Editorial Note
According to his book Truth is Our Weapon (New York, Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1953), pages 78–79, Assistant Secretary of State Barrett and his staff prepared a paper, presumably sometime in the latter half of 1950, restating American propaganda objectives. Help in the preparation of the paper was provided by Wallace Carroll, Editor of the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, and Joseph B. Phillips, former Foreign Affairs Director of Newsweek. The paper in draft was discussed at length with Secretary of State Acheson, John Foster Dulles, other high-ranking Department of State officers, and with a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. A lengthy quotation from a 1950 summary of the paper, which Barrett explained became the guiding document of the information program, indicated four primary objectives of the new psychological offensive: 1. creation of a climate of confidence and self-reliance; 2. presenting the United States fairly and countering misconceptions and misrepresentations about the United States; 3. deterring the Soviet Union from further aggression by frustrating the psychological preparation for war; 4. helping roll back Soviet influence by all means short of force.
No paper of the sort described by Barrett has been found in the 1950 portion of Department of State files.