

Army (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 238–241.

52. Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York, NY: Random House, 2001), 

97.

53. “Gen. Miles Against General Staff Plan,” New York Times, 21 March 

1902, 3; and Wooster, Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of a Frontier Army, 242–

243.

54. Morris, Theodore Rex, 98.

55. Ibid., 99–104, 127–129; and Linn, The Philippine War, 219.

56. Wooster, Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of a Frontier Army, 246–

248.

57. “Censorship is in Effect on Mexican Border,” Christian Science Monitor, 

15 March 1916; and “Gen. Pershing Leads Men,” New York Times.

58. “Censorship Plan Prepared by Army,” New York Times, 28 May 1916.
27

59. Woodrow Wilson, “An Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” in Arthur 

S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 41 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 1983), 522. For background, see David M. Kennedy, Over Here: 

The First World War and American Society (New York, NY: Oxford University 

Press, 1980), 10–20.

60. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 41, 526.

61. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 42, 39–41.

62. Ibid., 59.

63. George Creel, Rebel at Large: Recollections of Fifty Crowded Years

(New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947), 158–159. The tensions between 

Lansing and Creel were never fully overcome. This problem transcended 

personalities, and has arisen anew almost every time an attempt has been made 

to create an institutionalized public affairs office beyond the purview of the State 

Department.

64. “Baker to Censor All Troop News,” Special to the New York Times, 

29 June 1917.

65. “Unconstitutional Censorship Ended: Baker Revokes Order Diverting 

Cables; ‘Emergency Passed’ Is Stated Reason,” Special to the New York Times, 

6 July 1917.

66. On the history of the Creel Committee, see Stewart Halsey Ross, 

Propaganda for War: How the United States Was Conditioned to Fight the 

Great War of 1914–1918 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1996); and 

Stephen Vaughn, Holding Fast the Inner Lines: Democracy, Nationalism, and the 

Committee on Public Information (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina 

Press, 1980).

67. John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the First World War (New York, 

NY: Da Capo Press, 1995), 89.

68. Ibid.

69. As was the practice at that time, censorship fell under the purview 

of Pershing’s G-2, LTC Dennis E. Nolan. Frank E. Vandiver, Black Jack: The 

Life and Times of John J. Pershing, Vol. II (College Station, TX: Texas A&M 

University Press, 1977), 738.

70. For a personal account of his experiences, see Palmer, With My Own 

Eyes.

71. Michael S. Sweeney, The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce

(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 54.

72. William M. Hammond, “The News Media and the Military,” in 

Encyclopedia of the American Military, Vol. III, ed. John E. Jessup (New York, 

NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994), 2095.

73. Palmer, With My Own Eyes, 340.

74. Paul L. Murphy, “Espionage and Sedition Acts of World War I,” in 

The Oxford Companion to American Military History, ed. John W. Chambers II 

(Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), 251–252.

75. Sweeney, The Military and the Press, 51.

76. Ibid., 201.
28

77. Philip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda 

from the Ancient World to the Present Day, 3d ed. (Manchester, UK: Manchester 

University Press, 2003), 183.

78. Raymond Fielding, The American Newsreel 1911–1967 (Norman, OK: 

University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), 115–126.

79. David Traxel, Crusader Nation: The United States in Peace and the 

Great War, 1898–1920 (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 286–287.

80. David Culbert, “Film, War and the Military in,” in Oxford Companion to 

American Military History, ed. Chambers, 265.

81. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 43, 3.

82. Vaughn, Holding Fast the Inner Lines, 197.

83. Ross, Propaganda for War, 230.

84. Ibid., 231–240, 317.

85. Ibid., 244–248.

86. Traxel, Crusader Nation, 354.

87. Given the large extent to which American financiers continued to 

participate, even if unofficially, in European postwar reconstruction, one should 

be cautious about referring to this inward turn as isolationism.

88. Weigley, History of the United States Army, 396.

89. Barney Oldfield, Never a Shot in Anger (New York, NY: Duell, Sloan 

and Pearce, 1956), 5.
29

Chapter 3

World War II

In my past dealings with members of the press and the 

radio I have scrupulously avoided what might be called 

propaganda proposals and have endeavored, through a 

frank presentation of the situation, so far as permissible, 

merely to give them the facts, leaving the conclusions to 

their own judgment. The War Department will always be 

embarrassed by the insatiable demand of our people for 

“hot” news, and with related perils involved in releasing 

certain information. The situation is inevitable and the 

safeguard I turn to is to build up a general understanding of the problems by you gentlemen [American Society 

of Newspaper Editors] who present carefully considered 

views in your editorial columns.

George C. Marshall Jr.1

After Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, it 

was apparent to many in the US Government that prudent steps were 

needed should the United States again be drawn into the wider world war.2

Given the strong currents of isolationism in American public opinion, the 

Roosevelt administration faced a daunting task of communicating the 

rationale for American preparedness and bracing the American populace 

for potential involvement in the world-spanning conflict.3

 President 

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s own approach to leadership further complicated 

matters. He had a penchant for fostering bureaucratic rivalries to preserve 

presidential prerogatives.4

 In keeping with this practice, in the 2 years 

before American entry into the war, Roosevelt authorized the creation of 

a number of different agencies tasked with information activities. These 

included the creation of an Office of Government Reports (established 

September 1939), a Division of Information of the Office of Emergency 

Management (established March 1941), an Office of Coordinator of 

Information (established July 1941), a subsidiary Foreign Information 

Service (established August 1941), and an Office of Facts and Figures 

(established October 1941).5

 The growing need to counter German 

propaganda aimed at Latin America in the summer of 1940 occasioned the 

appointment of Nelson Rockefeller as the Coordinator of Inter-American 

Affairs in August 1940. Rockefeller’s brief gave him wide latitude in the 

direction of US public affairs efforts with the region.6

 This confusing 

profusion of agencies remained in place until the exigencies of wartime 
30

prodded Roosevelt to consider a more centralized public information 

effort.7

The War Department’s rudimentary public affairs remained an adjunct 

of the G-2 Division, where it had been located since 1916. Then, in July 

1940, a Press Relation Bureau was established under the Deputy Chief of 

Staff for Operations. Under this arrangement, the G-2 Division retained 

responsibility for units located outside of Washington, and the Press 

Relations Bureau controlled War Department press releases in Washington. 

Following the fight for the passage of the Selective Service Act, Secretary 

of War Henry L. Stimson and Chief of Staff George C. Marshall decided 

that press relations should be more closely coordinated. Stimson decided 

that a Bureau of Public Relations should be established directly under the 

Secretary of War and began holding weekly press briefings. Major General 

Robert C. Richardson Jr. served as the first head of the new Bureau of 

War

Department

Public Affairs

Navy

Department

Public Affairs

Foreign

Information

Service

Office of

Coordinator

of

Information

Office of

Facts and

Figures

Division

of

Information

Office of

Government

Reports

Roosevelt

Figure 2. President Roosevelt’s Information Soup, circa fall 1941.
31

Public Relations until August 1941 when he returned to field command. 

Brigadier General Alexander Surles, who remained in the post throughout the war, replaced Richardson.8

 According to journalist James Reston, 

by the fall of 1941 the War Department Bureau of Public Relations was 

staffed with 259 employees, of whom 52 were officers. Both the Navy and 

War Department’s public relations bureaus were working on official budgets of $75,000, exclusive of the salaries. Reston suggested, however, that 

the amounts employed for public relations work were far higher.9

As a corollary to the expansion of official information outlets, the 

administration also began to review its position regarding censorship. In 

April 1940, a joint board convened with representatives from the Federal 

Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the War, Navy, and State Departments 

to discuss possible legislation. In early June, the board forwarded to 

President Roosevelt a “Basic Plan for Public Relations Administration.” 

This plan requested $50 million in appropriations to establish a complete 

censorship of all mass media outlets. Roosevelt had no interest in pressing 

for full media censorship, which would have stoked undue political fires. 

Instead, Roosevelt ordered the War and Navy Departments to compose a 

plan that limited itself to censorship on international communications.10

While this plan was being developed, senior officials in both the War and 

Navy Departments moved to curtail information about the military in 

public circulation.11 As per Roosevelt’s instructions, a new joint plan for 

international censorship was submitted and approved by the President on 

4 June 1941. This new plan authorized the joint Army-Navy board to prepare legislation that would establish a censorship office for international 

communications. It also authorized training of Army and Navy personnel 

for censorship duties in advance of the legislation’s passage. Both branches 

moved quickly to initiate censor training programs. As in World War I, the 

Army’s Censorship Branch remained attached to the G-2 Division of the 

General Staff. Major W. Preston Corderman served as first head of the 

Censorship Branch.12

Though both the Army and Navy supported leaving censorship in the 

hands of military authorities, Attorney General Francis Biddle and Secretary 

of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. pressed the President to place any 

office of censorship in civilian hands.13 On 18 December 1941, Congress 

approved the first War Powers Act. Among other things, it authorized the 

President to establish an Office of Censorship. The next day, President 

Roosevelt appointed Byron Price to direct the new office.14 Before the 

war, Price had worked in the wire services and as an executive editor of 

the Associated Press. Price made a deliberate decision not to follow the 

pattern of George Creel and the Committee on Public Information. This 
32

meant that Price eschewed any responsibilities for shaping Government 

publicity for fear it would be construed as propaganda. Price’s selection 

also represented a victory for those who felt that the direction of censorship should be retained under civilian control.15

The new Office of Censorship released its guidelines for radio and 

print censorship on 15 January 1942. Journalists and editors were called on 

to refrain from disclosing information about specific unit and ship names, 

locations, and movements. A similar policy applied to the movement of the 

President of the United States and senior military and diplomatic personnel. 

Weather forecasts and detailed maps and pictures of military installations 

were also restricted.16 Despite the fact that the Justice Department had 

handed down a ruling giving Price wide discretionary powers to control 

the nation’s radio stations and broadcast programs, he opted to follow 

a policy of voluntary cooperation on the part of the nation’s press. This 

policy was applied to both domestic broadcasts and printed media.17

Censorship in war zones remained a military responsibility. This was 

verified in a joint memorandum issued in late May by the Departments of 

the Army, Navy, and State along with the Office of Censorship. Under the 

system put in place for all Navy ships and war zones, journalists had to be 

accredited. To become accredited, a journalist had to agree to submit all 

stories to an Army or Navy censor before its release. Theater commanders 

were responsible for establishing what would be censored in the respective 

combat zones.18 Although the War and Navy Departments in Washington 

established broad guidelines, the theater commanders retained considerable discretion in establishing their public affairs policies. To enter a 

theater, journalists had to submit to an official examination of their background, discuss their opinions about the war, and prove their reliability to 

officials in the War and Navy Departments. Once they were accredited, the 

journalists were subject to military censorship in theater, but in return, the 

military would feed, transport, and billet them. Combat journalists were 

also issued officers’ uniforms devoid of insignia with green armbands that 

identified them as photographers or reporters.19 In the 1930s, United States 

press and radio organizations had approximately 300 staff correspondents 

stationed outside the country. During World War II, 1,800 correspondents 

were accredited to the US Army, and another 800 to the US Navy.20 In addition, some correspondents operated abroad without accreditation. Though 

there were individual instances in which these correspondents pressed the 

boundaries of the censors, in most cases self-censorship by the journalists proved quite effective. This was primarily the case for print and radio 

journalists. Photographic and newsreel material, on the other hand, were 

heavily censored throughout the war.21
33

The profusion of government agencies involved in the promulgation of 

official information and Price’s somewhat informal approach to the supervision of censorship contributed to a general unease in both the Roosevelt 

administration and the press, with the state of affairs, as they existed in 

the early months of the US entry into World War II. In October 1941, 

Reston charged that the United States was operating a “vast uncoordinated 

defense information service which will cost more than $10,000,000 in the 

current fiscal year.” This effort was “run by nobody in particular and by 

several hundred government officials in general.”22

Complementing the censorship effort and aiming at coordinating the 

sprawling range of information agencies, Roosevelt ultimately was convinced to create an Office of War Information (OWI) to consolidate control over the US Government’s wartime information programs. OWI was 

established by Executive order on 13 June 1942. It assumed the duties of 

the Office of Facts and Figures, the Office of Government Reports, and 

those duties of the Coordinator of Information and its Foreign Information 

Service related to gathering public information and its dissemination 

abroad. President Roosevelt chose Elmer Davis, a civilian, to serve as 

director. Davis hailed from Indiana, had attended Oxford as a Rhodes 

Scholar, and later worked for the New York Times and as a freelance writer 

before going on to a successful career as a radio commentator in the late 

1930s.23 Davis faced a difficult task in trying to bring together the activities of the agencies, which had been consolidated into the OWI. This task 

was made all the more difficult because Davis focused most of his energies 

on OWI’s domestic activities, leaving the overseas component of OWI to 

Robert Sherwood’s direction.

Army Hour

At 1530 eastern time on Sunday, 5 April 1942, the War Department 

launched one of the most successful public affairs operations in the history of World War II. Secretary of War Stimson touched off the campaign, 

stating: “Our soldiers in the jungles of Bataan, our airmen in the skies over 

Burma and the East Indies, have already written immortal pages in the history of the American army. With their spirit inspiring our people, we can 

and will win the war.”24 During the remainder of the program, Lieutenant 

General Lesley McNair, chief of Army Ground Forces, and the commanders of the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th US Armies sought to assure their listeners 

that the US military was busy building a “reservoir of trained units ready 

instantly to go overseas and fight wherever and whenever needed.”25 This 

broadcast was the first installment of Army Hour.
34

Army Hour was broadcast to the nation over the radio waves by NBC 

affiliates across the United States every Sunday afternoon. The radio 

program was developed by the Radio Division of the War Department 

Bureau of Public Relations. The Radio Division was headed by Edward 

W. Kirby, a former director of public relations of the National Association 

of Broadcasters, who was appointed to the rank of lieutenant colonel. 

Lieutenant Colonel Kirby’s division initially consisted of only seven 

men, though all had previous experience in broadcasting.26 Major General 

Alexander D. Surles, chief of the Bureau News Section Colonel R. Ernest 

Dupuy, and Kirby laid down general guidelines for the program. Wyllis 

Cooper, a civilian consultant who had previously worked as a radio scriptwriter, served as writer and director for the series. Cooper had served in 

the Army along the Mexican border, was gassed at the Argonne in World 

War I, and remained in the Army as an intelligence officer after the war. 

He retired from the National Guard in 1933 as a captain.

The program, designed by the Bureau of Public Relations, quickly 

became a successful Sunday staple. Every week millions of Americans 

heard the program. After 6 months of broadcasts, The Washington Post’s 

Ernest L. Schier wrote that Army Hour was helping “to bring America 

closer to our allies and to understand what a gigantic job it is to fight all 

over the world.” By weaving together stories from theaters around the 

globe in addition to the home front, the program seemed to blend home 

front and fighting front into one.27 By the end of the first year, in addition 

to a number of famous guests, several three- and four-star generals, 25 

major generals, and 58 colonels had participated in the broadcasts.28

After the early reverses suffered by American arms, the Army and the 

nation at large were eager for positive news stories. The Doolittle raid on 

Tokyo provided one of the first opportunities to get a positive story out. On 

24 May 1942, the country was treated to a radio spot with General James 

H. Doolittle on the Army Hour program. During the interview, which 

was conducted from an undisclosed location on the West Coast, Doolittle 

promised that additional Japanese and German targets would be bombed. 

Doolittle also reassured his audiences that the raid had gone well in large 

part due to the excellence of the bombers he and his men flew in. According 

to the Doolittle radio report, “the Japanese pursuit ships that came after us 

never had a chance.”29 Following up on the positive story in the Pacific, the 

next week Army Hour featured Chinese Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang 

Kai-shek. In the broadcast, which was translated by his English-educated 

wife, the Chinese leader promised that China would fulfill its obligations 

and that the country’s “faith in America is unshaken.” Chiang also told 
35

listeners that he thought the principles of the Atlantic Charter were more 

than simply “empty diplomatic phrases,” but rather principles of freedom, 

justice, and equality that should be applied to all the people of the world.30

One of Chiang’s lieutenants, Major General Chu Shih-ming, encouraged 

Americans to believe that numerous airfields in China were available for 

the deployment of American bombers and aircrews to launch additional 

raids on Japan.31

Subsequent Army Hour programs covered a wide-range of subjects. 

Each week’s program came to feature an update on the war presented by 

Colonel Dupuy. In addition, the technique of using “on-the-spot” broadcasts 

from around the world was consistently employed. This feature seems to 

have contributed greatly to the programs’ popularity. Vignettes were presented on various aspects of Army training. One week, glider training was 

featured; another, the life of a West Point cadet.32 Regular broadcasts from 

America’s allies were also included to give the public a better sense of 

how war production was being utilized abroad. One broadcast followed a 

bomber from its construction in Long Beach, California, to a mission over 

occupied Europe flown out of an airbase in England.33 A story on the ruggedness of American tanks being used by the British in North Africa was 

typical of this trend.34 Army Hour also reflected the emotionally charged 

atmosphere of a nation at war.35 The headline in The Washington Post on 

7 December 1942 read, “Marines Find Killing Japs on Fly Great Sport.” 

In the broadcast on the previous day, Colonel Leonard Rodieck described 

the practice by which the Marines dealt with Japanese snipers in the South 

Pacific. If a sniper was found in a coconut tree, a tank would be called up. 

It would then bump the tree, not hard enough to uproot the tree, but rather 

to dislodge the sniper so that he would be hurtled “through the air in much 

the same manner as a clay pigeon.” A Colonel Thomas, serving as chief 

of staff to General Alexander A. Vandergrift, reported over the airwaves 

that “shooting a Jap on the fly is the most popular sport on Guadalcanal 

at the moment.”36 However, while such a report would be sure to offend 

contemporary sensibilities, it was not unusual given the racially charged 

context of the war in the Pacific.37

Army Hour retained its position as one of the most successful and sustained programs for the remainder of the war. The program “reported on 

the Army in its darkest moments—at the surrender of Corregidor, during 

the bad days at Anzio, at the Ardennes breakthrough. But they were also 

there to hail the Army in its brightest successes.”38 The Army and, later, the 

Department of Defense would continue to try to emulate its success with 

programs like Time for Defense and Battle Report, Washington.

39
36

Military-Media Relations in North Africa, the Mediterranean, 

and Europe

In the fall of 1942, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the designated US 

commander of the landings in North Africa, found a number of challenges 

in his relations with the press. He was initially intent on retaining strict 

operational security, lest “the effort to keep our intentions secret and to 

give credence to our cover and deception plans will be hopeless.”40 At the 

same time, Eisenhower instructed Army censors not to block anything that 

was critical of him personally.41 In mid-September Eisenhower repeatedly 

expressed his concern to General George Marshall that the press was using 

“detective methods” to ferret out his operational plans. His expressed his 

frustration, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, in a letter on 19 September, in which 

he wrote: “In a high-pressure situation, such as now prevails here, the 

knowledge that all our efforts may be defeated by some damnable and 

inexcusable act on the part of the press is peculiarly upsetting. It would 

be a great pleasure to hang the offender!”42 Eisenhower’s sensitivity is 

understandable, especially given the fact that he faced the complications 

of both coalition warfare and planning for a series of amphibious landings 

that needed to occur nearly simultaneously over a vast geographic swath 

of territory.

The planning for Operation TORCH was fraught with both military 

and political difficulties, not least of which was ascertaining how the 

French authorities in North Africa would react to any allied landings.43

The North African campaign would not only provide units of the US Army 

with a baptism by fire, they also introduced Eisenhower to the complications of diplomacy and public relations that befall theater commanders. 

