Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XXX, Public Diplomacy
68. Memorandum From the Director of the United States Information Agency (Reinhardt) to all USIS Principal and Branch Posts and Heads of Offices and Services1
We are all aware that some critical decisions will be made over the next several months about the basic thrust and organization of the United States’ entire public diplomacy effort. Regardless of the precise outcome of this process, we can be certain that public diplomacy will continue to be an active, vital element of the overall U.S. foreign policy effort. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that public diplomacy will assume an even greater importance than it has in the past.
It is with this in mind that I have initiated an effort to get USIA’s own house in order. I believe we must reexamine thoroughly everything we do, and why we do it, to insure that we are an Agency which is clear about its mission, realistic about its objectives, tough-minded about its programs and confident in its contribution to the overall foreign policy effort of the United States.
I believe we need a rigorous set of standards by which all elements of the Agency will operate. We need carefully defined guidelines to insure that our varied activities are carried out in a coherent fashion, toward the same end.
With a view toward developing a set of operative principles and guidelines, the Deputy Director and I have recently held a series of wide-ranging, highly informative discussions with all Area and Media Directors. A report on these discussions, together with the set of guidelines that has emerged from them, is enclosed. I urge you to study this report with great attention and care. It contains the guidelines on which we shall be building in the months ahead—the guidelines by which all Agency elements will be expected to operate—and some of the basic thinking which underlies these guidelines.
This report is only a beginning; but it is an important one. I intend for the dialogue we have now begun within the Agency to be ongoing. I view it as an entirely healthy process, one that can help us achieve a new level of vitality, a renewed sense of purpose and a coherent, unified direction for the Agency’s worldwide activities.
[Page 196]I welcome the full participation of all personnel in this process.
Sincerely,
Director
Enclosure
Report Prepared in the United States Information Agency2
INTRODUCTION
The following is a report on a series of meetings that the Director and the Deputy Director held with all USIA element heads on June 2, June 8 and June 15. The purpose of the meetings was to lay out and discuss some fundamental principles by which the Agency should operate. The purpose of this report is to inform you of the key points of discussion and the results of the meetings.
Part I of the report is a transcript of the Director’s opening remarks at the June 8 meeting. These remarks have been included in their entirety so that you may have an accurate sense of the Director’s thinking.
Part II is a summary of the meetings’ key points of discussion. It is designed to draw your attention to some of the more important problems and opportunities characteristic of current Agency operations.
Part III is a summary review of the Agency’s basic operating guidelines under the new Director. These guidelines are a product of Director Reinhardt’s thinking, as refined by the recent discussions. Of necessity, the guidelines are general in nature. The Agency’s management, however, will be developing specific mechanisms to insure that all Agency operations properly adhere to these guidelines.
[Omitted here is a title page that reads: “USIA: OPERATING GUIDELINES FOR THE AGENCY, Report on a Series of Discussions among the Director, the Deputy Director and all USIA Element Heads.”]
I. The Director’s Opening Remarks, June 8 Meeting with all USIA Element Heads
This is a meeting that I came back to the Agency determined to hold rather early, because I thought it was at the core of what I hoped [Page 197] to accomplish in the Agency. The idea of such a meeting goes further back than that. We have all second-guessed our superiors in the Agency. When I knew that I would have charge, I had hoped to hold this meeting the next day and get it out of the way so we could redirect the Agency as I have thought it should be directed since 1956.3
It soon became clear to me, however, that we couldn’t hold the meeting right away. I was not sure that my 1956 views were still entirely relevant. I was not sure who would constitute the intermediate-term managerial forces of the Agency. I was not sure of some other things. So the meeting is several weeks late. I regard it nonetheless as probably the most important in the series of meetings that I have had—primarily because it is all about program leadership.
Over the years the Agency has vacillated, temporized, changed courses with different Directors and different personalities. Each Director has had certain interests and some have accomplished worthy goals, but few have been strongly concerned with leadership of the field program, with being closely involved with USIA’s operations in Malawi or Germany. We would like to go in the direction of being intimately involved in the field program. We want to take some of the wear off this hackneyed statement and make it fully applicable today. We want to insure, in short, that the focus of USIA is constantly on the field.
This morning I would like to set forth and discuss some principles or guidelines to govern our operations overseas, principles which affect media and management elements in Washington as they serve the field. These principles will establish some parameters for our future operations.
