Office of the Historian

Secretary’s Letters, lot 56 D 459, “President”

Memorandum for the President by the Secretary of State1

confidential
[Washington,] October 14, 1953.
  • Subject:
  • The Official Label Information Program

In preparing to carry out the section of Reorganization Plan No. 8, which makes the Secretary of State responsible for an information program on official U.S. positions “identified as official positions by an exclusive descriptive label”, account has been taken of the recommendations of your Committee on International Information Activities.2

In accordance with these recommendations, the U.S. Information Agency is being reorganized so that its output will emphasize factual news reporting and will reflect the attitude of the U.S. Government in a responsible manner.

In view of this change in the character of USIA output the problem has been to develop a special program which will have the advantages of an official label but which will not, at the same time, discredit the USIA by implying that the rest of its output does not reflect Government policy.

I have concluded that the presentation of official positions within the following framework would best accomplish these ends:

1.
Statements or speeches by the President and the Secretary of State on foreign affairs are the most authoritative possible and do not need an official label. However, they will be given an advance buildup and subsequent follow-through in accordance with the impact which they wish them to have abroad.
2.
The State Department will prepare at periodic intervals programs to be disseminated by USIA, preceded and followed in each program by the statement that they have been produced by the Department as a special statement on U.S. foreign policy.
3.
As general practice, these programs will be produced to meet one or more of the following circumstances:
a.
When it is desired to emphasize an especially important policy development.
b.
When it is desired to present a periodic review of foreign policy developments.
c.
When conflicting statements by prominent Americans have produced confusion abroad.

Mr. Streibert, Director of the U.S. Information Agency, and Mr. C.D. Jackson of your staff, concur in these conclusions.

It is recommended that you approve the presentation of official U.S. positions on foreign policy within the above framework.

John Foster Dulles
  1. Drafted by Phillips. Two brief memoranda, attached to the source text, indicate that Dulles asked McCardle on Oct. 8 to draw up a memorandum to the President on the subject, and that McCardle forwarded the memorandum to Dulles on Oct. 14 for his signature. A copy of this document and the accompanying two memoranda are also in file 103 USIA/10–1453.↩
  2. Reference is to the Jackson Committee Report, p. 1795.↩