These issues came sharply into focus over the attempts to make a deal with 

Admiral Francois Darlan, commander in chief of the Vichy French military 

forces, in the wake of the TORCH landings. The Americans and British 

had initially pursued a deal with General Henri Giraud, a French patriot 

who had fought the Germans in World War I and World War II before 

being captured, escaping, and going into hiding in the south of France.

The basis of a deal with Giraud had been discussed by Robert Murphy, 

then US Counsel-General to French North Africa, and French officers sympathetic to the allied cause, including Major General Charles Mast, then 

serving as Chief of Staff to the French 19th Corps in Algiers. As a condition of cooperation, Mast insisted on receiving information on the allied 

invasion plan. Major General Mark Clark, then serving as Eisenhower’s 

American Deputy Commander, and a small group from Eisenhower’s 

Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) staff carried out this delicate task 
37

by means of a covert operation. Clark and his team flew to Gibraltar, and 

were then conveyed by a British submarine from Gibraltar to the coast 

just outside of Algiers. Clark’s team went ashore in the morning hours of 

22 October 1942. During this meeting, Mast encouraged Clark to believe 

that if General Giraud could be spirited from his hiding place in the south 

of France to North Africa, he would rally French forces and prevent 

bloodshed when the American landings took place.44 Giraud was indeed 

spirited away from France by submarine, but his insistence on assuming 

command of the Allied forces was unacceptable to either Roosevelt or 

Winston Churchill. In addition, Giraud’s influence over the French forces 

in North Africa was less than the allies had hoped. Nonetheless, the War 

Department subsequently used Clark’s secret trip for its public affairs 

value as a tale of high adventure.

When the TORCH landings did take place on 8 November, Robert 

Murphy, Roosevelt’s political representative in North Africa, tried to 

secure cooperation from General Alphonse Juin, the commander in chief 

of French forces in North Africa.45 By chance, Juin’s superior, Admiral 

Darlan, happened to be in North Africa visiting his son. Darlan initially 

proved unwilling to countenance cooperation. Eager to prevent fighting 

with the French and under pressure from Churchill to secure the French 

Navy, Eisenhower dispatched Clark to Algiers to negotiate with Darlan. It 

took another 2 days of allied diplomatic pressure before Darlan approved 

a cease-fire in return for allied recognition as the de facto French military 

governor of North Africa. When news of the cease-fire was broadcast, the 

Germans reacted by promptly occupying Vichy.46

In the interim, General Marshall cabled Eisenhower and informed him 

that while the operation unfolded, he wanted the press to be kept busy with 

positive news stories. He specifically suggested that the story of Clark’s 

secret rendezvous with the French military authorities outside Algiers 

would make for good copy.47 In his reply to Marshall, Eisenhower demonstrated a growing appreciation for information management. He informed 

Marshall that he had hitherto withheld the information out of concern that 

prior to securing French North Africa, the story would be exploited by 

the Axis. This could have been done by implying that the Americans had 

to undertake a secret mission to meet with “Quislings” within the Vichy 

French military. By releasing the story after the landings had taken place 

and any fighting had ended, Eisenhower hoped to portray the mission as 

“immensely important to us in finding out exactly what was the majority 

sentiment in North Africa and in preparing the way for effective United 

States-French collaboration.”48 The story did make quite a splash, appearing in numerous papers. The front page of the New York Times carried the 
38

headline “A Spy-Thriller Trip by Clark Paved Way for Africa Drive.”49

Despite the positive spin the story generated, neither Marshall nor 

Eisenhower were completely pleased.50 According to Marshall, reports of 

Clark’s boat capsizing, which led to both the general’s pants and the gold 

he was carrying being lost at sea, “cheapened” the efforts of the American 

officers. Worse yet, the discussion of the amount of gold lost threatened to 

point to American bribery of French officers.51 Clearly this threatened to 

undermine the premise that the Americans were establishing contacts with 

pro-allied elements in the French military.

General Eisenhower soon found himself facing a new information 

management problem. Once the Axis forces had been expelled from 

North Africa and the decision made to press on to Sicily, he had to work 

to defuse speculation about the next stage of Allied military operations. 

What made this difficult were the extensive preparations underway for 

the Sicilian campaign across North Africa. Exercises were being held on 

numerous beaches and equipment and landing craft were being gathered 

in ports. Eisenhower’s concern was that, given the absence of combat 

activity, reporters would turn to speculation about the future course of 

Allied operations. Given the intense scrutiny the Allied preparations were 

under by Axis intelligence officers, General Eisenhower took the unprecedented step of bringing the reporters into his confidence. A month before 

the launch of Operation HUSKY, Eisenhower briefed his press corps on 

the invasion, indicating the intent to attack Sicily, spelling out the general locations of British General Sir Bernard Montgomery and Lieutenant 

General George S. Patton’s landing beaches, and indicating that the Allies 

were heavily bombing the western end of Sicily to mislead the Axis as 

to the intended location of the landings. According to Eisenhower, “from 

that moment onward, until after the attack was launched, nothing speculative came out of the theater and no representative of the press attempted 

to send out anything that could possibly be of any use to the enemy.”52

Though this was an experiment that Eisenhower, given his responsibility 

for maintaining operational secrecy, did not want to repeat, he was cognizant that it “placed upon every reporter in the theater a feeling of the same 

responsibility that I and my associates bore.”53

On 15 January 1944, General Eisenhower arrived in London to assume 

command of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) 

and hasten the planning for the Allied invasion of northwest Europe scheduled for 1 May 1944. It was clear to all involved that it would be impossible, 

given the magnitude of the buildup, to prevent the Germans from realizing 

that an invasion of France was impending. Nonetheless, there was clear 

military need to achieve as much strategic and tactical surprise as possible 
39

to maximize the operation’s chance of success. Indeed, a strategic deception plan had already been deemed necessary at the Cairo Conference the 

previous autumn. SHAEF would subsequently develop a plan, known as 

Operation FORTITUDE, which proved remarkably successful in convincing the Germans that the main Allied attack would take place as the Pas 

de Calais.54 Thus, even after word of the Normandy landings, the Nazi 

high command hesitated to commit reinforcements for a number of days 

on the supposition that the main assault was still coming. To pull this off, 

a network of double agents, fictitious radio traffic, and elaborately staged 

encampments and supply depots were established in southeast England. A 

nonexistent First United States Army Group (FUSAG), nominally under 

the command of Patton, was also conjured into existence to make the 

Germans believe the flamboyant Patton would be leading the first wave 

of the assault.

These elaborate preparations, in part, prevented these deception and 

cover operations from being divulged. With hundreds of reporters pouring 

into the United Kingdom, maintaining a good working relationship with 

the media entered into a critical phase for the maintenance of operational 

security. At his first press conference as Supreme Allied Commander on 

17 January, Eisenhower impressed on the assembled journalists that once 

they were accredited to his headquarters, he considered them to be quasistaff officers. On 28 January, Prime Minister Churchill wrote to General 

Eisenhower expressing his concern over the maintenance of security for 

Operation OVERLORD. Churchill informed Eisenhower that he had seen 

to it that the British and American press (through the American censors 

who worked in cooperation with the British Ministry of Information) in 

Britain took care not to “forecast dates, areas of landings, or estimates of 

possible size of attacks,” but was concerned that as journalists became 

accredited to SHAEF, similar security precautions needed to be followed.55

Eisenhower replied that he personally would “feel disturbed if I thought 

that I or my Public Relations Staff were held as anything but friends of the 

Press.” Eisenhower was in no rush to prematurely accredit press individuals before the invasion out of concern that it might stimulate a “Thank you 

for nothing” sentiment. By the end of May, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, Director 

General of the British Ministry of Information, and Brigadier General 

Robert A. McClure, Eisenhower’s head of public relations at SHAEF, 

worked out an agreement to begin quietly accrediting journalists.56

Subsequently, many of these accredited journalists would be assigned 

to accompany specific outfits once the invasion began. With a limited 

number of spots available on the first assault wave, some journalists were 

offered the opportunity to parachute in with the airborne elements. Though 
40

it was a tough sell, a number of journalists ultimately found their way into 

France by this route.57 On 8 May 1944, Eisenhower issued guidance for 

handling accredited members of the press to all unit commanders in the 

AEF stating: “As a matter of policy accredited war correspondents should 

be accorded the greatest possible latitude in the gathering of legitimate 

war news.” For Eisenhower, subject only to the needs for operational security judged by the individual commanders, the journalists were to have 

access to visit with officers and enlisted men, as well as “see the machinery of war in operation in order to visualize and transmit to the public the 

conditions under which the men from their countries are waging war.”58

For those journalists who were embedded with paratroopers or units in the 

initial assault wave, their experience in Normandy began in a most visceral manner. Those who remained behind in England met at Macmillan 

Hall at the University of London. There they were locked in the Press 

Room, furnished with background material, and at 0830 read the famous 

terse official communiqué, “Under the command of General Eisenhower, 

Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied 

armies this morning on the northern coast of France.”59 Although SHAEF 

accredited 530 journalists by 7 June 1944, prior to the liberation of Paris 

there was a limit to the number of press representatives allowed on the 

continent. After the liberation of Paris, this system was ended.60 By war’s 

end, SHAEF would accredit 1,338 correspondents from the United States, 

Britain, France, and some neutral nations.61

With the approach of war’s end, both the Office of Censorship and 

the Office of War Information were closed. In the case of the Office of 

Censorship, Director Byron Price had long advocated that censorship be 

curtailed as soon as the threat to national security decreased. He advocated 

the closure of his agency as soon as fighting ended. The Censorship Policy 

Board endorsed Price’s views on 20 November 1943. After the defeat of 

Germany, Price “canceled all program restrictions of the radio code.” He 

subsequently won President Truman’s endorsement to declare the end 

of censorship on the same day that victory over Japan was announced. 

The work of the Office of Censorship formally ended on 15 August 1945. 

Price’s plan for a voluntary censorship code was generally perceived to 

have worked admirably well. The editors of the trade journal Editor & 

Publisher stated, “We have never heard anyone in the newspaper business contradict the statement that Byron Price conducted the Office of 

Censorship in a competent, careful and wholly patriotic manner.”62

While there had probably never been any question of the Office of 

Censorship continuing its activities in peacetime, a reasonable case could 

be made for the retention of the Office of War Information. Unlike the 
41

Creel Committee, which had focused the great majority of its propaganda 

output to maintain domestic support for President Wilson’s policies, from 

1944 on, 90 percent of OWI’s budget was geared toward international 

propaganda activities.63 At the end of August, President Truman signed 

another Executive order that transferred the foreign information functions of the Office of War Information and the Office of Inter-American 

Affairs to an Interim International Information Service established within 

the Department of State. Under this order, the remaining functions of the 

Office of War Information were to cease on 15 September 1945. As of 

31 December 1945, both the Office of War Information and the Interim 

International Information Service were abolished.64 The War Department 

retained its Public Relations Bureau, the function of which was increasingly geared toward defending Army appropriations during the massive 

postwar demobilization. This quiet interlude for Army public affairs, discussed in the next chapter, did not last long. The dawning of the Cold War 

would soon revive the interest of the US Government in pursuing a more 

aggressive approach to public affairs, public diplomacy, and psychological 

warfare. In the context of the Cold War, the military found itself called on 

to fight limited wars very different from World War I and World War II. The 

difficulties of limited war were manifested in a number of ways, including 

creating a complicated environment for military-media relations.
42

Notes

1. Informal and Off-the-Record Statement to the American Society of 

Newspaper Editors, 13 February 1943, Marshall Papers [Microfilm], Reel 24.

2. On the Army’s prewar preparations, see Mark Skinner Watson, Chief of 

Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations [United States Army in World War II, The 

War Department] (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1991), 126–176.

3. For a provocative assessment of this challenge, see Steven Casey, 

Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War 

against Nazi Germany (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001).

4. William Leuchtenburg wrote: “In flat defiance of the cardinal rule of 

public administration textbooks—that every administrator appear on a chart with a 

clearly stated assignment—the president not only deliberately disarranged spheres 

of authority but also appointed men of clashing attitudes and temperaments.” 

William E. Leuchtenburg, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: The First Modern President,” 

in Leadership in the Modern Presidency, ed. Fred I. Greenstein (Cambridge, MA: 

Harvard University Press, 1988), 28.

5. Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War 

Information, 1942–1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978), 21–28.

6. Ibid., 25. On Roosevelt’s concern regarding Nazi activities in Latin 

America, see Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 

1932–1945 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1979), 233–236.

7. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda, 28–29.

8. Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory (New York, 

NY: The Viking Press, 1973), 127–128.

9. James B. Reston, “Defense Picture Given to World in All Media by 

Federal Agencies,” Special to the New York Times, 27 October 1941.

10. Richard W. Steele, “Preparing the Public for War: Efforts to Establish a 

National Propaganda Agency, 1940–41,” in The American Historical Review 75, 

No. 6 (October 1970): 1641–42; and Michael S. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory: The 

Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II (Chapel 

Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 27–28.

11. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory, 22–27.

12. Ibid., 28.

13. Ibid., 30.

14. The Office of Censorship was officially established under Executive 

Order 8985. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory, 11, 36.

15. Ibid., 45–46.

16. The summary text of the new code was published in “Censorship Code 

Issued for Press,” Special to the New York Times, 15 January 1942.

17. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory, 7–10.

18. Ibid., 51.

19. Ibid., 106–107.

20. Robert W. Desmond, Tides of War: World News Reporting, 1940–1945

(Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1984), 448–449.
43

21. Raymond Fielding, The American Newsreel, 1911–1967 (Norman, 

OK: University of Oklahoma Press), 288–295; and George H. Roeder Jr., The 

Censored War: American Visual Experience during World War II (New Haven, 

CT: Yale University Press, 1993).

22. Reston, “Defense Picture Given to World,” Special to the New York 

Times, 27 October 1941.

23. Clayton D. Laurie, The Propaganda Warriors: America’s Crusade 

against Nazi Germany (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 110–

111; and Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda, 31–35.

24. “Victory Keynote Opens ‘Army Hour,’” Special to the New York Times, 

6 April 1942.

25. Ibid. Quote from Lieutenant General McNair. For an anecdotal account, 

see Edward M. Kirby and Jack W. Harris, Star-Spangled Radio (Chicago, IL: 

Ziff-Davis Publishing, 1948), 25–41.

26. Gerd Horten, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda 

during World War II (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 41.

27. Ernest L. Schier, “‘Army Hour’ Radio Program Ranks In Importance 

With Fighting Fronts,” The Washington Post, 11 October 1942.

28. “The Army Hour: A Year of Sundays,” New York Times, 4 April 1943.

29. “Doolittle Promises More Raids on Japan,” New York Times, 25 May 

1942; and “Doolittle Sees Raids on ‘Other Jap Objectives,’” Washington Post, 

25 May 1942.

30. “Chiang Ties Morale And Arms,” Christian Science Monitor, 1 June 

1942.

31. “Air Bases in China,” Christian Science Monitor, 1 June 1942.

32. “Glider Training To Be Subject Of Army Hour,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 

7 June 1942; and “A West Point Plebe Is Guest on Army Hour,” Chicago Daily 

Tribune, 26 July 1942.

33. “How U.S. Fights Enemies Shown By Army Hour,” Chicago Daily 

Tribune, 19 June 1942.

34. “New U.S. Tank Outhit, Outlast Nazis in Libya,” Washington Post, 

8 June 1942.

35. For a contemporary analog, see “US Sniper shot at Koran in Iraq,” 

BBC News, 18 May 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7407187.stm 

(accessed 14 May 2009).

36. “Marines Find Killing Japs on Fly Great Sport,” Washington Post, 

7 December 1942.

37. John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War

(New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1986).

38. Kirby and Harris, Star-Spangled Radio, 40–41.

39. Steven Casey, Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public 

Opinion in the United States, 1950–1953 (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 

2008), 91, 104.

40. Alfred E. Chandler, ed. The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The 

War Years, Vol. I (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), 564.
44

41. Harry C. Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower (New York, NY: 

Simon and Schuster, 1946), xiv–xv.

42. Chandler, ed., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years, 

Vol. II, Doc. 509, 565

43. Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (New York, NY: Henry Holt 

and Company, 2002), 343–346.

44. Martin Blumenson, Mark Clark: The Last of the Great World War II 

Commanders (New York, NY: Congdon & Weed, 1984), 81–83.

45. Robert Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 

& Company, 1964), 124–134.

46. D’Este, Eisenhower, 354.

47. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 418–419.

48. Chandler, ed., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years, 

Vol. II, Doc. 603, 686.

49. “A Spy-Thriller Trip by Clark Paved Way for Africa Drive,” New York 

Times, 13 November 1942.

50. Though he did not complain to Marshall, Eisenhower had specifically 

requested in an earlier cable that the means of Clark’s transport not be disclosed, 

because submarine insertions were widely used in covert operations. A War 

Department press release on 13 November, however, specifically mentioned, 

“Prior to the beginning of current operations, General Clark, with a few trusted 

assistants, proceeded secretly in a submarine to enemy-dominated territory.” 

Quoted in The Washington Post, 13 November 1942. On Eisenhower’s request 

that the mode of transportation not be mentioned, see Chandler, ed., The Papers 

of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years, Vol. II, Doc. 603, 686.

51. Chandler, ed., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years, 

Vol. II, Doc. 652, 749, No. 1.

52. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 

& Company, 1948), 169–170.

53. Ibid.

54. Roger Hesketh, Fortitude: The D-Day Deception Campaign (London: 

St. Ermin’s Press, 1999).

55. Churchill’s letter is referenced, but not reproduced, in Chandler, ed., The 

Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years, Vol. III, Doc. 1532, 1709, No. 

1. The British Ministry of Information was established on 3 September 1939. Like 

the US Creel Committee in World War I, it combined the functions of censorship, 

domestic information, and propaganda in a single organization. Michael Balfour, 

Propaganda in War, 1939–1945: Organisations, Policies and Publics in Britain 

and Germany (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 53–71.

56. Chandler, ed., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years, 

Vol. III, Doc. 1532, 1709, No. 2.

57. The first journalist to jump into combat reporting was Jack Thompson 

of the Chicago Tribune. He parachuted in with Lieutenant Colonel Edson Raff’s 

battalion at Youkes-les-Baines in Algeria on 15 November 1942. Barney Oldfield, 

Never a Shot in Anger (New York, NY: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1956), 47–58.
45

58. Chandler, ed., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years, 

Vol. III, Doc. 1676, 1853.

59. Eisenhower’s Communiqués Digital Collection, Communiqué Number 

1, 6 June 1944. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/

EisenhowerCommuniques &CISOPTR=652&REC=2&CISOSHOW=0 (accessed 

14 May 2009).

60. Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command (Washington, DC: Center of 

Military History, US Army, 1989 reprint), Appendix A: SHAEF and the Press, 

June 1944–May 1955, 522.

61. Desmond, Tides of War, 449. Pogue gives the total number of accredited 

journalist as 996 “shortly before the war’s end,” but this may not account for 

the total number of unique individuals who had entered the theater. Pogue, The 

Supreme Command, 449.

62. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory, 209–210.

63. Shawn J. Parry-Giles, The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda and the 

Cold War, 1945–1955 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 4.

64. Executive Order 9608, 31 August 1945. John T. Woolley and Gerhard 

Peters, The American Presidency Project [online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University 

of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.

edu/ws/?pid=60671 (accessed 5 May 2009).

47

Chapter 4

Murky Waters: Military-Media Relations and Limited Wars

Among all the contemporary skills with which a soldier 

these days must concern himself, not the least important 

is public relations—a phrase almost unknown to the Army 

and a profession little practiced by it until World War II. 

That ignorance or negligence may be one reason why at 

the end of every war the Army was a budgetary stepchild. 