I would first refer to Area Directors specifically, and everyone else by implication. Area Directors are in direct contact with the field and must conceive of themselves as part of management. As Area Directors, you are not a buffer or the PAO’s representative in Washington—you are part of the management of the Agency. The guidelines we eventually agree on about field operations are your guidelines. You will have a fair chance to debate and refine them, and then they will become yours. The PAO and his or her staff will act in accordance with the guidelines, and you will be the first line of appraisal, not defense. It will not be your job to represent PAOs but to represent the management of the Agency.
If Area Directors operate in this fashion, theoretically we do not need an inspection corps. Theoretically you, travelling regularly, should know all that goes on in our overseas posts. Practically, we do, of course, need the element of objectivity the inspection corps brings [Page 198] to the assessment of field programs. But there shouldn’t be many substantial discoveries of which you as Area Directors are not already aware.
What do we want to do in the field? The pending reorganization of the Agency will eventually produce a new statement of public mandate, or charter, enunciated by the President. But any enunciated charter is likely to go back to the bedrock of the Smith-Mundt Act,4 which sets forth two major objectives for us: 1) to explain American policy, and 2) to project American society—the most technically advanced, the most affluent, and in many ways the most interesting civilization in all of history. American life, thought, development—these are the things we project. There is no way around these two obligations. They can be expanded on or refined, but not avoided. A field post that is not meeting both of these obligations is not operating in the national interest or in accordance with our guidelines.
Look a little further. Every year the State Department orders a PARM exercise, setting out objectives of U.S. foreign policy in a given country. Our concern will be which of these USIS is contributing to. If there are eight PARM objectives, maybe it’s 3, 4, and 5 to which USIS is contributing. Theoretically a post could conclude there is nothing USIS can do about any one of the eight. We would be most interested in the rationale of the post which makes that statement; resources would be allocated accordingly. The question is, if you can’t contribute to PARM-stated objectives, what can you do? You have your own objectives presumably. These would be subsidiary objectives but not core objectives.
I like the term contract when we refer to the Country Program Memorandum—not a contract that’s unalterable for 12 months, but one that is valid the day it’s written and approved. The objectives should be set in concrete but not necessarily the proposals for implementation. The objectives are a part of the contract between Washington and the field. Obviously they can be changed in response to changing conditions in a country. But unless conditions do change, the management of the Agency—Area Directors being part of management—will be interested in the fulfillment of the contract, whether it’s in Upper Volta or Japan. Charlie Bray and I, when we travel, will be interested in briefings on the up-to-date objectives the posts are working towards, an updating of PARM and on the contract posts have with USIA. We will not let wining and dining get in the way of these discussions. We will ask the question “What have you done for us lately?” Other elements of management, we should hope, will proceed in like manner.
[Page 199]We would like to advocate in this time of zero-based budgeting, zero-based thinking. We are going through the ZBB exercise this summer. It looks like we are off to a good start. I think there should also be a zero-based philosophy in USIA. That which we have traditionally done is not what we will necessarily continue to do. An essential part of zero-based thinking will be what I would call a central perspective. All of us in this room are part of management, and we must begin from a shared perspective. For example, we should ask the question, “Do we need libraries at all?” From the standpoint of a central perspective we should be able to ask this question and come to some convincing conclusions. “Is a given activity in the national interest?” is another way to put the question. We have always asked that question. You know better than I that in the end we can justify almost anything with that question. Zero-based thinking demands that you ask it with conviction and answer it in a rigorous, convincing fashion.
We would like to repeat again that resource allocation will and should reflect the President’s foreign policy emphasis. If a post is making no contribution to the foreign policy objectives set forth in the PARM, then it should expect resources to be allocated accordingly.
The public diplomacy section of an embassy should be like any other section of an embassy. We ought to be an indispensable part of the country team, and our programs should reflect this. We should hopefully make as great a contribution as the political or economic sections. This relationship will have to be effected in Washington as well as abroad. The contract we have with our posts should reflect all of this.
In arriving at the central perspective I mentioned earlier, I would like to set out for discussion several ideas which form my thinking now. First, there is a strong presumption that a public diplomacy section should be a part of each diplomatic mission abroad. I state that deliberately. It does not mean that in every case it will be a reality. But I think that among the parts of any diplomatic mission there should be a public diplomacy section. The argument can be made that in some places, where our other interests are minimal, it should be the central part. I want to discuss this presumption further because some of you have thought through this question in preparing your papers evaluating one-person posts. Most of these posts are in Africa. One is in Latin America. Wherever they are, Area Directors, as part of management, must take into consideration, except for Africa, that resources to open new posts should come out of the area’s own hide. Latin America will not open in Surinam, which has a good case, unless it takes resources from something else.