Chief of Staff might present and even argue their views 

that appropriations were inadequate—but they did it to 

their civilian superiors or to congressional committees. 

The general public, either as an interested audience or 

as a support, was largely ignored because of a long run 

tradition, accepted by the Army, that soldiers should be 

seen and not heard.

Dwight D. Eisenhower1

During World War II, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Chief of 

Staff of the Army George C. Marshall had kept close watch on the US 

Army’s public relations. When Marshall retired on 26 November 1945, 

his long-time protégé, Dwight D. Eisenhower, succeeded him as Chief of 

Staff. For the next 3 years, Eisenhower was largely preoccupied with postwar demobilization, interservice fights over unification, and the debate 

over the need for universal military training. Eisenhower’s experience in 

North Africa and Northwest Europe gave him considerable experience in 

the diplomacy of coalition warfare and an appreciation for information 

management. Like Stimson and Marshall, Eisenhower had become adept 

in his relations with the press during the war. As Chief of Staff, Eisenhower 

recognized that the need for an Army public relations capability was perhaps more important than ever. Eisenhower’s wartime experience also 

convinced him that “the expenditure of men and money in wielding the 

spoken and written word was an important contributing factor in undermining the enemy’s will to resist and supporting the fighting morale of our 

potential Allies in the Occupied Countries.” This led him to the conclusion 

that “without doubt, psychological warfare has proved its right to a place of 

dignity in our military arsenal.”2

 Eisenhower was not alone in his convictions. As the postwar peace shifted to the Cold War confrontation with the 

Soviet Union, the US Government would pay increasing attention to the 

improvement of its propaganda and psychological warfare capabilities.
48

Before all that happened, however, Eisenhower appointed Lieutenant 

General “Lightnin’ Joe” Collins, in charge of the Army’s public affairs 

capabilities. Collins, who had distinguished himself during the war as 

commander of the 7th Corps from the Normandy landings to the German 

surrender, was initially ill-disposed to give up field command to serve 

as the War Department’s Chief of Information. Judging by Collins’ own 

accounts, he was never entirely comfortable in his shift from the field to 

public relations.3

 Collins recognized that “it is the job of the public relations officer to assist the commander in cementing this partnership with the 

public by providing accurate, full and unbiased information.” For Collins 

the role of the public relations officer also included the indoctrination of 

recruits and “by interpreting the profession of arms to a nation which is 

eager to be proud of its Army.”4

 One example of Collins’ somewhat rocky 

relations with the press came in the summer of 1946. A rash of pregnancies among nurses had resulted in rather negative comments about the 

American occupation forces. At Eisenhower’s behest, Collins traveled to 

Germany to inform senior commanders of the need to maintain a high standard of conduct. When Collins addressed the press on the matter from the 

American occupation headquarters in Frankfurt, he accused the American 

reporters of “concentrating on scandal instead of important aspects of the 

Cold War being fought between the Russian and Allied forces of occupation.”5

 Though Collins’ salvo probably did little to mute the interest in 

covering such stories, he found that his experience as Chief of Information 

was an ideal school to prepare a senior officer for the challenges that a 

Chief of Staff of the Army faced.6

As Chief of Information, Collins authorized an independent study 

of the War Department public affairs practices by Jack H. Lockhart. 

Lockhart was an assistant to John H. Sorrells, an executive editor for the 

Scripps-Howard Newspapers. During World War II, Lockhart had served 

as assistant director of the press section in the Office of Censorship. His 

report was submitted to Collins and Major General Floyd Parks in early 

June 1946.7

 Lockhart opened by pointing out that the Army would be a 

source of news with or without its cooperation. In Lockhart’s view, the 

surest way to guarantee that news would be unfavorable would be to try 

to choke off the bad news. This would only “increase the news value of 

the unfavorable and decrease interest in the favorable.”8

 In final analysis, 

Army public relations could only “present the Army as it is, not as it ought 

to be or would like to be. No more than that can be expected, or achieved.”9

Lockhart realized that a “warts and all” approach was unpalatable to many 

who desired the public to perceive the Army as perfect or ideal. But for 
49

Lockhart, “this desire for a paper army of perfection only is a sure course 

to an army rotten in fact.”10

On the practical side, Lockhart had a number of recommendations for 

Army public relations. He believed the four words for Army public affairs 

officers to live by were accessibility, frankness, speed, and authority.11 He 

felt that the Secretary of War and the Chief of Staff had to be the foremost 

public spokespersons of the Army, and that any announcement or information they released should be quickly conveyed to the Bureau of Public 

Relations. Anyone who served as spokesperson had to be of sufficient 

authority that his statement was unlikely to be reversed by someone up 

the chain of command. Lockhart thought that the Director of Information 

and the Director of the Bureau of Public Relations should participate in 

all War Department policy planning and decisions. He recommended the 

establishment of officers in the Bureau of Public Relations who would 

monitor and be available to respond rapidly to any breaking news developments affecting the Army.12 Lockhart argued that all Army responses 

to inquiries must be the whole, unvarnished truth. Not only did he warn 

against half-truths, he recommended eliminating the practice of buck passing and banishing the phrase “no comment.” The latter, he thought, would 

certainly goad reporters to seek their story elsewhere, probably to the 

Army’s regret.13 Lockhart also suggested what might be termed a traveling 

inspector general of public relations who would visit with Public Relations 

Officers (PROs) in the field and identify commanders who needed further 

education on the importance of public relations.14 Finally, he encouraged 

PROs to read media trade journals, such as Editor and Publisher, and highlevel Bureau of Public Affairs officers to maintain friendly relations with 

managing editors of the major papers, the National Press Club, and the 

Gridiron Club. For Lockhart, public relations needed to be a “command 

mission throughout the Army” because “command indifference, neglect, 

ignorance, abuse or opposition to public relations can make futile the work 

of the most able and hard-working PRO or public relations group, and 

quickly tear down more good will than subordinates can ever build up.”15

In 1946, the Army launched two initiatives to improve its public affairs 

capability. The Army Information School was established at Carlisle 

Barracks, Pennsylvania.16 Brigadier General Williston Palmer served as 

the first commandant of the school. Two tracks of instruction were established. The first focused on public affairs and the other on information 

and education. The latter aimed at training officers who would provide 

information to soldiers currently serving regarding the purpose of their 

service. Both began with 8-week courses that enrolled 100 officers each. 
50

The curriculum of both included refresher material on American history 

and discussion of the functions of the War Department and its components. 

In addition, considerable time was devoted to practical aspects of the job, 

to include giving public speeches and the preparation of press releases, 

visual aids, and publications. The Director of Information established and 

published a new journal, the Army Information Digest. The journal aimed 

to provide information to commanding officers and provide useful background to public affairs officers to aid in the discharge of their duties.17

After the establishment of the position of Secretary of Defense under 

the National Security Act of 1947, the first incumbent, James Forrestal, 

advocated the centralization of many defense functions, both to prevent 

needless duplication and to curb interservice disputes over roles and 

missions. In this vein, he established the nonstatutory Office of Public 

Information (OPI) on 17 March 1949. It was Forrestal’s expectation that 

OPI would serve as the sole public relations outlet for the military services in Washington, DC.18 OPI was charged with responsibilities for the 

press (print, radio, newsreels, and television), the accreditation of correspondents, analysis of public information pertaining to the military, and 

review of materials (such as manuscripts) for publication. OPI soon came 

under determined resistance from the individual Services, which resisted 

the amalgamation of their individual public affairs capabilities. In March 

1950, the Service secretaries requested that Secretary of Defense Louis 

Johnson restore public affairs capabilities to the individual Services.19

Though one would suspect that the outbreak of the Korean War would have 

necessitated a strengthening of OPI—this did not occur. Paradoxically, 

the impact of the Korean War allowed the individual Services to more 

strongly assert their individual public affairs capabilities, while the White 

House attempted to assert closer control over the release of information 

pertaining to foreign and military policy.20

The White House’s interest in closer control over information management largely resulted from the frustration caused by General Douglas 

MacArthur’s frequent, unwarranted broadsides on matters of policy beyond 

his own purview, especially his pronouncements on US strategic intentions 

regarding Formosa and mainland China. As in all things, MacArthur’s 

relations with the press over the course of his career provided a diverse 

array of experiences. Before the US entry into World War I, MacArthur 

had served as the War Department’s one-man Bureau of Information. In 

1916, MacArthur held the firm conviction that the Government and the 

military needed a policy of strict censorship should the United States enter 

the war. He advocated strict censorship because he thought the press might 
51

betray military secrets and demoralize the American public as a result of 

bias or inaccurate reporting.21 As Chief of Staff of the Army (1930–35), 

MacArthur had been directly responsible for one of the worst publicity 

disasters the interwar Army experienced when he personally took charge 

of the operation that drove the Bonus Army from the streets of Washington, 

DC. Though MacArthur was keen to cultivate a small circle of admiring 

press correspondents, his handling of the press during World War II alienated many.

During the defense of the Philippines, an initial promise to hold daily 

press conferences broke down as the fighting went poorly. In lieu of the 

press conferences, MacArthur relied on tight censorship of reporters. With 

this tight censorship in effect, the reporters in the Philippines were forced 

to rely on communiqués issued by MacArthur’s aide, Colonel Legrande 

Diller. According to Diller’s later assertion, MacArthur himself wrote or 

closely edited most of these communiqués. Not surprisingly, MacArthur 

received the lion’s share of attention in the communiqués. Between 

8 December 1941 and 11 March 1942, 109 of the 142 issued communiqués only referenced one individual—MacArthur. The names of combat 

units were generally omitted, and the men doing the fighting were referred 

to as “MacArthur’s army” or “MacArthur’s men.” D. Clayton James has 

pointed out that these releases were essentially propaganda, though it was 

uncertain what MacArthur hoped to accomplish by them. In any event, 

they “did not lessen the misunderstandings between him and his troops 

or officials in Washington.”22 MacArthur’s constant interest in publicity 

contributed to poor relations with the US Navy. Though this was only one 

element in the larger struggle between Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and 

MacArthur to establish the strategic priorities for the war in the Pacific, 

MacArthur’s desire to manage news to his own benefit clashed with the 

Navy’s desire to maintain the tightest possible operational secrecy regarding what types and how many ships were involved in any given action.23 In 

his handling of the communiqués for the campaign in New Guinea, James 

argues that MacArthur was trying to channel the primary Allied war effort 

into his theater in the Pacific.24

When the war in the Pacific ended, journalists from America and 

other Allied nations were eager to see wartime censorship and with it their 

dependence on communiqués cease. Stories about the Japanese surrender 

and subsequent occupation promised ample opportunities for “scoops.” 

In Europe, General Eisenhower had received the German surrender in the 

middle of the night with no fanfare. When General MacArthur had been 

designated Supreme Commander Allied Powers (SCAP) by President 
52

Harry S. Truman on 15 August, he quickly decided to carry out an elaborate and public formal surrender.25 Over the next 2 weeks, the details of the 

surrender ceremony were worked out. MacArthur, in an effort to salve the 

Navy’s wounded pride when Nimitz was not made SCAP and in a nod to 

Truman, chose the battleship USS Missouri for the site of the famous ceremony on 2 September 1945 that marked the formal end of World War II.

Much to the chagrin of many Western journalists, however, some 

wartime practices lingered into the occupation. To add insult to injury, 

despite formal prohibitions from the occupation authorities, some Japanese 

radios continued to broadcast in English overseas after the surrender. In 

several instances, Japanese radios broadcasted news of decisions from the 

American occupation authorities many hours before MacArthur’s staff 

relayed the news to the Western press.26 MacArthur also made statements—

having been duly alerted to the political implications of getting the boys 

home soon—that conflicted with the War Department and the Truman 

administration’s policy on demobilization.27 When Emperor Hirohito 

made his unprecedented call on MacArthur at the US Embassy, bayonetwielding troops prevented the entry of those few reporters who had heard 

news of the visit.28 Much of the substance if not the form of MacArthur’s 

wartime approach to public affairs was subsequently maintained during 

the occupation of Japan.

It was not until 6 October 1945 that wartime censorship practices 

officially ended.29 A run of stories issued after the end of official censorship 

were critical of MacArthur’s headquarters handling of the press during 

wartime. A week later, Brigadier General Legrande Diller issued a new 

ruling establishing a censorship, which set up specific ceilings for the 

number of reporters the wire services and a mere seven major newspapers 

could have in the Far East zones under his headquarters’ authority. The 

total for the entire zone, which included the Philippines, Japan, and South 

Korea, was 132 reporters. The three major wire services were permitted 

five reporters each in Japan, and newspapers like the New York Times

were authorized to have three correspondents.30 Because of protests 

from the reporters, the War Department soon suggested that MacArthur 

review his public relations policy. As a result, MacArthur reassigned 

Diller and the quota system was dropped.31 Nonetheless, the occupation 

authorities retained leverage over the press. For the first several years of 

the occupation, the reporters in Japan depended on housing, travel, and 

rations dispensed by the “largesse” of MacArthur’s headquarters.32 As 

a result of these policies, military-media relations in the Far East were 

already strained well before the start of the Korean War.
53

Korean War

The outbreak of the Korean War and the subsequent intervention by 

United Nations (UN) forces led to a difficult limited war situation that 

came to be perceived far differently than US involvement in World War I 

and World War II. The challenges posed by limited war made selling the 

Korean War a considerable challenge for the Truman administration.33 This 

was the case after several months of highly fluid fighting, when the war 

became stalemated in a protracted series of vicious engagements roughly 

along the prewar boundary between North and South Korea. General 

MacArthur’s well-established habits of dealing with the media played an 

important role in determining the initial course of military-media relations 

in the Korean War.

On 28 June 1950, 3 days after the outbreak of the Korean War, 

MacArthur had decided to fly to Korea to appraise the situation on the 

ground. MacArthur summoned four influential press figures to his office 

in the Dai Ichi building. The four reporters were Russell Brines of the 

Associated Press (AP), Ernest Hoberecht of the United Press (UP), Howard 

Handleman of the International News Service, and Roy McCartney 

of Reuters. These men were all bureau chiefs for their respective news 

services in Japan. They were invited to accompany MacArthur on his 

visit to Korea.34 MacArthur’s party met the next day with South Korean 

President Syngman Rhee; Brigadier General John H. Church, head of a 

15-man survey party MacArthur had dispatched to Korea on 27 June; and 

a number of officers from the South Korean Army and the US Military 

Advisory Group. After attending a briefing in a schoolhouse in Suwon, 

MacArthur’s party traveled north to observe the front, then at the Han 

River south of Seoul. Along the way they observed a steady stream of 

South Korean soldiers retreating south. Most of the troops retained their 

personal weapons and carried ammunition, and most stopped to stand at 

attention as the three cars of MacArthur’s party moved north to observe 

the situation. After having been on the ground for a little over 8 hours, 

MacArthur would return to Tokyo convinced that the defensive potential of 

the South Korean Army had already been exhausted; only the commitment 

of American ground forces could stem the North Korean advance.35 When 

Brines dispatched his report to AP, he wrote:

General MacArthur said the hundreds of South Korean 

soldiers seen along the road seemed to be in good shape 

and their morale appeared undiminished. Many saluted 

briskly. Most of them cheered or sang as the General’s 

caravan passed. . . . None on a convoy of twelve trucks 
54

returning to the front seemed downhearted. They all 

cheerfully waved flags. Even most of the hundreds of 

tired, discouraged refugees trudging southward along the 

highway stopped and applauded the general.36

This was, of course, about as favorable a spin as one could hope to put 

on the rapidly deteriorating situation in Korea, where “only 24,000 ROK 

[Republic of Korea] troops could be located from an army that had numbered 98,000 four days earlier.”37

On 5 July, elements of the 24th Division, designated Task Force Smith, 

became the first of the US ground forces committed to action. This piecemeal force, made up of two rifle companies and a 105-mm howitzer battery, was overrun in its first day in combat.38 Given the chaotic conditions 

on the ground, it was not yet practical for any sort of formal supervision 

of the American reporters that were flocking to Korea. This led to a situation where reporters generally practiced self-censorship, aware that anything they got home that was perceived by MacArthur’s headquarters in 

Tokyo as providing “aid and comfort to the enemy” was likely to lead to 

a loss of accreditation.39 In any case, MacArthur, as he had in World War 

II, preferred to shape the news through the issue of official communiqués 

from his headquarters. But by the end of July, nearly 200 reporters had 

converged on Korea. The war they witnessed in the field was much bloodier, muddier, and frustrating than the official communiqués suggested. 

On 2 July, Colonel Marion Echols, a press officer in Tokyo, issued an 

official statement on General MacArthur’s press policy. In the statement, 

Echols informed the press that MacArthur abhorred censorship, and no 

formal system as was applied in World War II would be used in Korea. 

Nonetheless, reporters were reminded that “inaccurate and irresponsible 

reporting endangers our interests and the lives of our soldiers, sailors, and 

airmen.”40

To prevent the need for a formal censorship policy, reporters were 

told to continue to practice self-censorship. This meant they were not 

to report “specific units, sizes, titles, places of landings, locations, and 

troop movements,” nor the “vilification of our armed forces personnel.”41

Echols made it clear that early reports with “emphasis to South Korea’s 

swift collapse, had been ‘far from desirable.’”42 Ten days later, MacArthur 

cabled the Pentagon to complain that “voluntary press censorship has not 

been entirely satisfactory due to the insensate desire for sensationalism.”43

Despite his dissatisfaction, MacArthur remained committed to the principal of voluntary self-censorship for several months. He thought that such 

problems as there were could be rectified if the Pentagon would hold a 
55

conference with high-level press figures and better impress on them the 

requirements of self-censorship.44

In mid-July, three reporters were expelled in short order from Korea. 

The first was Margueritte Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune. Next 

came AP reporter Tom Lambert and UP reporter Peter Kalischer. Lambert 

was expelled for quoting a soldier who referred to the fighting as a “damn 

useless war.” Kalischer was expelled because of his sensationalist stories 

that “made the army look bad.” Higgins faced removal for the more mundane reason that she was a woman, and the US Eighth Army commander, 

General Walton Walker, felt that her presence was unacceptable in the 

crude all-male environment at the front and at Eighth Army headquarters.45

MacArthur, facing a military-media publicity crisis, rescinded all three 

expulsions. In discussions with Lambert, Kalischer, and their respective 

bureau chiefs at the Dai Ichi on 16 July, MacArthur was informed that the 

wire services preferred more explicit guidance on appropriate stories from 

the Army, even if this meant the imposition of censorship.46 Meanwhile in 

Washington, the Pentagon was being told much the same by senior representatives of several news outlets. Army Chief of Staff J. Lawton Collins 

and the Director of Information, Major General Floyd Parks, both thought 

that the Army needed to provide more specific guidance to the press than 

MacArthur had to date. Repeatedly in July and August, they pressed 

MacArthur to impose a formal censorship policy, only to be rebuffed or 

ignored.47 It was only after the severe reverses suffered in December and 

the intervention of the Communist Chinese forces that MacArthur would 

accede to these requests.

Poor public relations at the Pentagon contributed to the war’s first 

bureaucratic casualty. In August, there was even discussion of whether or 

not something akin to the Office of War Information should be revived. 

Ultimately, this project fizzled because officials in the Truman administration felt congressional and public opinion would oppose the creation of 

an information agency, which hitherto had only functioned during periods 

of total wartime mobilization. Before the outbreak of the war, Secretary 

of Defense Johnson had been charged with enforcing the administration’s 

austere defense budgets. Reports of American unpreparedness in the early 

months of fighting, however, made it look like Johnson’s cost cutting had 

gone too far. Johnson’s own penchant for irritating fellow members of the 

Cabinet, his grating manner with members of key congressional committees, and several public relations missteps led President Truman to seek 

his resignation in early September. Truman replaced Johnson with George 

C. Marshall. Though some right-wing Republicans blamed Marshall for 
56

his supposed role in the “loss of China,” Truman felt that Marshall was 

the best man to supervise the defense establishment and the defense buildup that was beginning. The appointment immediately improved relations 

between the State and Defense Departments and brought Marshall’s considerable experience to bear in dealing with Congress and public affairs. 