For the media elements, with the exception of VOA, there is also a strong presumption in favor of acquiring rather than producing. This is not to say that we are out of the production business. It is only to say there [Page 200] is a strong presumption for acquiring. I gather from the last two or three months in the Agency we are headed in that direction anyway.
There is an understanding that the Washington organization exists for managing and assisting the field; our only interest is in the field operation. There will be several realigned organizational elements—not really new, but the organization chart will reflect some changes. The elements in Washington should be designed to reinforce the principles we are trying to formulate today. There will be a management section including the area offices. Management is understood in terms of managing programs, what we are doing overseas, how well or how poorly. Clearly the front office is part of this management; so are the areas and also IOP. There will be a new IOP, which I will discuss later. This element will ask the question, why this activity or that, how does this library or this seminar contribute to obtaining the objectives of the contract between a field post and USIA? There will also be a service element, and all of the media belong in it. Budget, administrative services, administrative control, resource allocation, people and money of all kinds should be brought more closely together.
Central to a great deal of this restructuring will be a reconstituted IOP. Of necessity it has to have a lot in it. It will include all those things it has had traditionally, but with a new focus. It will be the intellectual nerve center of the Agency. It will have policy, and it will be concerned with plans, today’s and next year’s plans. It will be concerned with evaluations, including inspection but also other aspects of evaluations, such as research—focused research, meaningful, useful research. It must be concerned with guidelines, particularly for the media. It will be concerned with programs in a broader sense. Its relations with our chief medium—VOA—have already been spelled out.
I want nothing I say here to be interpreted wrongly; the PAO still must be concerned with indigenous problems and opportunities. So long as the PAO can provide a convincing rationale for a post’s activities, the leeway he or she has always had over operations will be carefully preserved. As the Agency’s intellectual nerve center, IOP will have the dual role of monitoring or evaluating, and thinking creatively, seeing what the possibilities are. Our perspective here in Washington should be broader than that of the officer in Chad. We should see the overall picture of the Agency’s activities.
Our dominant medium is VOA. It has the means to reach people around the world without going through any filters, at least in areas accustomed to listening to shortwave broadcasts and areas where VOA has a strong signal. Part of the instrumentality for programming which PAOs have at their disposal is radio. There’s nothing a PAO can or should do about the news; but not all VOA broadcasts are news. PAOs can do much to help us with this medium, and as management leaders [Page 201] PAOs should use it. The other media are still important. People still read, look at films, attend seminars and exhibits. The purpose of these activities is to help PAOs fulfill their terms of the contract. All of this has been pretty much generalities. Perhaps in discussion we can set forth some specifics.
I want this to be a discussion. Your focus shouldn’t be for me to answer questions. I am far more interested in what you think.
II. Summary of Key Discussion Points During Meetings of June 2, 8, and 15 Policy Explication
. . . If the Agency has an obligation to explain U.S. policies—and it clearly does—the question is how are we doing it; are we doing it? And the term “U.S. policies” should be understood to include both domestic and foreign policies, since the two are increasingly intertwined in their impact abroad.
. . . There is a feeling that, at least unconsciously, the Agency, its management and executors in the field, may not have been sufficiently engaged in policy explication. Whether this feeling is correct or not, it is perceived in Washington and some areas abroad as correct. That poses both a problem and an opportunity for the Agency. To the extent that we do not explain U.S. policies, or are perceived as not doing so, we detract from our indispensability to the overall foreign policy process.
. . . People have been backing away from policy explication over the years. It was Vietnam, it was Watergate, the quality of the policies we were having to explicate.
. . . We have just emerged from a time when, in this Agency and elsewhere, policies were either not clear or not acceptable to many people within the bureaucracy. During that period, the bureaucratic beast turned away from that and did other things. The question now is whether our attention to a dual obligation has gotten out of balance, whether by calculation or by accident. If so, we must correct the balance.