Despite the change in personnel, the administration’s handling of the war 

continued to face an uphill battle with congressional and public opinion.

MacArthur’s decision to gamble on and the subsequent success of the 

landing at Inchon, of course, brought a significant shift in public perception of the war. In the intervening months, the successful UN offensive following Inchon mollified tension in military-media relations. Though some 

irritants between the correspondents in Korea and MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo remained, much of the domestic news was more positive. 

This in turn created some concern in Washington over whether or not the 

public might grow too blasé, endangering the rearmament drive that was 

then gathering momentum.48 But, the pendulum could and did swing both 

ways. Following Chinese intervention in the Korean War in late November, 

a much gloomier view of the war emerged that more accurately reflected 

the situation on the ground.49 Though officials both in Washington and 

Tokyo were themselves deeply concerned, there was more concern than 

ever to shape public attitudes. MacArthur, recently the recipient of praise 

for his bold strategy, now faced the prospect of a humiliating defeat sullying his long and distinguished career. During December, MacArthur’s 

headquarters moved closer toward a censorship policy. At the same time, 

a number of pronouncements by MacArthur and Major General Charles 

A. Willoughby, his chief of intelligence, about the massive Communist 

Chinese forces faced by the UN forces raised concern in Washington that 

the war was being portrayed as unwinnable. To assert closer control over 

pronouncements by “officials in the field as well as those in Washington,” 

President Truman issued a memorandum on 5 December requiring all 

speeches, public statements, and press releases on foreign and military 

policy to be cleared by the State Department and Defense Department, 

respectively.50

In Tokyo, MacArthur’s headquarters responded to reverses in the field 

by attempting to curtail information. On 4 December 1950, the public 

information officer’s daily press briefings were scaled back from 60 minutes to 15 minutes. Then, on 9 December, they were temporarily suspended 

altogether.51 On 18 December, Secretary Marshall and senior Pentagon 

officials in Washington held discussions with 11 senior press representatives who reiterated the position they had consistently supported. They 
57

were united in the view that the military was responsible for establishing 

security of information, and signaled their views to MacArthur in a joint 

communiqué. MacArthur at last agreed to institute a formal censorship 

program. It was announced on 22 December and went into effect 4 days 

later. On that date a Press Security Division would be activated within 

the Eighth Army, with three censors at headquarters in Taegu directed by 

Major Melvin B. Vorhees and two other censors working closer to the 

front.52 The work of these censors would be supported by a Press Advisory 

Division in Tokyo under the direction of Colonel E.C. Buckhart.53

Though the press had long clamored for a more formal practice, this 

did not mean they were well disposed toward a heavy-handed censorship policy. Given the conditions in the field, this is exactly what they 

experienced in the weeks after the imposition of formal censorship. When 

General Walker was killed in a jeep accident, however, he was replaced 

by Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway, who not only dramatically 

improved morale in Eighth Army, but also soothed the ruffled feathers 

of the press.54 Ridgway retained the tough censorship code recently put 

into effect, but also made himself more available to reporters. On taking 

command of Eighth Army, Ridgway immediately set out on an inspection 

trip of his entire front. During this tour, he spoke openly with reporters, 

unafraid to speak directly about the harsh conditions of the war. His charismatic determination to improve the situation on the ground influenced 

reporters as well as soldiers.

Ridgway explicitly recognized the need to improve relations with the 

media, not just for his own sake, but to improve morale in Korea and at 

home. To this end, he summoned James T. Quirk to Korea. Quirk had 

served in North Africa and Europe as a public relations officer under 

Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton.55 At the time he was recalled 

to Active Duty, Quirk had been working as a deputy promotion manager 

for the Philadelphia Enquirer.

56 After a marathon series of flights to Korea, 

which took 4 days in all, Quirk had his first meeting with Ridgway on 30 

January 1950. At this meeting, Ridgway informed Quirk that he was to 

serve as his personal public relations advisor. After Quirk had a few days 

to visit the front, Ridgway sent him the following terse memo:

MEMO FOR COL QUIRK:

There are two topics I wanted to discuss with you today, 

and on which I would appreciate your counsel.

First, how do we go about developing in the minds of our 

splendid men, recognition, of the almost certainty, that 
58

America will not in their life-time know again, the quiet, 

peaceful insulated comfort of other days?

Second, what information can we assemble, and how and 

to whom transmit, so that our Government can deflate the 

falsely acquired military reputation of Communist China’s 

Armies in the minds of not only of our people, but above 

all of the populations of Asia?

Please think these over and let me have your ideas, when 

convenient.

RIDGWAY57

One of the early shifts in military-media relations that Ridgway and 

Quirk made was to restore substantive briefings to the press. With formal 

censorship established, reinforced by additional public information officers 

dispatched by the Pentagon, the press now received much fuller briefings 

than MacArthur’s command in Tokyo had provided in some months. 

Quirk, in particular, stressed to the reporters the need to understand military 

maneuvers in context. Hence, not every advance should be seen as a major 

offensive, nor should every retreat be seen as a rout. Bringing the press 

back into the command’s confidence also allowed the reporters a clear 

sense of when they needed to withhold information to protect operational 

secrecy; and, at the same time, it allowed them to be positioned to best 

cover upcoming operations.58

Ridgway’s shift from a confrontational to a cooperative stance closely 

paralleled the policy that Eisenhower had successfully followed with the 

press in Operation HUSKY during World War II. Despite Ridgway’s own 

more positive attitude toward engagement with the press and Quirk’s 

efforts to improve day-to-day press liaisons, there was a distinct limit to 

how much a local improvement in military-media relations could do within 

the constraints of a limited war situation. This problem was to become 

even more pronounced during the Vietnam War, ultimately causing what 

one careful observer has referred to as the “Great Divorce” between the 

military and the media.59

Vietnam

The nature of the war in Vietnam would create for the US Government 

and military a more difficult information environment than had been faced 

in the Korean War. The Korean War began with a major North Korean 

offensive across the 38th Parallel. Given the heightened Cold War climate 

and the fact that the UN sanctioned the defense of South Korea against 
59

North Korean aggression, the Korean War, at least initially, had wider 

international and domestic public support. American involvement in 

Vietnam, certainly the method by which it was portrayed to the press, had 

a more ambiguous element to it.60 South Korea’s internal politics, though 

not without exception, were also decidedly less complicated than those 

of South Vietnam. When US involvement in South Vietnam was shifting from an advisory role to that of wide-ranging commitment, the South 

Vietnamese Government suffered two coups in close succession that cast 

doubts in the minds of many about the stability and ability of the South 

Vietnamese to prosecute the war against the Viet Cong.61 In addition, television would bring the Vietnam War into America’s living rooms in a way 

that had not occurred in the Korean War. Thus, from the beginning, it must 

be recognized that Army public affairs officers were operating in a difficult environment.

The old adage has it that generals always go about trying to refight the 

last war. If that were the case, the basic approach taken toward the media 

in Vietnam might have been rather different. As was seen in the preceding 

section, for the first several months of the war, General MacArthur advocated that the press follow a policy of voluntary censorship. This policy 

had contributed to very poor military-media relations early in the Korean 

War. It was only after the failures of MacArthur’s policy seemed imminently apparent that a formal censorship policy was instituted in the theater. Thus, one might expect that the lesson to be learned from the Korean 

experience was not to dally with the imposition of censorship. However, as 

was the case in Korea, the US military in Vietnam repeated the precedent 

established by MacArthur in Korea and again rejected formal censorship 

in favor of a system of voluntary guidelines.62

However, while there was never formal censorship of journalists in 

the field, as had been the case in previous wars of the 20th century, there 

were consistent attempts at information management, which would lead 

to considerable ill will between the Government and the media that longpersisted after the end of the Vietnam War. In the fall of 1961, President 

John F. Kennedy and his senior advisors were reviewing the situation in 

South Vietnam in the wake of persistent reports that Ngo Dinh Diem’s 

regime was loosing ground to the Viet Cong Communist insurgency. After 

a month-long review, which included a careful assessment of the situation 

in Vietnam by General Maxwell Taylor, National Security Council (NSC) 

staff member Walt Rostow, and others, President Kennedy approved 

National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 111 on 22 November 

1961.63 This authorized the US Government to undertake a number of 
60

measures to strengthen its joint effort with the Government of Vietnam 

(GVN) to arrest the deterioration of the situation. This would include the 

augmentation of the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) with 

increased airlift for GVN forces. These additional airlift units were to be 

flown by US personnel. Though the NSAM did not specify the number of 

troops, there was a clear trend toward a considerable expansion in the US 

advisory presence in Vietnam. In return for increased US assistance, Ngo 

Dinh Diem’s regime was to undertake a number of reforms to improve the 

GVN’s capability for prosecuting the war.64 President Kennedy, however, 

desired that this expansion in US effort not lead to a perception that the 

United States was going to replace or supplant the Army of the Republic of 

Vietnam (ARVN), which was to retain primary responsibility for combating the insurgency.

Around the same time as President Kennedy approved NSAM 111, 

US officials in South Vietnam were instructed to refrain from providing 

the press with any information regarding military or political activities; 

instead, inquiries were to be directed to South Vietnamese officials. As 

US assistance to the GVN increased in the following year, Commander in 

Chief Pacific (CINCPAC) Admiral Harry Felt issued orders that no reporters were to accompany US helicopters transporting ARVN forces and their 

American advisors on combat missions.65 To clarify the US position, a 

joint State–Defense–United States Information Agency (USIA) message 

was sent to the US Embassy in Saigon on 21 February 1962. While ostensibly aimed at increasing the ability of US officials to deal with the press, 

“the cable prompted the U.S. mission in Saigon to persist in the practice of 

excessive classification to a degree that denied newsmen access to whole 

segments of the war.”66

During the next 2 years, while officially American involvement was 

strictly advisory, there was a concerted effort among the upper-echelons of 

US officials in Vietnam to portray South Vietnamese efforts in as positive 

a light as possible. Criticism of South Vietnamese shortcomings, from the 

perspective of the Kennedy administration, would only serve to undermine 

public support in the United States for continued aid to South Vietnam. 

Further, it would complicate relations between Washington and Saigon, 

and serve ready-made propaganda to the Communists world to use against 

Diem’s regime. However, the reporters in the field, who saw the war at 

a more localized level, were increasingly skeptical of what they saw as 

discord between the war on the ground and its official portrayal.67 When 

the Diem regime moved to expel several reporters, including New York 

Times correspondent Homer Bigart, Newsweek correspondent Francois 
61

Sully, and NBC News correspondent James Robinson, who had written 

stories or made comments unflattering of the regime’s handling of the war, 

it exacerbated relations between the press corps and the South Vietnamese 

Government.68

When elements of the ARVN’s 7th Division badly mismanaged an 

operation against the 514th Viet Cong Battalion in early January 1963 near 

the village of Ap Bac in Dinh Tuong province, it provided a focal point for 

the Western press to vent frustration with the Diem regime. A number of 

American advisors were killed in the action, and five US helicopters were 

lost through a combination of mechanical failures and enemy fire. Though 

no reporters had been present at the first day of the battle, they were soon 

able to piece together the situation through interviews with frustrated US 

Army advisors on the scene who had seen the superior forces of the 7th 

Division allow the smaller 514th Battalion slip out of what should have 

been a decisive defeat. Other than the disgruntled US advisors, the US 

mission officially tried to avoid any critical commentary on the action at 

Ap Bac. Nonetheless, the story quickly became a focal point in the United 

States regarding the South Vietnamese Government’s handling of the 

war in general.69 According to William Hammond, “Ap Bac and the controversy surrounding it marked a divide in the history of U.S. relations 

with the news media in South Vietnam” because, “after it, correspondents 

became convinced that they were being lied to and withdrew, embittered, 

into their own community.”70 But the nadir was yet to come.

During the summer of 1963, confidence in Diem’s leadership plummeted further when a number of Buddhist monks committed suicide by 

self-immolating themselves in public as a means of protest. By year’s end, 

sufficient unrest in South Vietnam led to Diem’s overthrow by a military 

coup, tacitly approved by the US Government. Though the removal of the 

unpopular Diem would temporarily leaven criticism of the war effort, the 

instability of the military leaders who followed in Diem’s wake hardly 

aided the attempts of the US Government to portray progress in the stabilization of South Vietnam.

In the spring of 1964, the US Government moved to impose closer 

information coordination on its efforts in South Vietnam. In the Pentagon, 

Colonel Rodger Bankson, an experienced public affairs officer who had 

worked as a censor during the Korean War, was appointed to lead the 

newly created Southeast Asia Division within the Office of the Assistant 

Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. In South Vietnam, an Office of 

Information within the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) 

was established. President Lyndon B. Johnson, acting on a recommendation 
62

from US Information Agency director Carl Rowan, appointed Barry 

Zorthian to serve as the chief public affairs officer.71 Zorthian was a 

retired Marine who had served in World War II, worked as a journalist, 

and served with Voice of America. Zorthian originally was recruited to 

serve in Vietnam as the public relations officer for Voice of America. 

His writ would soon be considerably expanded, however. At a high-level 

conference in Honolulu in early June, there was widespread agreement of 

the need to appoint a single communications “czar” for the US military 

and civilian missions in South Vietnam.72

In the summer of 1964, the US mission in Vietnam underwent a number of changes in key personnel. General Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, would replace Henry Cabot Lodge as US Ambassador 

in Vietnam; General William Westmoreland replaced General Paul Harkins 

as Commander, MACV; and Barry Zorthian assumed his duties as the chief 

public affairs officer. Zorthian and Westmoreland did everything possible 

to make the MACV Office of Information the central source for information on military operations.73 The State Department issued instructions that 

the public information program was to stress “maximum candor.”

The program of “maximum candor,” however, was undermined little 

more than a year after it was put in place. In April 1965, President Johnson 

approved a range of US actions in Vietnam that included increased US 

military operations. To make it appear as though there had not been a 

change in policy that deliberately escalated the war, NSAM 328 instructed 

Government officials:

The actions themselves should be taken as rapidly as practicable, but in ways that should minimize any appearance 

of sudden changes in policy, and official statements on 

these troop movements will be made only with the direct 

approval of the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with 

the Secretary of State. The President’s desire is that these 

movements and changes should be understood as being 

gradual and wholly consistent with existing policy.74

American public support for the war had risen considerably in response 

to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. On 13 February 1965, President Johnson 

authorized Operation ROLLING THUNDER, a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam that would continue, with intermittent bombing “pauses” until near the end of Johnson’s presidency. Initially, the 

Gallup Poll reported a 67 percent public approval rating of the campaign, 

though telegrams addressed to the White House ran 14 to 1 against the new 

policy.75 Press opinion in Vietnam, which had been deteriorating steadily 
63

since late 1963, had been very negative about the situation in country prior 

to this most recent escalation of the war. Editorial opinion in the United 

States, conversely, was still largely supportive of the administration’s policies. In mid-May, Time magazine ran a story on the war titled, “Viet Nam: 

The Right War at the Right Time.”76 Nonetheless, dissent was spreading 

beyond just members of the press corps in South Vietnam. Around the 

same time that Time carried its upbeat article, John Mecklin published a 

critical book on the US effort in Vietnam.77 Although there were others, 

Mecklin’s critique was one of the first of the dissents to emerge from the 

“inside.”78

Despite increasing skepticism, the overall American public remained 

supportive of the war effort from 1965 to 1967. But as the number of 

troops deployed and the number of US casualties continued to mount, so 

did criticism of the war. In November 1967, Westmoreland was recalled 

to the United States as part of a concerted effort by President Johnson to 

shore up eroding public and Congressional support for the war. During 

Westmoreland’s visit, he testified before Congress, spoke on Meet the Press, 

and addressed the National Press Club. In his widely reported remarks, 

Westmoreland argued that the war had reached a turning point, and that he 

foresaw the possibility of winding down US troop commitments within 2 

years. He also stated his belief that the Viet Cong were no longer capable 

of mounting large-unit actions in South Vietnam. Then, 2 months later, 

the Viet Cong and infiltrated units of the North Korean Army launched 

the Tet Offensive.79 The Tet Offensive marked a fundamental break in the 

perception of the war. Though the Tet Offensive broke the back of the 

Viet Cong and was ultimately a military victory for the US and ARVN 

forces, the scale of the assault and the operational surprise achieved belied 

the positive assessments that Westmoreland and others had cultivated. In 

many ways, the political consequences the Tet Offensive produced did 

ultimately undermine the prospect of a long-term US commitment to 

the defense of South Vietnam. From the perspective of military-media 

relations, Tet cast a long shadow on an entire generation of officers. The 

lieutenants, captains, and majors who served in the Army during the Tet 

Offensive came to believe that it was the media’s portrayal of Tet that 

turned a military victory into defeat.80 Many of the problems that continued 

to plague military-media relations through the first Gulf War were a result 

of this perception.

Grenada

In the aftermath of the American involvement in Vietnam, militarymedia relations reached a point from which the relationship was long in 
64

recovering. Not only had the military and the media come to distrust one 

another, but American society as a whole suffered through a long period 

of distrust of public institutions. Vietnam, racial and social discord, the 

Watergate scandal, and the hearings conducted by Senator Frank Church 

(Democrat, Idaho) on covert operations all contributed to the erosion of 

trust between the American people and public institutions. The long hostage 

crisis in Iran at the end of the Carter administration and the aborted rescue 

attempt, of course, did little to re-instill the confidence of the American 

populace or the press in the effectiveness of the guardians of national security. According to Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf III, who served as commander of the 1983 intervention in Grenada (Operation URGENT FURY): 

“At the time of the Grenada intervention, relations between the press and 

the US military had been eroded to an appalling state. . . . The military 

brooded over the loss in Vietnam, and many blamed the press. At the same 

time, the media was deeply suspicious of those in authority within the military and its surrogate, the Pentagon.”81 As a consequence of these deeply 

held suspicions, Metcalf described senior military and civilian officers at 

the Pentagon in the late 1970s and 1980s as being more pre-occupied to 

reacting to the Early Bird (an in-house Department of Defense synopsis 

of leading news articles pertaining to military matters) than “attending to 

the business of the Cold War.”82 When the Reagan administration chose 

to intervene on the island of Grenada in October 1983, the poor relations 

between the military and the media were reflected in the decision not to 

notify any members of the media before the invasion took place and to 

exclude them from landing on the island for 2 days after the commencement of operations.83 According to Metcalf, who had only 39 hours notification that he was to lead the operation prior to the scheduled first landing 

of troops, when he was informed by a Public Affairs Officer sent by the 

Commander in Chief Atlantic to brief him on press policies, he was told 

that there would be no press involvement in the operation. For his part, 

Metcalf was unconcerned with this decision.84

Though Operation URGENT FURY was a relatively minor military 

operation in the broad sweep of the 20th century, the media’s exclusion 

generated considerable reaction. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General 

John H. Vessey Jr. was sufficiently concerned with the volume of media 

agitation over being excluded from the early operation that he asked 

Winant Sidle, a retired brigadier general who had served as the MACV 

Chief of Information in 1967–68, to chair a commission on militarymedia relations. Skirting the issue of censorship, the Sidle Commission 

recommended the creation of a National Press Pool. The National Press 

Pool would have reporters available for deployment with military units 
65

on short-notice to cover operations like URGENT FURY.85 The pool was 

approved by the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense in April 1985. 

On 10 occasions over the next 4 years, members of the pool deployed 

with military forces on exercises. When they deployed to Panama during Operation JUST CAUSE in 1989, however, they found themselves 

escorted to a room where they watched CNN coverage of the war and 

then were treated to a State Department lecture on Panamanian history. As 

had been the case in Grenada, it was several days before journalists were 

allowed into the field, by which time most of the fighting was already 

over.86

Although members of the National Press Pool again deployed with 

American forces to Saudi Arabia during Operation DESERT SHIELD, 

as it turned out there was a long period after the initial deployments 

before much of note happened in the field. As the mission shifted from 

the defense of Saudi Arabia toward a potential operation to eject Iraqi 

forces from Kuwait, the initial media pool swelled dramatically in size. At 

the same time, US Central Command (CENTCOM) had plenty of time to 

develop guidelines for the numerous members of the press who clamored 

to cover the confrontation between the United States-forged coalition and 

Iraq.87 From the US military’s perspective, the first Gulf War was a rather 

successful example of military-media engagement.88 Indeed, DESERT 

STORM proved to be a big story, but one in which the media perceived 

itself as having been carefully managed by the Pentagon, seemingly still 

smarting from its own perceptions of the media’s impact on the Vietnam 

War. After Operation DESERT STORM, there would be another bout of 

analysis about how to improve military-media relations that would produce reams of congressional testimony and numerous books.89 By the second Gulf War, the US military had adopted a policy that would prove more 

conducive to the media’s desire to be close to the action by resurrecting the 

practice of imbedding reporters with combat units.

From the First Gulf War to the Global War on Terrorism

After the first Gulf War, Alan D. Campen, a retired Air Force Colonel 

who had served as Director, Command and Control Policy, Office of the 

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 1982 to 1985, edited a volume 

on the war titled, The First Information War: The Story of Communications, 

Computers, and Intelligence Systems in the Persian Gulf War (1992). The 

book opens by stating, “The United States unveiled a radically new form of 

warfare in the Persian Gulf in 1991.” This “radically new form of warfare” 

was brought about by leveraging information.90 The interest in leveraging 

information grew increasingly important in the 1990s, when the real-time 
66

coverage of overseas conflicts, dubbed the “CNN effect,” became commonplace. A study group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at 

the National War College produced a report in March 1993 that looked at 

the threat environment of the 1990s and attempted to delineate the criteria 

for US military forces in this period. Among a number of other points, it 

recognized the need to “fight a CNN war” in which the US armed forces:

Must be capable of responding to media demands for 

instantaneous information, and of using the rapid transmission of data to its advantage. This magnifies the 

importance of tending to image considerations, the first 

criterion, especially in terms of the friendly fire problem. 

But it also suggests the need for greater information dominance and for some thought about how modern, real-time 

news reporting can be used to U.S. advantage in future 

military operations.91

The impact of the footage of a US Army helicopter pilot being dragged 

through the streets of Mogadishu in October 1993 during the UN peacekeeping mission there dramatically illustrated the influence of the “CNN 

effect.”92 By mid-decade, however, some observers suggested a coming 

backlash against the “CNN effect.” Marine Commandant General Charles 

Krulak argued in the fall of 1996 that there was a “growing reluctance to 

fight for CNN—the concern that we are being manipulated into conflict 

by media interests rather than legitimate interests.”93 This idea that the 

global media was determining rather than merely reporting the headlines, 

in a manner not unlike the jingoistic press in America before the SpanishAmerican War, had enough public currency by the mid-1990s to serve as 

the plot of the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997).

Ironically, the proliferation of the very technology that made the 

“CNN effect” possible in the 1990s has undermined the ability of any 

particular media outlet to retain the ability to dominate the contemporary 

news agenda. In the 21st century, it seems unlikely that either governments 

or specific media outlets will be able to dictate the flow and dissemination 

of information. The proliferation of satellite telecommunications, the 

internet, and cheap digital recording and communication devices have 

all undermined the ability of any government or media outlet to manage 

information. At the same time, the US Government and military have 

continued to pursue improved modes of information management. In 

August 1998, President William J. Clinton authorized Tomahawk cruise 

missile strikes on targets in Sudan and Afghanistan linked to Osama bin 

Laden’s terrorist network in reprisal for the attacks on two US Embassies 
67

in East Africa. The rapidity with which the Sudanese Government 

launched its own information campaign to discredit the US cruise missile 

strike surprised the Clinton administration.94 As a result, President 

Clinton approved Presidential Decision Directive 68 in April 1999 to 

encourage a better governmental approach to information management. 

Though this directive remains classified, among other things it authorized 

the establishment of an International Public Information System and 

an International Public Information Core Group chaired by the Under 

Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, whose charter 

was reminiscent of the Truman administration’s Psychological Strategy 

Board.95

After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, some within the Bush 

administration argued that the US Government’s capabilities for information management were insufficient for the ideological dimension of the 

conflict with al-Qaeda. This seems to have been the case within Secretary 

of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s department. In October 2001, Under 

Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith set up an Office of Strategic 

Influence (OSI) in the Pentagon.96 The OSI proved to be rather short-lived, 

however, when it came under intense public scrutiny for purportedly 

making plans to disseminate false news stories to foreign media in early 

2002. Feith dissolved the OSI at the end of February 2002.97 Slightly less 

than a year later, President George W. Bush created an Office of Global 

Communications in the White House, headed by the Deputy Assistant 

to the President for Global Communications.98 During the remainder of 

the Bush presidency, the importance of strategic communications to the 

Global War On Terrorism (subsequently the Long War) was frequently 

reiterated.99 The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, for instance, stated:

Victory in the long war ultimately depends on strategic communication by the United States and its international partners. Effective communication must build 

and maintain credibility and trust with friends and foes 

alike, through an emphasis on consistency, veracity and 

transparency both in words and deeds. Such credibility is 

essential to building trusted networks that counter ideological support for terrorism.100

Yet, for all the interest in strategic communications during the Bush administration, it may well be that the US Government’s approach to information management in the early years of the 21st century largely mirrored the 

patterns of information management of the preceding century.
68

Notes

1. Dwight David Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (Garden 

City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1967), 320–321.

2. Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda 

Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 

49. For the best account of the US Army’s approach to psychological warfare, see 

Alfred H. Paddock Jr., U.S. Army Special Warfare: Its Origins, rev. ed. (Lawrence, 

KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002).

3. J. Lawton Collins, Lightning Joe: An Autobiography (Baton Rouge, LA: 

Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 339–341.

4. J. Lawton Collins, “An Information Policy for the New Army,” Army 

Information Digest 1, No. 1 (May 1946): 3–5.

5. Collins, Lightning Joe, 343.

6. Ibid., 344.

7. Survey of the Operations of the Bureau of Public Relations of the War 

Department, transmitted to Major General Floyd Park by Jack H. Lockhart, 3 June 

1946. Papers of Floyd H. Parks, Box 10, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library.

8. Ibid., part I, 2.

9. Ibid., part I, 3.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid, part I, 6.

12. Ibid, part II, 2–3.

13. Ibid, part II, 6.

14. Ibid., part II, 6–7.

15. Ibid., part I, 4.

16. In 1951, the Army Information School became the Armed Forces 

Information School, though it generally was still referred to as the Army 

Information School. In 1964, it became the Defense Information School. The 

school is currently located at Fort Meade, Georgia. “Defense Information School 

Training.” http://www.usmilitary.com/2163/defense-information-school-training/ 

(accessed 14 May 2009).

17. “The Army Information School Makes a Bow,” Army Information Digest

1, No.1 (May 1946): 14–19.

18. Doris Condit, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense [HOSD], 

Vol. II: The Test of War 1950–1953 (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of 

the Secretary of Defense, 1988), 26.

19. Condit, HOSD, Vol. II, 26–27.

20. Prior to the Korean War, there was a long discussion within the US 

Government of the appropriate roll and scope of public information campaigns, 

both of an overt and covert nature. This subject is beyond the scope of this study; 

however, a fairly extensive literature on this subject has developed. See Nancy 

E. Bernhard, U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947–1960 (New 

York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Sarah-Jane Corke, US Covert 

Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare, and the CIA, 1945–53
69

(London: Routledge, 2008); Robert T. Davis II, “Cold War Interagency Relations 

and the Struggle to Coordinate Psychological Strategy,” in Kendall D. Gott and 

Michael G. Brooks, eds., The US Army and the Interagency Process: Historical 

Perspectives (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2009), 

301–319; Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War behind the 

Iron Curtain (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2000); Walter Hixson, Parting the 

Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (New York, NY: St. 

Martin’s Press, 1997); David F. Krugler, The Voice of America and the Domestic 

Propaganda Battles, 1945–1953 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 

2000); Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The American Crusade against the Soviet 

Union (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1999); Gregory Mitrovich, 

Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–

1956 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Michael Nelson, War of the 

Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (Syracuse, 

NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997); Frank Ninkovich, U.S. Information Policy 

and Cultural Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy Association, 1996); 

and Thomas C. Sorensen, The Word War: The Story of American Propaganda

(New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1968).

21. Geoffrey Perret, Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur

(New York, NY: Random House, 1996), 74.

22. D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, Vol. II: 1941–1945 (Boston, 

MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 90.

23. Ibid., Vol. II, 164–165.

24. Ibid., Vol. II, 280–281.

25. Ibid., Vol. III, 11; and Perret, Old Soldiers Never Die, 473.

26. Luther J. Reed, “Tokyo Reporting,” Army Information Digest 1, No. 4 

(August 1946): 17–19.

27. James, The Years of MacArthur, Vol. III; and Perret, Old Soldiers Never 

Die, 17–22, 497–498.

28. William J. Coughlin, Conquered Press: The MacArthur Era in Japanese 

Journalism (Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books), 116.

29. Ibid., 117.

30. Ibid., 118–119.

31. Ibid., 119.

32. Perret, Old Soldiers Never Die, 528–529.

33. For the best account of this challenge, see Steven Casey, Selling the 

Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public Opinion in the United States, 

1950–1953 (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008).

34. Stanley Weintraub, MacArthur’s War: Korea and the Undoing of an 

American Hero (New York, NY: The Free Press, 2000), 48.

35. James, The Years of MacArthur, Vol. III, 426–427. MacArthur’s report on 

the trip to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and State Department is reproduced in United 

States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS] 1950, 

Vol. VII (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1950), 248–250.

36. Quoted in Weintraub, MacArthur’s War, 54.
70

37. James, The Years of MacArthur, Vol. III, 425.

38. Roy K. Flint, “Task Force Smith and the 24th Division: Delay and 

Withdrawal, 5–19 July 1950,” in America’s First Battles, ed. Charles E. Heller 

and William A. Stofft (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1986), 266–

299.

39. Weintraub, MacArthur’s War, 67.

40. Casey, Selling the Korean War, 45.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid., 49.

43. Quoted in Casey, Selling the Korean War, 53.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid., 54–55.

46. Ibid., 55.

47. Ibid., 59–60.

48. On 19 July, President Truman had requested an additional $10 billion 

defense appropriation. This, combined with an earlier supplemental request, had 

doubled the defense budget over the level that the administration had previously 

established as its peacetime budgetary ceiling.

49. D. Clayton James takes a view rather more sympathetic to MacArthur’s 

perspective, stating, “Much of the American and West European press reacted with 

sensational, alarmist reports on the aborted Home by Christmas Drive, portraying 

MacArthur as blundering and warmongering and his forces as fleeing, panicstricken, in the face of the Chinese attackers.” James, The Years of MacArthur, 

Vol. III, 539.

50. The directive is reproduced in Declassified Documents Reference System 

[DDRS] (Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications International, 1992), Appendix 

I, 1992, F127, 1873.

51. Casey, Selling the Korean War, 147.

52. Ibid., 158.

53. Ibid., 155.

54. Roy E. Appleman wrote “[Ridgway] alone made the difference in keeping 

the American Eighth Army in Korea, gradually turning it around to face north 

once again and to emerge as a strong, motivated fighting force in the Chinese 4th 

and 5th Phase offensives in the winter and spring of 1951.” Roy E. Appleman, 

Ridgway Duels for Korea (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 

1990), xiv.

55. Rory Quirk, Wars and Peace: The Memoirs of an American Family

(Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1999), 19, 37–38.

56. Ibid., 154.

57. Ibid., 167–168.

58. Casey, Selling the Korean War, 167–168.

59. This is the title of chapter 5, covering Korea and Vietnam, in Michael 

S. Sweeney, The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce (Evanston, IL: 

Northwestern University Press, 2006).
71

60. Syngman Rhee would serve continuously as president of South Korea 

from 1948 until 1960. From 1919 to 1939, he had served as president of the 

Korean Provisional Government-in-Exile. There was no such comparable figure 

in the history of South Vietnam.

61. Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown on 1 November 1963. He and his 

brother, who had headed the secret police, were killed the following day.

62. Daniel C. Hallin, The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam

(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986), 6; and William M. Hammond, 

Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War (Lawrence, KS: University Press 

of Kansas, 1998), 291.

63. Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 

1941–1975 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), 107–113.

64. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, National Security Act 

Memorandum (NSAM) 111: First Phase of Viet-NAM Program, 22 November 

1961. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+ 

Desk/NSAMs.htm (accessed 14 May 2009).

65. Clarence R. Wyatt, “The Media and the Vietnam War,” in The War That 

Never Ends: New Perspectives on the Vietnam War, eds. David L. Anderson and 

John Ernst (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 272–273.

66. This telegram is generally referred to as State Department Cable 1006. 

It is reproduced as “Tel. from Dep. of State to Emb. Vietnam, 21 February 1962,” 

FRUS 1961–1963, Vol. II, Doc.75. See also William M. Hammond, Public Affairs: 

The Military and the Media, 1962–1968 (Washington, DC: Center of Military 

History, 1988), 15.

67. Hammond, Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962–1968, 

17–24.

68. Ibid., 24–29.

69. Ibid., 30–35.

70. Ibid., 37.

71. Hammond, Reporting Vietnam, 22–23.

72. FRUS 1964–1968, Vol. I, Doc. 189: Summary Record of Meetings, 

Honolulu, 2 June 1964.

73. Hammond, Reporting Vietnam, 23.

74. NSAM 328, “Presidential Decisions Regarding U.S. Policy in Vietnam, 

6 April 1965.” http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsam-lbj/index.html and http://

www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/nsams/nsamhom.asp (accessed 

14 May 2009).

75. Schulzinger, A Time for War, 172.

76. Time, 14 May 1965.

77. John Mecklin, Mission in Torment: An Intimate Account of the U.S. Role 

in Vietnam (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1965).

78. Two reporters, both of whom received Pulitzer Prizes in 1964 for their 

coverage of Vietnam, published accounts of the Vietnam War in early 1965. See 

David Halberstam, The Making of a Quagmire (New York, NY: Random House, 
72

1965), and Malcolm Browne, The New Face of War (Indianapolis, IN: BobbsMerrill, 1965).

79. Two good recent assessments are David F. Schmitz, The Tet Offensive: 

Politics, War, and Public Opinion (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); 

and James H. Wilbanks, The Tet Offensive: A Concise History (New York, NY: 

Columbia University Press, 2007). Peter Baestrup’s careful assessment of how 

Tet was covered by the media is also of note. Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the 

American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in 

Vietnam and Washington, 2 vols. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977).

80. Douglas Kinnard, The War Managers (Hanover, NH: University of New 

England Press, 1977), 124–135; Sweeney, The Military and the Press, 151–152.

81. J. Metcalf III, “The Press and Grenada, 1983,” in Defence and the Media 

in Time of Limited War, ed. Peter R. Young (London: Frank Cass, 1992), 168.

82. Ibid., 169.

83. In 1979, Maurice Bishop, leader of a Marxist-leaning party, had seized 

power in a bloodless coup. During the period from 1979 to 1983, Grenada had 

established close ties with Fidel Castro. Bishop was himself overthrown by a 

left-wing faction of his own government on 12 October 1983 and executed a 

week later. The coup leaders dissolved the civilian government, established a socalled Revolutionary Military Council, closed the airport, and imposed a curfew 

under which violators were subject to be shot on sight. With approximately 1,000 

US citizens on the island, including around 600 medical students, the Reagan 

administration promptly initiated contingency planning for their evacuation. On 

25 October 1983, a brigade of the 82d Airborne and US Marines landed on the 

Caribbean island of Grenada to prevent the seizure of the medical students as 

hostages and provide for the establishment of a government more amenable to 

American national security interests. Ronald H. Cole, Operation Urgent Fury: The 

Planning and Execution of Joint Operations in Grenada 12 October–2 November 

1983 (Washington, DC: Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, 1997).

84. J. Metcalf III, “The Press and Grenada, 1983,” 169.

85. Sweeney, The Military and the Press, 155–156.

86. Ibid., 157–158.

87. See the Guidelines for the Media, 14 January 1991, reproduced in 

appendix A.

88. Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York, 

NY: Random House, 1995), 528–530.

89. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, “Pentagon Rules on Media 

Access to the Persian Gulf War,” Hearing before the Committee on Governmental 

Affairs United States Senate, 102d Cong., 1st sess., 20 February 1991 (Washington, 

DC: US Government Printing Office, 1991). See also Robert E. Denton Jr., The 

Media and the Persian Gulf War (Wesport, CT: Praeger, 1993); John J. Fialka, 

Hotel Warriors: Covering the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center 

Press, 1991); John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in 
73

the Gulf War (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1992); Twentieth Century Fund, 

Battle Lines: Report of the Twentieth Century Fund on the Military and the Media

(New York, NY: Priority Press, 1985).

90. Alan D. Campen, ed., The First Information War: The Story of 

Communications, Computers, and Intelligence Systems in the Persian Gulf War

(Fairfax, VA: AFCEA International Press, 1992), ix.

91. Michael J. Mazaar, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Benjamin Ederington, Military 

Technical Revolution: A Structural Framework (Washington, DC: Center for 

Strategic and International Studies, 1993), 11–12.

92. President Clinton wrote in his memoirs that the Battle of Mogadishu 

was “one of the darkest days of my presidency,” and that the event “haunted me.” 

Subsequent to the ghastly images of an Army helicopter pilot being drug through 

the streets, the Clinton administration and Congress adopted a 6-month timeline 

for the withdrawal of US forces from Somalia. William J. Clinton, My Life (New 

York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 576. See also Frank J. Stech, “Winning CNN 

Wars,” Parameters (Autumn 1994): 37–38.

93. Charles C. Krulak, “The United States Marine Corps in the 21st Century,” 

RUSI Journal (August 1996): 24.

94. Jamie Frederic Metzl, “Popular Diplomacy,” Daedalus 128, No. 2 

(Spring 1999): 177–178.

95. International Public Information (IPI), Presidential Decision Directive 

68, 30 April 1999. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd/pdd-68.htm (accessed 

14 May 2009).

96. Douglas J. Feith, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of 

the War on Terrorism (New York, NY: Harper, 2008), 171.

97. Ibid., 173–176.

98. Executive Order 13282, “Establishing the Office of Global 

Communications, 21 January 2003,” John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, 

The American Presidency Project [online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University of 

California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/

ws/?pid=61379 (accessed 14 May 2009).

99. There is substantial literature on strategic communications. See, for 

example, Jeffrey B. Jones, “Strategic Communication: A Mandate for the United 

States,” Joint Force Quarterly 39 (Fourth Quarter, 2005), 108–114; Pamela Keeton 

and Mark McCann, “Information Operations, STRATCOM, and Public Affairs,” 

Military Review 85, No. 6 (November–December 2005), 83–86; Huba Wass de 

Czege, “On Winning Hearts and Minds,” Army (August 2006), 8–18; Carl D. 