. . . Going back to the premise that the minimum USIS post is the PAO and the Wireless File—that means that 80 percent of the effort and the time of that PAO should be devoted to policy explication. Everything built at the post around that adds dimension, additional ways in which the policy explication function can be carried out. We ought not to exist without policy explication at the beginning.
. . . I believe there are posts that have been and are doing a by-the-numbers job in setting forth policy. Everything they get is dutifully handled and they have done a first-class job in gaining recognition for our society. Where we have done a miserable job—the Agency and the Department in Washington and in the field—is helping front-line warriors, catching the attention of the audience we are dealing with. I’ve seen in inspections and personal experience that a number of our [Page 202] officers are afraid to take on the explication job because the subjects are so complex. They look on themselves as technicians who merely provide a stage for the experts. If an issue is there, they are unwilling to take it on. Part of it is training, leadership, whatever. We will have to prepare our people and give them the confidence and the skills to do it.
. . . If you start with an officer, even minus the Wireless File, he is at least a reflection of the society. He is the contact point, the person the audience knows. He must be someone attractive enough to that audience, interesting to them, one who can develop a relationship with them to permit him to present a whole variety of wares. If he cannot do that, the game is lost. Because we have acquired of late a lot of very attractive wares—VTRs, magazines, etc.—we are becoming increasingly in this Agency impressarios, distributors of products. We are by default almost entirely that, or too much so. If a USIS officer repeatedly says to a foreigner, “I don’t know anything about that, but in two weeks I can get you the best speakers on the subject,” that officer after a while will not have the kind of relationship which will make him useful in that mission.
. . . First of all, you must be able to articulate, you must know the substance of issues and be able to address them. On top of that, as an FSIO, you are expected to have certain communications abilities which make you different from an FSO. I’ve found a large number of our officers who shy away from the explication role because they don’t feel this is part of their role. I think this is a serious problem, perhaps one that should be addressed at the beginning of the training cycle.
. . . I don’t see how the PAO can function unless he has at least a curbstone knowledge of economics, human rights, etc.
. . . If the PAO or press attache becomes known as the person best able to speak for the Ambassador, is known as an articulate person, reasonable and knowledgeable, I think experience shows that the press will turn to that person.
Indispensability
. . . In order to be an integral part of a diplomatic mission, a USIS post must have some appreciation of—and be appreciated by—the entire mission. Receptivity can vary widely from chief-of-mission to chief-of-mission. Obviously, a PAO must devote time, effort and ingenuity to insuring that his operation is indispensable to the mission. Ultimately, however, a well-run public diplomacy operation is the most persuasive demonstration of a USIS post’s worth to the over-all Mission.
. . . An educational function must also be carried out by USIA management with colleagues in the State Department, the White House, other Executive departments and agencies, and the Congress. This will help to integrate USIS posts abroad more fully into field missions.
[Page 203]Program Integrity
. . . Too often, we inherit setups, and we adapt to the whims of new chiefs of mission. I think it is a rare PAO who will come back to the Agency and say we have had a library for 20 years and now we don’t need it. We all fall into things that already exist and seem to work well for us—without examining whether they are the best ways of getting the job done or not.
Role of the Media
. . . The role of the media is in service of the field programs. Media products should not demand functions that people in the field can’t carry out.
Coherence
. . . Firm management from Washington should insure program coherence and continuity and preclude wild program gyrations resulting from changes in PAOs—while still allowing for the necessary, desirable degree of flexibility, initiative and creativity in the field. The supremacy of the PAO has to be exercised within certain parameters which allow for adaptation to local conditions.
Standards
. . . It is essential that management in Washington agree on a set of standards by which programs in the field can be justified and evaluated. What is a good library or a good information program? What commonalities exist among the areas? What constitutes a good program instrumentality? These are all key questions.
. . . The absence of parameters and standards has led, in the past, to a focus on differences rather than commonalities. If we are going to have a contract with the field, it must be based on consistent standards.
. . . Qualitative standards cannot be separated from cost effectiveness. The PAO, the Area Director, Media heads must always think of the two together.
Strategy
. . . A well-run post must have a communications strategy geared to its objectives. Uncoordinated, purposeless activities too often proliferate in the absence of such a strategy.
Agency-Wide Perspective
. . . It is a healthy process where the Area Director attempts to put on the Director’s hat, in confrontation with the less catholic perspective. Angels clearly will sit on the side of the more catholic view in such confrontations. It should not take more than two or three encounters before the word gets around that at each level of management we are [Page 204] expected to approach problems and decisions from the perspective of central management, that empire-building is out.