Gunrow, “Winning the Information War,” Army (April 2007), 12–15; US National 

Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communications (Washington, 

DC: Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy Coordinating Committee, 

2007); Dennis M. Murphy and James F. White, “Propaganda: Can a Word Decide 

a War?” Parameters 37 (Autumn, 2007), 15–27; Richard Halloran, “Strategic 

Communication,” Parameters 37 (Autumn, 2007), 4–14; Carnes Lord, “On the 

Nature of Strategic Communications,” Joint Force Quarterly 46 (Third Quarter, 
74

2007), 87–89; William M. Darley, “The Missing Component of U.S. Strategic 

Communications,” Joint Force Quarterly 47 (Fourth Quarter, 2007), 109–113.

100.Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department of 

Defense, 6 February 2006), 91–92.
75

Chapter 5

Conclusions

For the journalist, war sells the news. But news gathered 

from battlefields and wartime governments also has the 

higher goal of fulfilling the press’s modern role as the 

Fourth Estate. News provides American citizens with 

information to help them make informed decisions about 

their leaders. For the soldier, however, news is primarily 

a tool or a weapon. Information shared through the mass 

media can bolster military and civilian morale, raise 

enlistments, boost the armed forces’ budget, undermine 

the enemy’s confidence, and hasten the end of conflict. Or 

it can compromise battlefield security, wreck the civilian 

base of support, and topple the government leadership 

directing the war effort. From the military point of view, a 

reckless press can turn victory into defeat.

Michael S. Sweeney1

Surveying the history of military-media relations during conflicts over 

the last 150 years, one recognizes that there has been a rich variety of 

experiences. There has always been and always will be tension between 

military authorities and the press, which are more pronounced when the 

military situation is most difficult. This creates a particular problem when 

operations are difficult because of the military’s increased desire to tighten 

control over information, both to prevent exploitation by the enemy and 

to protect the morale of its troops. Members of the media may see these 

same circumstances as a time when an open inquiry into the causes of such 

reverses should be investigated and exposed to the American public. Yet, 

in many instances, the military and the media have worked out reasonable 

accommodations that have permitted extensive news coverage of wars 

without creating debilitating friction between the corporate goals of either 

group. Though reporters have chafed at seemingly arbitrary practices and 

military officers have despaired at achieving “balanced” reporting, there 

has been no instance since General Sherman’s infamous confrontation with 

Thomas Knox that a military commander has seen a need to court-martial 

a reporter. By the second Gulf War, even the considerable rift in militarymedia relations during the Vietnam War seems to have been bridged with 

the return to the time-honored practice of allowing reporters to embed 

themselves with combat units.
76

A number of factors affect military-media relations. In many cases, 

the activities of Army public affairs officers are only ancillary to the 

relationship. That is to say, military-media relations are seldom merely 

a matter of providing or not providing food, shelter, transportation, and 

communications facilities to the press. The more important determinants 

of the relationship are sometimes factors beyond the control of the military. 

When US military forces operate with allies, particularly in an allied-host 

country, thorny question can arise. It is not hard to imagine situations 

in which the performance of an allied force or forces is cause for great 

frustration. Nonetheless, the continued participation of that ally may have 

considerable political importance beyond the purview of a military officer’s 

bailiwick. When reporters ask officers what they think of their allies, what 

is more important—honesty or preserving the relationship with the ally? Is 

the reporter’s pursuit of the “truth” more important than the preservation 

of a military coalition? Another difficult problem for the military arises 

when presidential policies have deliberately precluded “maximum candor” 

with the press. Again, the military officer would find himself in a dilemma 

of following orders, which precludes full cooperation with the media. In 

some cases, individual Army commanders have also pursued policies that 

have done a good deal to undermine the Army’s pursuit of positive public 

affairs. Notable examples include Commanding General Nelson Miles 

during the Philippine-American War and General Douglas MacArthur in 

Korea.

As for the future, changing modes in the nature of global communications may fundamentally alter the very nature of military-media relations.2

In past situations where military control over the modes of communication 

between a theater and the United States was well developed, there was 

generally a tendency toward censorship in theater. Even when there was no 

formal censorship, practices aimed at controlling the information available 

to the press were often followed. However, the proliferation of communications methods in recent years has made theater censorship and information control increasingly less relevant. Stripped of the ability to control 

the dissemination of material, the US Government and the military have 

had to place greater stress on the shaping of the message. The renewed 

interest in public diplomacy and strategic communications since the events 

of 9/11 is symptomatic of this trend. The mission statement of the Office 

of Global Communications, established by President George W. Bush on 

21 January 2003, clearly enunciated this interest. Executive Order 13283, 

which established the Office of Global Communications, states that its 
77

purpose was to advise the President and the heads of executive departments and agencies on how best to “ensure consistency in messages that 

will promote the interests of the United States abroad, prevent misunderstanding, build support for and among coalition partners of the United 

States, and inform international audiences.”3

 However, when such wideranging information coordination organizations were created in the past, 

it often made it difficult to draw a clear line between public relations and 

propaganda and/or psychological warfare. As General William Tecumseh 

Sherman put it so long ago, “We do not want the truth about things; that 

is what we don’t want . . . we do not want the enemy any better informed 

about what is going on here than he is.”4

 This contrasts with Jack Lockhart’s 

sage advice to “present the Army as it is, not as it ought to be or would like 

to be.”5

 The challenges of information management in the contemporary 

world suggest the latter’s advice may well be the best way to proceed in 

the future, but it does not mean that we should cease to appreciate the 

variegated past of Army-media relations.
78

Notes

1. Michael S. Sweeney, The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce

(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 5.

2. A good example of this view can be found in an article in Military Review 

written shortly before this study went to press. See Lieutenant General William B. 

Caldwell IV, US Army; Mr. Dennis Murphy; and Mr. Anton Menning, “Learning 

to Leverage New Media: The Israeli Defense Forces in Recent Conflicts,” Military 

Review (May–June 2009): 2–9.

3. Executive Order No. 13283, “Establishing the Office of Global 

Communications, 21 January 2003,” John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, 

The American Presidency Project [online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University of 

California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/

ws/?pid=61379 (accessed 5 May 2009).

4. John F. Marszalek, Sherman’s Other War: The General and the Civil War 

Press (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999), 37–38.

5. Survey of the Operations of the Bureau of Public Relations of the War 

Department, transmitted to Major General Floyd Park by Jack H. Lockhart, 3 June 

1946. Papers of Floyd H. Parks, Box 10, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library.
79

Glossary

AEF	 Army Expeditionary Force

AFHQ	 Allied Forces Headquarters

AP	 Associated Press

ARVN	 Army of the Republic of Vietnam

CENTCOM	 US Central Command

CINCPAC	 Commander in Chief, Pacific

CPI	 Committee on Public Information

DDRS	 Declassified Documents Reference System

DOD	 Department of Defense

FBI	 Federal Bureau of Investigation

FRUS	 Foreign Relations of the United States

FUSAG	 First United States Army Group

GVN	 Government of Vietnam

IPI	 International Public Information

IPIG	 International Public Information Group

JIB	 Joint Information Bureau

MAAG	 Military Assistance Advisory Group

MACV	 Military Assistance Command, Vietnam

NBC	 National Broadcasting Company

NSAM	 National Security Action Memorandum

NSC	 National Security Council

OASD(PA)	 Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs)

OPI	 Office of Public Information

OSI	 Office of Strategic Influence

OWI	 Office of War Information

PDD	 Presidential Decision Directive

PR	 public relations

PRO	 Public Relations Officer

ROK	 Republic of Korea

SCAP	 Supreme Commander Allied Powers

SHAEF	 Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

SPG	 Special Planning Group

STRATCOM	 Strategic Command

UN	 United Nations

UP	 United Press

US	 United States

USIA	 United States Information Agency

81

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Appendix A

Documents Relating to US Government Information Policy

Civil War

Executive Order, August 7, 1861

Executive Order—Taking into Military Possession all Telegraph Lines in 

the United States, February 25, 1862

World War I

Executive Order 2585—Taking Over Necessary and Closing Unnecessary 

Radio Stations, April 6, 1917

Executive Order 2594—Creating Committee on Public Information, 

April 13, 1917

Executive Order 2604—Censorship of Submarine Cables, Telegraph and 

Telephone Lines, April 28, 1917

World War II

Executive Order 9182—Establishing the Office of War Information, June 

13, 1942

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 8 May 1944

Post-World War II

Executive Order 9608—Providing for the Termination of the Office of War 

Information, and for the Disposition of Its Functions and of Certain 

Functions of the Office of Inter-American Affairs, August 31, 1945

Extract from the Smith-Mundt Act, 1948

Korean War

Harry Truman, Presidential Memorandum, 5 December 1950

Harry Truman, Directive Creating Psychological Strategy Board, April 4, 

1951

Vietnam War

State Department Cable 1006, 21 February 1962

National Security Action Memorandum No. 308, June 22, 1964

National Security Action Memorandum No. 313, July 31, 1964

Post-Vietnam

Extract from National Security Action Memorandum 328, 6 April 1965

National Security Decision Directive Number 77, Management of Public 

Diplomacy Relative to National Security, January 14, 1983

Guidelines for News Media, 14 January 1991

Presidential Decision Directive PDD 68, 30 April 1999

Executive Order 13283—Establishing the Office of Global Communications, January 21, 2003
90

Abraham Lincoln

XVI President of the United States: 1861–1865

Executive Order1

August 7, 1861

By the fifty-seventh article of the act of Congress entitled “An act for 

establishing rules and articles for the government of the armies of the 

United States,” approved April 10, 1806, holding correspondence with 

or giving intelligence to the enemy, either directly or indirectly, is made 

punishable by death, or such other punishment as shall be ordered by the 

sentence of a court-martial. Public safety requires strict enforcement of 

this article. 

It is therefore ordered, That all correspondence and communication, 

verbally or by writing, printing, or telegraphing, respecting operations of 

the Army or military movements on land or water, or respecting the troops, 

camps, arsenals, intrenchments, or military affairs within the several 

military districts, by which intelligence shall be, directly or indirectly, given 

to the enemy, without the authority and sanction of the major-general in 

command, be, and the same are absolutely prohibited, and from and after 

the date of this order persons violating the same will be proceeded against 

under the fifty-seventh article of war.

SIMON CAMERON.

Approved:

A. LINCOLN.

__________________

1. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project

[online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters 

(database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=70012 (accessed 5 May 

2009).
91

Abraham Lincoln

XVI President of the United States: 1861–1865

Executive Order—Taking into Military Possession all Telegraph 

Lines in the United States2

February 25, 1862

WAR DEPARTMENT

Ordered, first. On and after the 26th day of February instant the President, 

by virtue of the act of Congress, takes military possession of all the 

telegraph lines in the United States.

Second. All telegraphic communications in regard to military operations 

not expressly authorized by the War Department, the General Commanding, 

or the generals commanding armies in the field, in the several departments, 

are absolutely forbidden.

Third. All newspapers publishing military news, however obtained and 

by whatever medium received, not authorized by the official authority 

mentioned in the preceding paragraph will be excluded thereafter from 

receiving information by telegraph or from transmitting their papers by 

railroad.

Fourth. Edward S. Sanford is made military supervisor of telegraphic 

messages throughout the United States. Anson Stager is made military 

superintendent of all telegraph lines and offices in the United States.

Fifth. This possession and control of the telegraph lines is not intended to 

interfere in any respect with the ordinary affairs of the companies or with 

private business.

By order of the President:

EDWIN M. STANTON,

Secretary of War.

__________________

2. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project

[online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters 

(database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=69797 (accessed 5 May 

2009).
92

Woodrow Wilson

XXVIII President of the United States: 1913–1921

Executive Order 2585—Taking Over Necessary and Closing 

Unnecessary Radio Stations3

April 6, 1917

Whereas, the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of 

America, in Congress assembled, have declared that a state of war exists 

between the United States and the Imperial German Government; and 

Whereas it is necessary to operate certain radio stations for radio 

communication by the Government and to close other radio stations not 

so operated, to insure the proper conduct of the war against the Imperial 

German Government and the successful termination thereof 

Now, therefore, it is ordered by virtue of authority vested in me by the Act 

to Regulate Radio Communication, approved August 13, 1912, that such 

radio stations within the jurisdiction of the United States as are required 

for naval communications shall be taken over by the Government of the 

United States and used and controlled by it, to the exclusion of any other 

control or use; and furthermore that all radio stations not necessary to the 

Government of the United States for naval communications, may be closed 

for radio communication.

The enforcement of this order is hereby delegated to the Secretary of the 

Navy, who is authorized and directed to take such action in the premises 

as to him may appear necessary.

This order shall take effect from and after this date.

WOODROW WILSON

THE WHITE HOUSE,

April 6, 1917.

__________________

3. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project

[online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters 

(database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=75407) (accessed 5 May 

2009).
93

Woodrow Wilson

XXVIII President of the United States: 1913–1921

Executive Order 2594—Creating Committee on Public 

Information4

April 13, 1917

I hereby create a Committee on Public Information, to be composed of 

the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, 

and a civilian who shall be charged with the executive direction of the 

Committee.

As Civilian Chairman of this Committee, I appoint Mr. George Creel. 

The Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the 

Navy are authorized each to detail an officer or officers to the work of the 

Committee.

WOODROW WILSON

THE WHITE HOUSE,

April 13, 1917.

__________________

4. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project

[online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters 

(database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=75409 (accessed 5 May 

2009).
94

Woodrow Wilson

XXVIII President of the United States: 1913–1921

Executive Order 2604—Censorship of Submarine Cables, Telegraph and Telephone Lines5

April 28, 1917

Whereas, the existence of a state of war between the United States and the 

Imperial German Government makes it essential to the public safety that 

no communication of a character which would aid the enemy or its allies 

shall be had,

Therefore, by virtue of the power vested in me under the Constitution and 

by the Joint Resolution passed by Congress on April 6, 1917, declaring 

the existence of a state of war, it is ordered that all companies or other 

persons, owning, controlling or operating telegraph and telephone lines 

or submarine cables, are hereby prohibited from transmitting messages to 

points without the United States, and from delivering messages received 

from such points, except those permitted under rules and regulations to be 

established by the Secretary of War for telegraph and telephone lines, and 

by the Secretary of the Navy for submarine cables,

To these Departments, respectively, is delegated the duty of preparing and 

enforcing rules and regulations under this order to accomplish the purpose 

mentioned.

This order shall take effect from this date.

WOODROW WILSON

THE WHITE HOUSE,

April 28, 1917.

__________________

5. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project

[online]. (Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters 

(database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=75413 (accessed 5 May 

2009).
95

Franklin D. Roosevelt

XXXII President of the United States: 1933–1945

Executive Order 9182—Establishing the Office of War 

Information6

June 13, 1942

In recognition of the right of the American people and of all other peoples 

opposing the Axis aggressors to be truthfully informed about the common 

war effort, and by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution, 

by the First War Powers Act, 1941, and as President of the United States 

and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, it is hereby ordered as 

follows:

1. The following agencies, powers, and duties are transferred and 

consolidated into an Office of War Information which is hereby established 

within the Office for Emergency Management in the Executive Office of 

the President:

(a) The Office of Facts and Figures and its powers and duties.

(b) The Office of Government Reports and its powers and duties.

(c) The powers and duties of the Coordinator of Information relating to the 

gathering of public information and its dissemination abroad, including, 

but not limited to, all powers and duties now assigned to the Foreign 

Information Service, Outpost, Publications, and Pictorial Branches of the 

Coordinator of Information.

(d) The powers and duties of the Division of Information of the Office for 

Emergency Management relating to the dissemination of general public 

information on the war effort, except as provided in paragraph 10.

2. At the head of the Office of War Information shall be a Director 

appointed by the President. The Director shall discharge and perform his 

functions and duties under the direction and supervision of the President. 

The Director may exercise his powers, authorities, and duties through such 

officials or agencies and in such manner as he may determine.

3. There is established within the Office of War Information a Committee 

on War Information Policy consisting of the Director as Chairman, 

__________________

6. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project

[online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters 

(database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16273 (accessed 5 May 

2009).
96

representatives of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the 

Secretary of the Navy, the Joint Psychological Warfare Committee, and 

of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, and such other members 

as the Director, with the approval of the President, may determine. The 

Committee on War Information Policy shall formulate basic policies and 

plans on war information, and shall advise with respect to the development 

of coordinated war information programs.

4. Consistent with the war information policies of the President and with 

the foreign policy of the United States, and after consultation with the 

Committee on War Information Policy, the Director shall perform the 

following functions and duties:

(a) Formulate and carry out, through the use of press, radio, motion 

picture, and other facilities, information programs designed to facilitate 

the development of an informed and intelligent understanding, at home 

and abroad, of the status and progress of the war effort and of the war 

policies, activities, and aims of the Government.

(b) Coordinate the war informational activities of all Federal departments 

and agencies for the purpose of assuring an accurate and consistent flow 

of war information to the public and the world at large. 

(c) Obtain, study, and analyze information concerning the war effort and 

advise the agencies concerned with the dissemination of such information 

as to the most appropriate and effective means of keeping the public 

adequately and accurately informed.

(d) Review, clear, and approve all proposed radio and motion picture 

programs sponsored by Federal departments and agencies; and serve as 

the central point of clearance and contact for the radio broadcasting and 

motion-picture industries, respectively, in their relationships with Federal 

departments and agencies concerning such Government programs.

(e) Maintain liaison with the information agencies of the United Nations 

for the purpose of relating the Government’s informational programs and 

facilities to those of such Nations.

(f) Perform such other functions and duties relating to war information as 

the President may from time to time determine.

5. The Director is authorized to issue such directives concerning war information as he may deem necessary or appropriate to carry out the purposes 

of this Order, and such directives shall be binding upon the several Federal 

departments and agencies. He may establish by regulation the types and 

classes of informational programs and releases which shall require clearance and approval by his office prior to dissemination. The Director may 
97

require the curtailment or elimination of any Federal information service, 

program, or release which he deems to be wasteful or not directly related 

to the prosecution of the war effort.

6. The authority, functions, and duties of the Director shall not extend to 

the Western Hemisphere exclusive of the United States and Canada.

7. The formulation and carrying out of informational programs relating 

exclusively to the authorized activities of the several departments and 

agencies of the Government shall remain with such departments and 

agencies, but such informational programs shall conform to the policies 

formulated or approved by the Office of War Information. The several 

departments and agencies of the Government shall make available to the 

Director, upon his request, such information and data as may be necessary 

to the performance of his functions and duties.

8. The Director of the Office of War Information and the Director of 

Censorship shall collaborate in the performance of their respective functions for the purpose of facilitating the prompt and full dissemination of all 

available information which will not give aid to the enemy.

9. The Director of the Office of War Information and the Defense 

Communications Board shall collaborate in the performance of their 

respective functions for the purpose of facilitating the broadcast of war 

information to the peoples abroad. 

10. The functions of the Division of Information of the Office for 

Emergency Management with respect to the provision of press and publication services relating to the specific activities of the constituent agencies 

of the Office for Emergency Management are transferred to those constituent agencies respectively, and the Division of Information is accordingly 

abolished. 

11. Within the limits of such funds as may be made available to the Office 

of War Information, the Director may employ necessary personnel and 

make provision for the necessary supplies, facilities, and services. He may 

provide for the internal management and organization of the Office of War 

Information in such manner as he may determine.

12. All records, contracts, and property (including office equipment) of the 

several agencies and all records, contracts, and property used primarily in 

the administration of any powers and duties transferred or consolidated 

by this Order, and all personnel used in the administration of such agencies, powers, and duties (including officers whose chief duties relate to 

such administration) are transferred to the Office of War Information, for 

use in the administration of the agencies, powers, and duties transferred 
98

or consolidated by this Order; provided, that any personnel transferred to 

the Office of War Information by this Order, found by the Director of the 

Office of War Information to be in excess of the personnel necessary for 

the administration of the powers and duties transferred to the Office of 

War Information, shall be retransferred under existing procedure to other 

positions in the Government service, or separated from the service.

13. So much of the unexpended balances of appropriations, allocations, or 

other funds available for the use of any agency in the exercise of any power 

or duty transferred or consolidated by this Order or for the use of the head 

of any agency in the exercise of any power or duty so transferred or consolidated, as the Director of the Bureau of the Budget with the approval 

of the President shall determine, shall be transferred to the Office of War 

Information, for use in connection with the exercise of powers or duties so 

transferred or consolidated. In determining the amount to be transferred, 

the Director of the Bureau of the Budget may include an amount to provide for the liquidation of obligations incurred against such appropriations, allocations, or other funds prior to the transfer or consolidation.
99

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 8 May 19447

TO ALL UNIT COMMANDERS, A.E.F.

Confidential

To all Unit Commanders, Allied Expeditionary Force: At my first Press 

Conference as Supreme Commander I told the War Correspondents that 

once they were accredited to my headquarters I considered them quasistaff officers.

All war correspondents that may accompany the expedition are 

first accredited to Supreme Headquarters and operate under policies 

approved by the Supreme Commander. They are, in turn, assigned to 

lower headquarters in accordance with agreements between the Public 

Relations Division of this headquarters and the Public Relations Officers 

on the staffs of the several Commanders-in-Chief. This allocation is 

always limited by accommodations available. Public Relations Officers of 

the various echelons act as their guides. As a matter of policy accredited 

war correspondents should be accorded the greatest possible latitude in 

gathering legitimate news.

Consequently it is desired that, subject always to the requirements of 

operations, of which the Commander on the spot must be the sole judge, 

Commanders of all echelons and Public Relations Officers and Conducting 

Officers give accredited war correspondents all reasonable assistance. They 

should be allowed to talk freely with officers and enlisted personnel and 

to see the machinery of war in operation in order to visualize and transmit 

to the public the conditions under which the men from their countries are 

waging war against the enemy.

__________________

7. Alfred E. Chandler, ed., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The 

War Years, Vol. III, (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), 1853.
100

Harry S. Truman

XXXIII President of the United States: 1945–1953

Executive Order 9608—Providing for the Termination of 

the Office of War Information, and for the Disposition of Its 

Functions and of Certain Functions of the Office of InterAmerican Affairs8

August 31, 1945

By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes, 

including Title I of the First War Powers Act, 1941, and as President of the 

United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

1. Effective as of the date of this order: 

(a) There are transferred to and consolidated in an Interim International 

Information Service, which is hereby established in the Department of 

State, those functions of the Office of War Information (established by 

Executive Order No. 9182 of June 13, 1942), and those informational 

functions of the Office of Inter-American Affairs (established as the Office 

of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs by Executive Order No. 8840 

of July 30, 1941 and renamed as the Office of Inter-American Affairs by 

Executive Order No. 9532 of March 23, 1945), which are performed 

abroad or which consist of or are concerned with informing the people of 

other nations about any matter in which the United States has an interest, 

together with so much of the personnel, records, property, and appropriation 

balances of the Office of War Information and the Office of Inter-American 

Affairs as the Director of the Bureau of the Budget shall determine to 

relate primarily to the functions so transferred. Pending the abolition of the 

said Service under paragraph 3(a) of this order, (1) the head of the Service, 

who shall be designated by the Secretary of State, shall be responsible to 

the Secretary of State or to such other officer of the Department as the 

Secretary shall direct, (2) the Service shall, except as otherwise provided 

in this order, be administered as an organizational entity in the Department 

of State, (3) the Secretary may transfer from the Service, to such agencies 

of the Department of State as he shall designate or establish, any function 

of the Service, and (4) the Secretary may terminate any function of the 

__________________

8. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project

[online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters 

(database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=60671 (accessed 5 May 

2009).
101

Service, in which event he shall provide for the winding up of the affairs 

relating to any function so terminated.

(b) There are transferred to the Bureau of the Budget the functions of the 

Bureau of Special Services of the Office of War Information and functions 

of the Office of War Information with respect to the review of publications 

of Federal agencies, together with so much of the personnel, records, and 

property, and appropriation balances of the Office of War Information as 

the Director of the Bureau of the Budget shall determine to relate primarily 

to the said functions.

(c) All those provisions of prior Executive orders which are in conflict 

with this order are amended accordingly. Paragraph 6 of the said Executive 

Order No. 8840 and paragraphs 3, 6, and 8 of the said Executive Order No. 

9182 are revoked.

2. Effective as of the close of business September 15, 1945:

(a) There are abolished the functions of the Office of War Information then 

remaining.

(b) The Director of the Office of War Information shall, pending the 

abolition of the Office of War Information under paragraph 3(b) of this 

order, proceed to wind up the affairs of the Office relating to such abolished 

functions.

3. Effective as of the close of business December 31, 1945:

(a) The Interim International Information Service, provided for in 

paragraph 1(a) of this order, together with any functions then remaining 

under the Service, is abolished.

(b) The Office of War Information, including the office of the Director of 

the Office of War Information, is abolished.

(c) There are transferred to the Department of the Treasury all of the 

personnel, records, property, and appropriation balances of the Interim 

International Information Service and of the Office of War Information 

then remaining, for final liquidation, and so much thereof as the Director 

of the Bureau of the Budget shall determine to be necessary shall be 

utilized by the Secretary of the Treasury in winding up all of the affairs of 

the Service.

HARRY S. TRUMAN

THE WHITE HOUSE,

August 31, 1945.
102

Extract from the Smith-Mundt Act, 19489

Title 22, Section 1461, United States Code, Chapter 18, Subchapter V: 

Dissemination Abroad of Information about the United States

§ 1461. General authorization.

(a) Dissemination of Information Abroad

The Secretary [of State] is authorized, when he finds it appropriate, to 

provide for the preparation, and dissemination abroad, of information about 

the United States, its people, and its policies, through press, publications, 

radio, motion pictures, and other information media, and through 

information centers and instructors abroad. Subject to subsection (b) of 

this section, any such information (other than “Problems of Communism” 

and the “English Teaching Forum” which may be sold by the Government 

Printing Office) shall not be disseminated within the United States, its 

territories, or possessions, but, on request, shall be available in the English 

language at the Department of State, at all reasonable times following its 

release as information abroad, for examination only by representatives of 

United States press associations, newspapers, magazines, radio systems, 

and stations, and by research students and scholars, and, on request, shall 

be available for examination only to Members of Congress.

__________________

9. Cornell University Law School. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ 

22/1461.html (accessed 12 May 2009).
103

Harry Truman, Presidential Memorandum, 5 December 195010

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

December 5, 1950

CONFIDENTIAL

MEMORANDUM FOR:

The Secretary of State

The Secretary of the Treasury

The Secretary of Defense

The Attorney General

The Postmaster General

The Secretary of the Interior

The Secretary of Agriculture

The Secretary of Commerce

The Secretary of Labor

Chairman, National Security Resources Board

Administrator, Economic Cooperation Administration

Director, Central Intelligence Agency

Administrator, Economic Stabilization Agency

Director, Selective Service System

In the light of the present critical international situation, and 

until further written notice from me, I wish that each one of you would 

take immediate steps to reduce the number of public speeches pertaining 

to foreign or military policy made by officials of the departments and 

agencies of the Executive Branch. This applies to officials in the field as 

well as those in Washington.

No speech, press release, or other public statement concerning 

foreign policy should be released until it has received clearance from the 

Department of State.

No speech, press release, or other public statement concerning 

military policy should be released until it has received clearance from the 

Department of Defense.

__________________

10. Declassified Documents Reference System (DDRS) (Woodbridge, CT: 

Research Publications International, 1992). Microfiche #127, #1873.
104

In addition to the copies submitted to the Department of State 

or Defense for clearance, advance copies of speeches and press releases 

concerning foreign policy or military policy should be submitted to the 

White House for information.

The purpose of this memorandum is not to curtail the flow of 

information to the American people, but rather to insure that the information 

made public is accurate and fully in accord with the policies of the United 

States Government.

/s/ HARRY TRUMAN
105

Harry Truman, Directive Creating Psychological Strategy 

Board11

Directive by the President to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of 

Defense, and the Director of Central Intelligence:

SECRET WASHINGTON, April 4, 1951

It is the purpose of this directive to authorize and provide for the more 

effective planning, coordination and conduct, within the framework of 

approved national policies, of psychological operations.

There is hereby established a Psychological Strategy Board responsible, 

within the purposes and terms of this directive, for the formulation and 

promulgation, as guidance to the departments and agencies responsible for 

psychological operations, of over-all national psychological objectives, 

policies, programs, and for the coordination and evaluation of the national 

psychological effort.

The Board will report to the National Security Council on the Board’s 

activities and on its evaluation of the national psychological operations, 

including implementation of approved objectives, policies, and programs 

by the departments and agencies concerned.

For the purposes of this directive, psychological operations shall include 

all activities (other than overt types of economic warfare) envisioned under 

NSC 59/1 and NSC 10/2, the operational planning and execution of which 

shall remain, subject to this directive, as therein assigned.

The Board shall be composed of:

a. The Undersecretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and 

the Director of Central Intelligence, or, in their absence, their appropriate 

designees;

b. An appropriate representative of the head of each such other 

department or agency of the Government as may, from time to time, be 

determined by the Board.

The Board shall designate one of its members as Chairman.

A representative of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall sit with the Board 

as its principal military adviser in order that the Board may ensure that its 

__________________

11. United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 

1951. National Security Affairs: Foreign Economic Policy, Vol. I (Washington, 

DC: US Government Printing Office, 1951). http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.

dl/FRUS.FRUS1951v01 (accessed 13 May 2009).
106

objectives, policies and programs shall be related to approved plans for 

military operations.

There is established under the Board a Director who shall be designated 

by the President and who shall receive compensation of $16,000 per year. 

The Director shall direct the activities under the Board. In carrying out this 

responsibility, he shall

a. Be responsible for having prepared the programs, policies, reports, 

and recommendations for the Board’s consideration,

b. Sit with the Board and be responsible to it for organizing its 

business and for expediting the reaching of decisions,

c. Promulgate the decisions of the Board.

d. Ascertain the manner in which agreed upon objectives, policies, 

and programs of the Board are being implemented and coordinated among 

the departments and agencies concerned,

e. Report thereon and on his evaluation of the national psychological 

operations to the Board together with his recommendations,

f. Perform such other duties necessary to carry out his responsibilities 

as the Board may direct.

The Director, within the limits of funds and personnel made available 

by the Board for this purpose, shall organize and direct a staff to assist 

in carrying out his responsibilities. The Director shall determine the 

organization and qualifications of the staff, which may include individuals 

employed for this purpose, including part-time experts, and/or individuals 

detailed from the participating departments and agencies for assignment 

to full-time duty or on an ad hoc task force basis. Personnel detailed for 

assignment to duty under the terms of this directive shall be under the 

control of the Director, subject only to necessary personnel procedures 

within their respective departments and agencies.

The participating departments and agencies shall afford to the 

Director and the staff such assistance and access to information as may be 

specifically requested by the Director in carrying out his assigned duties.

The heads of the departments and agencies shall examine into the 

present arrangements within their departments and agencies for the 

conduct, direction and coordination of psychological operations with a 

view toward readjusting or strengthening them if necessary to carry out 

the purposes of this directive. The Secretary of State is authorized to effect 

such readjustments in the organization established under NSC 59/1 as he 

deems necessary to accomplish the purposes of this directive.
107

This directive does not authorize the Board nor the Director to perform 

any “psychological operations.”

In performing its functions, the board shall utilize to the maximum 

extent the facilities and resources of the participating departments and 

agencies.

/s/ Harry S. Truman
108

State Department Cable 1006, 21 February 196212

1006. Joint State-Defense-USIA Message. Embtel 1013. State, Defense, 

USIA concur in view that more flexibility needed at local level in handling 

of American newsmen covering Viet-Nam operations. We conclude that in 

absence of rigid censorship, US interests best be protected through policy 

of maximum feasible cooperation, guidance and appeal to good faith of 

correspondents.

Recent press and magazine reports are convincing evidence that speculation stories by hostile reporters often more damaging than facts they might 

report.

Ambassador has over-all authority for handling of newsmen, in so far as 

US is concerned. He will make decisions as to when newsmen permitted 

to go on any missions with US personnel, when approved by US military commander. They also must approve in advance transport of newsmen on US ships and other US craft, including air, involved in Viet-Nam 

operations. Ambassador should coordinate information policy with GVN 

if possible.

Attention called to the following guidelines which we believe in our 

national interest. US military and civilian personnel must see that they are 

adhered to scrupulously and that Ambassador given complete cooperation 

if we [are] to avoid harmful press repercussions on both domestic and 

international scene.

1. This is not a US war. US personnel, civilian or military, should not 

grant interviews or take other actions implying all-out US involvement. 

Important that we constantly reinforce the idea that this is struggle in 

which tens of thousands Vietnamese [are] fighting for their freedom, and 

that our participation is only in training, advisory and support phases.

2. We recognize it natural that American newsmen will concentrate on 

activities of Americans. It is not in our interest, however, to have stories 

indicating that Americans are leading and directing combat missions 

against the Viet Cong.

3. Should impress upon newsmen that purpose of certain classified operations is to flush out and destroy bands of vicious Viet Cong terrorists. 

Every effort made to avoid harming innocent civilians. Sensational press 

stories about children or civilians who become unfortunate victims of military operations are clearly inimical to national interest.

__________________

12. United States Department of State. http://www.state.gov/www/about_

state/history/vol_ii_1961-63/g.html (accessed 12 May 2009).
109

4. Operations may be referred to in general terms, but specific numbers—

particularly numbers of Americans involved—and details of material 

introduced are not to be provided. On tactical security matters, analysis 

strength and weaknesses and other operational details which might aid 

enemy should be avoided.

5. We cannot avoid all criticism of Diem. No effort should be made 

to “forbid” such articles. Believe, however, that if newsmen feel we are 

cooperating they will be more receptive to explanation that we [are] in a 

vicious struggle where support of South Vietnamese is crucial and that 

articles that tear down Diem only make our task more difficult.

6. Emphasize to newsmen fact that success of operation requires high 

level GVN-American cooperation and that frivolous, thoughtless criticism 

of GVN makes cooperation difficult [to] achieve.

7. Correspondents should not be taken on missions whose nature [is] 

such that undesirable dispatches would be highly probable.

Think it advisable that Ambassador and General Harkins see newsmen 

at frequent intervals so as to establish point that they [are] keeping 

press informed to extent compatible with security. Should consider preoperations briefing of newsmen by designated spokesman.

The point below for consideration and private use at Ambassador’s 

discretion:

It should be possible for Ambassador and/or military to exact from responsible correspondents voluntary undertakings to avoid emphasis in dispatches of sensitive matters, to check doubtful facts with US Government 

authorities on scene. Seriousness of need for this may be duly impressed 

on responsible correspondents to extent that, in interests of national security and their own professional needs, they can be persuaded to adopt 

self-policing machinery. Can be reminded that in World War II American 

press voluntarily accepted broad and effective censorship. In type struggle 

now going on in Viet-Nam such self-restraint by press no less important. 

Important to impress on newsmen that at best this is long term struggle 

in which most important developments may be least sensational in which 

“decisive battles” are most unlikely, therefore stories implying sensational 

“combat” each day are misleading.

Additional press guidance will be provided from time to time. Your reactions and suggestions are welcome.

Rusk
110

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

June 22, 1964

NATIONAL SECURITY ACTION MEMORANDUM NO. 30813

MEMORANDUM TO

The Secretary of State

The Secretary of Defense

The Director of Central Intelligence

The Director, U.S. Information Agency

The Administrator, Agency for International Development

Domestic understanding and support are essential to the success of United 

States operations in Southeast Asia. The national interest requires full 

understanding of our policy and purpose in this area. I am not satisfied 

with the performance of the several departments in this area; we require 

stronger arrangements.

I have therefore designated Mr. Robert J. Manning, Assistant Secretary of 

State for Public Affairs, to generate and to coordinate a broad program to 

bring the American people a complete and accurate picture of the United 

States involvement in Southeast Asia, and to show why this involvement 

is essential.

Mr. Manning is instructed to draw as necessary upon the resources of all 

government agencies in obtaining and disseminating the facts needed by 

the American people. He will call as necessary upon the senior policy 

and information officers of your agency. I request that you take the steps 

necessary to ensure that he receives the unstinting cooperation on a priority 

basis. I have instructed Mr. Manning to inform me if he encounters any 

delays or obstructions.

/s/ Lyndon B. Johnson

__________________

13. United States Department of State. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/

nsam-lbj/index.html (accessed 1 July 2008); Lyndon Baine Johnson Library and 

Museum. http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/nsams/nsamhom.

asp (accessed 1 July 2008).
111

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

July 31, 1964

NATIONAL SECURITY ACTION MEMORANDUM NO. 31314

MEMORANDUM FOR

THE SECRETARY OF STATE

THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

The President has noticed this week a number of stories on Southeast Asia 

with Washington datelines which give the impression that some members 

of the Government are giving conflicting and mutually inconsistent 

documents to reporters, and that there may be some unauthorized use of 

information drawn from classified cables. The President requests that each 

Department and Agency head take further appropriate measures to impress 

upon all personnel with access to reporters that public comment on this 

subject should be most carefully handled as set forth in NSAM 308.

/s/ McGeorge Bundy

__________________

14. Johnson Library, National Security File. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/

nsam-lbj/index.html; and http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/

nsams/nsamhom.asp (accessed 1 July 2008).
112

Extract from National Security Action Memorandum 328, 

6 April 196515

[Points 1–4 reiterated previous Presidential approval of nonmilitary, 

psychological, covert, and military programs of action for Vietnam.]

* * * * * * *

5. The President approved an 18-20,000 man increase in U.S. 

military support forces to fill out existing units and supply needed logistic 

personnel.

6. The President approved the deployment of two additional Marine 

Battalions and one Marine Air Squadron and associated headquarters and 

support elements.

7. The President approved a change of mission for all Marine 

Battalions deployed to Vietnam to permit their more active use under 

conditions to be established and approved by the Secretary of Defense in 

consultation with the Secretary of State.

* * * * * * *

11. The President desires that with respect to the actions in paragraphs 

5 through 7, premature publicity be avoided by all possible precautions. 

The actions themselves should be taken as rapidly as practicable, but in 

ways that should minimize any appearance of sudden changes in policy, 

and official statements on these troop movements will be made only with 

the direct approval of the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the 

Secretary of State. The President’s desire is that these movements and 

changes should be understood as being gradual and wholly consistent with 

existing policy.

/s/ McGeorge Bundy

__________________

15. Johnson Library, National Security File. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/

nsam-lbj/index.html; and http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/

nsams/nsamhom.asp (accessed 1 July 2008).
113

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

January 14, 1983

NATIONAL SECURITY DECISION 

DIRECTIVE NUMBER 7716

MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

RELATIVE TO NATIONAL SECURITY

I have determined that it is necessary to strengthen the organization, 

planning and coordination of the various aspects of public diplomacy of the 

United States Government relative to national security. Public diplomacy 

is comprised of those actions of the U.S. Government designed to generate 

support of our national security objectives.

A Special Planning Group (SPG) under the National Security Council will 

be established under the chairmanship of the Assistant to the President for 

National Security Affairs. Membership shall consist of the Secretary of 

State, Secretary of Defense, the Director of the United States Information 

Agency, the Director of the Agency of International Development, and 

the Assistant to the President for Communications or their designated 

alternate. Other senior White House officials will attend as appropriate. 

Senior representatives of other agencies may attend at the invitation of the 

chairman.

The SPG shall be responsible for the overall planning, direction, coordination and monitoring of implementation of public diplomacy activities. It 

shall ensure that a wide-ranging program of effective initiatives is developed and implemented to support national security policy, objectives and 

decisions. Public diplomacy activities involving the President or the White 

House will continue to be coordinated with the Office of the White House 

Chief of Staff.

Four interagency standing committees will be established, and report 

directly to the SPG. The SPG will ensure that guidance to these committees 

is provided, as required, so that they can carry out their responsibilities in 

__________________

16. Ronald Reagan Library. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-077.

htm (accessed 1 July 2008).
114

the area of public diplomacy. The SPG will further periodically review 

the activities of the four permanent coordinating committees to insure 

that plans are being implemented and that resource commitments are 

commensurate with established priorities.

The NSC Staff, in consultation with the regular members of the SPG, 

will provide staff support to the SPG and facilitate effective planning, 

coordinating and implementing of plans and programs approved by the 

SPG. The NSC Staff will call periodic meetings of the four committee 

chairmen or their designees to ensure inter-committee coordination.

—Public Affairs Committee: This coordinating committee will be 

co-chaired by the Assistant to the President for Communications and the 

Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. This group 

will be responsible for the planning and coordinating on a regular basis 

of U.S. Government public affairs activities relative to national security. 

Specifically, it will be responsible for the planning and coordination of 

major speeches on national security subjects and other public appearances 

by senior officials, and for planning and coordination with respect to public 

affairs matters concerning national security and foreign policy events 

and issues with foreign and domestic dimensions. This committee will 

coordinate public affairs efforts to explain and support major U.S. foreign 

policy initiatives.

—International Information Committee: This committee will be 

chaired by a senior representative of the United States Information Agency. 

A senior representative of the Department of State shall serve as vice 

chairman of the committee. The body will be responsible for the planning, 

coordinating and implementing international information activities in 

support of U.S. policies and interests relative to national security. It will 

assume the responsibilities of the existing “Project Truth” Policy Group. 

The committee shall be empowered to make recommendations and, as 

appropriate, to direct the concerned agencies, interagency groups and 

working groups with respect to information strategies in key policy areas, 

and it will be responsible for coordinating and monitoring implementation 

of strategies on specific functional or geographic areas.

—International Political Committee: This committee will 

be established under the chairmanship of a senior representative of 

the Department of State. A senior representative of the United States 

Information Agency shall serve as vice chairman of the committee. This 

group will be responsible for planning, coordinating and implementing 

international political activities in support of United States policies and 

interests relative to national security. Included among such activities are 
115

aid, training and organizational support for foreign governments and private 

groups to encourage the growth of democratic political institutions and 

practices. This will require close collaboration with other foreign policy 

efforts—diplomatic, economic, military—as well as a close relationship 

with those sectors of the American society—labor, business, universities, 

philanthropy, political parties, press—that are or could be more engaged 

in parallel efforts overseas. This group will undertake to build up the 

U.S. Government capability to promote democracy, as enunciated in the 

President’s speech in London on June 8, 1982. Furthermore, this committee 

will initiate plans, programs and strategies designed to counter totalitarian 

ideologies by the Soviet Union or Soviet surrogates. This committee shall 

be empowered to make recommendations and, as appropriate, to direct 

the concerned departments and agencies to implement political action 

strategies in support of key policy objectives. Attention will be directed 

to generate policy initiatives keyed to coming events. Close coordination 

with the other committees will be essential.

—International Broadcasting Committee: This committee will be 

chaired by a representative of the Assistant to the President for National 

Security Affairs. This committee will be responsible for the planning and 

coordination of international broadcasting activities sponsored by the 

U.S. Government consistent with existing statutory requirements and the 

guidance established by NSDD 45. Among its principal responsibilities 

will be diplomatic and technical planning relative to modernization of U.S. 

international broadcasting capabilities, the development of anti-jamming 

strategies and techniques, planning relative to direct radio broadcast by 

satellite and longer term considerations of the potential for direct T.V. 

broadcasting.

Each designated committee is authorized to establish, as appropriate, 

working groups or ad hoc task forces to deal with specific issues or 

programs.

All agencies should ensure that the necessary resources are made available 

for the effective operation of the interagency groups here established.

Implementing procedures for these measures will be developed as 

necessary.

/s/ Ronald Reagan
116

Guidelines for News Media, 14 January 199117

News media personnel must carry and support any personal and 

professional gear they take with them, including protective cases for 

professional equipment, batteries, cables, converters, etc.

Night Operations—Light discipline restrictions will be followed. The 

only approved light source is a flashlight with a red lens. No visible light 

source, including flash or television lights will be used when operating with 

forces at night unless specifically approved by the on-scene commander.

Because of host-nation requirements, you must stay with your public 

affairs escort while on Saudi bases. At other U.S. tactical or field locations 

and encampments, a public affairs escort may be required because of 

security, safety, and mission requirements as determined by the host 

commander.

Casualty information, because of concern of the notification of the 

next of kin, is extremely sensitive. By executive directive, next of kin of 

all military fatalities must be notified in person by a uniformed member 

of the appropriate service. There have been instances in which the next 

of kin have first learned of the death or wounding of a loved one through 

the news media. The problem is particularly difficult for visual media 

photographs showing a recognizable face, nametag, or other identifying 

feature should not be used before next of kin have been notified. The 

anguish that sudden recognition at home can cause far outweighs the news 

value of the photograph, film, or videotape. News coverage of casualties 

in medical centers will be in strict compliance with the instructions of 

doctors and medical officials.

To the extent that individuals in the news media seek access to 

the U.S. area of operation, the following rule applies: Prior to or upon 

commencement of hostilities, media pools will be established to provide 

initial combat coverage of U.S. forces. U.S. news media personnel present 

in Saudi Arabia will be given the opportunity to join CENTCOM media 

pools, providing they agree to pool their products. News media personnel 

who are not members of official CENTCOM media pools will not be 

permitted into forward areas. Reporters are strongly discouraged from 

attempting to link up on their own with combat units. U.S. commanders 

will maintain extremely tight security throughout the operational area and 

will exclude from the area of operation all unauthorized individuals.

__________________

17. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Pentagon Rules on Media 

Access to the Persian Gulf War, 102d Congress, 1st sess., 20 February 1991, v–vi.
117

For news media personnel participating in designated CENTCOM 

Media Pools:

(1) Upon registering with the JIB, news media should contact their 

respective pool coordinator for an explanation of pool considerations.

(2) In the event of hostilities, pool products will be subject to 

review before release to determine if they contain sensitive information 

about military plans, capabilities, operations, or vulnerabilities (see 

attached ground rules) that would jeopardize the outcome of an operation 

or the safety of U.S. or coalition forces. Material will be examined solely 

for its conformance to the attached ground rules, not for its potential to 

express criticism or cause embarrassment. The public affairs escort officer 

on scene will review pool reports, discuss ground rule problems with 

the reporter, and in the limited circumstances when no agreement can be 

reached with a reporter about disputed materials, immediately send the 

disputed materials to JIB Dharan for review by the JIB Director and the 

appropriate news media representative. If no agreement can be reached, 

the issue will be immediately forwarded to OASD(PA) for review with 

the appropriate bureau chief. The ultimate decision on publication will be 

made by the originating reporter’s news organization.

(3) Correspondents may not carry a personal weapon.

Ground Rules, 14 January 1991

The following information should not be reported because its 

publication or broadcast could jeopardize operations and endanger lives.

(1) For U.S. or coalition units, specific numerical information on 

troop strength, aircraft, weapons systems, on-hand equipment, 
118

International Public Information (IPI)

Presidential Decision Directive PDD 6818

30 April 1999

[No text or factsheet for this PDD has been released.]

On 30 April 1999 President Clinton issued a secret Presidential 

Decision Direction—PDD 68—ordering the creation of an 

International Public Information (IPI) to address problems identified during military missions in Kosovo and Haiti, when no single US agency was empowered to coordinate US efforts to sell 

its policies and counteract bad press abroad. The IPI system is 

geared towards prevention and mitigation of crises and operates 

on a continuous basis. PDD-68 is evidently intended to replace 

the provisions of NSDD 77 “Management of Public Diplomacy 

Relative to National Security” issued by President Reagan on 

14 February 1983.

PDD 68 ordered top officials from the Defense, State, Justice, 

Commerce and Treasury departments and the Central Intelligence 

Agency and FBI to establish an IPI Core Group. The IPI Core 

Group is chaired by the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy 

and Public Affairs at the State Department. The IPI Core Group is 

ordered by the Presidential Directive to “assist [U.S. government] 

efforts in defeating adversaries.” “The intelligence community 

will play a crucial role . . . for identifying hostile foreign propaganda and deception that targets the U.S.,” the Group’s charter 

says. The IPI Core Group will arrange “training exercises at the 

National Defense University, National Foreign Affairs Training 

Center, the Service War Colleges” and other institutions. 

The International Public Information [IPI] System is designed 

to “influence foreign audiences” in support of US foreign policy 

and to counteract propaganda by enemies of the United States. 

The intent is “to enhance U.S. security, bolster America’s economic prosperity and to promote democracy abroad,” according 

to the IPI Core Group Charter. The Group’s charter states that 

IPI control over “international military information” is intended 

__________________

18. International Public Information. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd/

pdd-68.htm (accessed 12 May 2009).
119

to “influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups 

and individuals.” The IPIG will encourage the United Nations 

and other international organizations to make “effective use of 

IPI . . . in support of multilateral peacekeeping.” According to the 

IPIG Charter, IPI activities “are overt and address foreign audiences only” while domestic information should be “deconflicted” 

and “synchronized” to avoid contradictory messages.

Previously, the US Information Agency and the State Department 

were the primary agencies with responsibility for international 

public diplomacy. But with the information revolution, all agencies 

now have the ability to communicate internationally and interact 

with foreign populations. IPI is a mechanism that has been established to make sure that these various actors are working in a 

coordinated manner. According to the IPIG Charter, “The objective of IPI is to synchronize the informational objectives, themes 

and messages that will be projected overseas . . . to prevent and 

mitigate crises and to influence foreign audiences in ways favorable to the achievement of U.S. foreign policy objectives.” The 

charter insists that information distributed through IPI should be 

designed not “to mislead foreign audiences” and that information 

programs “must be truthful.”

The new information policy will not be used to influence the 

American public, which is prohibited by U.S. law. However, since 

foreign media reports are frequently reflected in American news 

media, it will be impossible to entirely preclude a backwash of the 

IPI-generated information into America. The IPIG Charter recognizes this, calling for the US Government domestic public affairs 

activities to be coordinated with foreign IPI efforts. According to 

the IPIG Charter, information aimed at domestic audiences should 

“be coordinated, integrated, deconflicted and synchronized with 

the [IPI Core Group] to achieve a synergistic effect for [government] strategic information activities.”
120

George W. Bush

Executive Order 13283—Establishing the Office of Global Communications19

January 21, 2003

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws 

of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Establishment of the Office of Global Communications. There 

is hereby established within the White House Office an Office of Global 

Communications (the “Office”) to be headed by a Deputy Assistant to the 

President for Global Communications.

Sec. 2. Mission. The mission of the Office shall be to advise the 

President, the heads of appropriate offices within the Executive Office 

of the President, and the heads of executive departments and agencies 

(agencies) on utilization of the most effective means for the United States 

Government to ensure consistency in messages that will promote the 

interests of the United States abroad, prevent misunderstanding, build 

support for and among coalition partners of the United States, and inform 

international audiences. The Office shall provide such advice on activities 

in which the role of the United States Government is apparent or publicly 

acknowledged.

Sec. 3. Functions. In carrying out its mission:

(a) The Office shall assess the methods and strategies used by the 

United States Government (other than special activities as defined in 

Executive Order 12333 of December 4, 1981) to deliver information 

to audiences abroad. The Office shall coordinate the formulation 

among appropriate agencies of messages that reflect the strategic 

communications framework and priorities of the United States, and 

shall facilitate the development of a strategy among the appropriate 

agencies to effectively communicate such messages.

(b) The Office shall work with the policy and communications offices of 

agencies in developing a strategy for disseminating truthful, accurate, 

and effective messages about the United States, its Government and 

policies, and the American people and culture. The Office may, after 

__________________

19. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project

[online] (Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters 

(database)). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=61379 (accessed 1 July 

2008).
121

consulting with the Department of State and obtaining the approval 

of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs on the 

President’s behalf, work with cooperating foreign governments in the 

development of the strategy. In performing its work, the Office shall 

coordinate closely and regularly with the Assistant to the President for 

National Security Affairs, or the Assistant’s designee.

(c) The Office shall work with appropriate agencies to coordinate 

the creation of temporary teams of communicators for short-term 

placement in areas of high global interest and media attention as 

determined by the Office. Team members shall include personnel from 

agencies to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability 

of personnel. In performing its functions, each information team shall 

work to disseminate accurate and timely information about topics 

of interest to the on-site news media, and assist media personnel in 

obtaining access to information, individuals, and events that reinforce 

the strategic communications objectives of the United States and its 

allies. The Office shall coordinate when and where information teams 

should be deployed; provided, however, no information team shall 

be deployed abroad without prior consultation with the Department 

of State and the Department of Defense, and prior notification to the 

Office of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

(d) The Office shall encourage the use of state-of-the-art media and 

technology and shall advise the United States Government of events, 

technologies, and other communications tools that may be available 

for use in conveying information. 

Sec. 4. Administration. The Office of Administration within the Executive 

Office of the President shall provide the Office with administrative and 

related support, to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability 

of appropriations, as directed by the Chief of Staff to the President to carry 

out the provisions of this order.

Sec. 5. Relationship to Other Interagency Coordinating Mechanisms. 

Presidential direction regarding National Security Council related 

mechanisms for coordination of national security policy shall apply with 

respect to the Office in the same manner as it applies with respect to 

other elements of the White House Office. Nothing in this order shall be 

construed to impair or otherwise affect any function assigned by law or 

by the President to the National Security Council or to the Assistant to the 

President for National Security Affairs.

Sec. 6. Continuing Authorities. This order does not alter the existing 

authorities of any agency. Agencies shall assist the Deputy Assistant to 
122

the President for Global Communications, to the extent consistent with 

applicable law and direction of the President, and to the extent such 

assistance is consistent with national security objectives and with the 

mission of such agencies, in carrying out the Office’s mission.

Sec. 7. General Provisions.

(a) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, 

substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity by any party 

against the United States, its agencies, instrumentalities or entities, its 

officers or employees, or any other person.

(b) Nothing in this order shall be construed to grant to the Office any 

authority to issue direction to agencies, officers, or employees. 

GEORGE W. BUSH

The White House,

January 21, 2003.

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 8:45 a.m., January 23, 

2003.]
123

Appendix B

Chronology

20 April 1898 Congress retroactively declares war on 

Spain.

10 December 1898 Treaty of Paris formalized end of 

Spanish-American War.

4 February 1899 Philippine-American War begins.

Spring 1916 Major Douglas MacArthur becomes the 

Army’s first public affairs officer.

2 April 1917 President Woodrow Wilson requests 

Congress approve a Declaration of War 

on Germany.

13 April 1917 Establishment of Committee on Public 

Information (Creel Committee).

18 May 1917 President Wilson signs Selective Service 

Act into law.

5 June 1917 Selective Service registration day 

(nearly 10 million men presented 

themselves to enroll in the draft).*

15 June 1917 Espionage Act passed.

8 January 1918 President Wilson’s Fourteen Points 

Speech.

16 May 1918 Sedition Act passed [repealed in 1921].

8 February 1918–13 June 1919 Publication of The Stars and Stripes.

September 1939 Office of Government Reports 

established.

16 September 1940 Selective Service Act signed into law.

16 October 1940 Selective Service Registration Day.

6 January 1941 Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms Speech.

March 1941 Division of Information of the Office of 

Emergency Management established.

__________________

*

David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society

(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1980), 149–150, 154.
124

July 1941 Office of Coordinator of Information 

established.

August 1941 Foreign Information Service established.

14 August 1941 Promulgation of the Atlantic Charter as 

agreed to by President Roosevelt and 

Prime Minister Churchill.

October 1941 Office of Facts and Figures established.

December 1941 Office of Censorship established.

5 April 1942 The first broadcast of Army Hour.

13 June 1942 Office of War Information established.

1946 Army Information School established at 

Carlisle Barracks.

January 1948 Smith-Mundt Act passed.

17 March 1949 Secretary of Defense Forrestal creates 

the Office of Public Information (OPI) 

in the Department of Defense.

April 1951 President Truman established the 

Psychological Strategy Board.

1951 Army Information School renamed 

Armed Forces Information School.

24 January 1953 President Eisenhower forms the 

President’s Committee on International 

Information Activities.

March 1955 Planning Coordination Group 

established.

1964 Armed Forces Information School 

renamed Defense Information School.

1969 Office of Communications set up in the 

White House.

25 October 1983 US launched operation URGENT 

FURY, an invasion of Grenada.

1991 Gulf War Military-Media Hearings.

1999 Presidential Decision Directive 68, 

International Public Information.

2003 Office of Global Communications set up 

in the White House.
125

Appendix C

US Government Communication/ 

Information Departments and Agencies

Central Intelligence Agency. Established under the 1947 National 

Security Act.

Committee on Public Information. Established by President Woodrow 

Wilson in 1917. Referred to as the Creel Committee, named after its 

director, George Creel.

Department of the Army, Office of Information.

Department of Defense, Office of Public Information. Established by 

Secretary of Defense James Forrestal on 17 March 1949.

Department of State, Bureau for Public Affairs.

Division of Information. Established in March 1941. Robert Horton 

served as the first director.

Foreign Information Service. Established in August 1941. It was a 

subdivision of the Office of Coordinator of Information. Robert Sherwood 

served as the first director of the Foreign Information Service.

Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Office of Information. 

Established spring 1964. Barry Zorthian served as the first director.

Navy Department, Public Affairs.

Office of Censorship. Authorized under the first War Powers Act of 

1941. President Roosevelt appointed Byron Price as the first director on 

19 December 1941.

Office of Coordinator of Information. Established by President 

Roosevelt in July 1941. William G. “Wild Bill” Donovan served as the 

first director.

Office of Facts and Figures. Established by President Roosevelt in 

October 1941. Archibald MacLeish served as the first director.

Office of Global Communications. Established by President Bush in July 

2002, and made official by Executive order on 21 January 2003.

Office of Government Reports. Established by President Roosevelt in 

September 1939. Lowell Mellett served as the first director.
126

Office of War Information. Established by President Roosevelt in 

June 1942. Elmer Davis served as the first director. The Office of War 

Information absorbed the functions of the Office of Facts and Figures, 

the Office of Government Reports, and numerous aspects of the Office of 

Coordinator of Information and the Foreign Information Service.

Psychological Strategy Board. Established by President Truman in April 

1951. It was dissolved by President Eisenhower in the fall of 1953, and its 

functions transferred to the Operations Coordinating Board.

US Information Agency. Established in 1953. In 1978 its functions were 

consolidated into the Department of State, Bureau of Educational and 

Cultural Affairs.

Voice of America. Established in February 1942 as part of the Office of 

War Information.

War Department, Public Affairs.
127

About the Author

Mr. Robert T. Davis II joined the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) in 

June 2007. He earned a B.A. in History from the University of Kansas 

in 1998, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Modern European History from 

Ohio University in 2003 and 2008, respectively. He is the author of CSI 

Occasional Paper 27, The Challenge of Adaptation: The US Army in the 

Aftermath of Conflict, 1953–2000. Dr. Davis is currently researching the 

development of the hybrid warfare concept and preparing a manuscript for 

publication on NATO Strategy during the Cold War.


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