. . . We are all guilty of parochialism. We must accept this fact and strive for a better perspective on our commonalities and global mission.
The Director: One of the Agency’s statutory obligations is to explain policy. I doubt that anybody rejects this. I have a feeling, however, that in our operations policy explication may too often be neglected, if not rejected. You can read inspection reports without gaining any real sense of our role as explicators. To put this in some perspective, the last thing I have in mind is that we should be running around the capitals of the world even pretending that we are setting foreign policy right. Indeed, I think it would be dangerous to head in that direction. As managers, I don’t want us to do anything to convey to the field the idea that every radio or TV editorial, or comment against U.S. foreign policy, could be fixed the next day. Nor do I want anyone to ignore the second part of our mandate, which is to project American society. But I think we need to look continually for evidence that we are taking the policy explication role seriously and that we are engaging local opinion molders in serious dialogue about policy issues.
I would think in terms of luncheon meetings or breakfast meetings or dinner meetings with key opinion molders, in which we are engaged in a dialogue about a central issue. The point isn’t to get an editorial or column the next day. If we get it, fine; but if we don’t, we have illustrated to the person that we are talking to aspects of American policy that before the meeting he may well not have taken into consideration. This effort involves setting the record straight where there are obvious errors. That’s what I mean by explication.
Our goal is to promote, through dialogue, a better understanding of U.S. policies and society. I don’t think, on the one hand, that we can be satisfied with the seminar that helps local journalists do a better job 25 years from now. That’s good but not sufficient. On the other hand, I don’t think we need to pretend we’re going to get different editorials. We need a logical rationale, a strategy for dealing with local opinion molders about American policies in the short term as well as the long term. That is the job of the PAO, what we as managers should be looking for.
The question of policy explication versus projection of American society is not an either/or question. It’s a matter of balance. We as managers, together with PAOs in the field, must be sure that the balance is appropriate at each post. This doesn’t mean that each PAO goes around asking: “What have I done for explication today; what do I plan to do for projection tomorrow?” Certainly there is a real sense in which the two objectives overlap and complement each other. But for each post there is nonetheless a proper balance between these two [Page 205] functions, a balance which is determined largely by local issues and communications environments. We must be continually sensitive to the need to achieve and maintain this balance. To put it another way: the balance in effect at each post must be supported by a firm rationale. That is the heart of the contract that the post has with Washington.
Finally, there is a new foreign policy in the land. We, as a chief arm of the foreign affairs community, have to reflect it. We have to accept political realities. One of the great realities is the human rights issue. Another is the so-called Third World emphasis. A budget that allocates over $38 million to Europe and $14 million to Africa is not consistent with the realities of today. There are problems with this in the European budget every year. We should think that over as we look at ZBB. These realities must be taken into account.
III. Summary Review of Operating Guidelines
1. The Agency’s primary focus is on the field. Washington exists only for the purpose of guiding, servicing and assisting work that goes on in the field.
2. All Area and Media Directors should consider themselves integral parts of the Agency’s management team. Their perspectives should be Agency-wide, not parochial.
3. The Agency’s two fundamental objectives are to explain U.S. policy (foreign and domestic) and to project American society. Both of these objectives must be met. Any officer or post that backs away either from policy explication or societal projection is not operating according to the Agency’s guidelines. The balance of time and resources devoted to each of these objectives will of necessity vary from post to post. Because of differing local problems and communications environments, there can be no mandated explication/projection ratio worldwide. But the balance achieved at each post must be justified and evaluated in terms of a systematic clear-minded rationale.
4. Every USIS post should have clearly defined objectives which contribute to the achievement of mission-wide objectives, as defined by the Country Team. The post’s objectives should be viewed as a contract between the post and Washington. Resources will be allocated according to the quality of the post’s contribution to the achievement of mission objectives.
5. Every program and activity of the Agency must be rigorously examined in terms of its contribution to the foreign policy and national interest goals of the Administration. Just because we have done something in the past does not mean we should continue doing it.
6. Every USIS post should be an indispensable part of the Country Team, making a contribution to the overall mission effort comparable to that of the political and economic sections.
[Page 206]7. Except in the most unusual circumstances, every U.S. diplomatic mission abroad should have a public diplomacy section.
8. Among the USIA management, there is a strong bias in favor of acquiring rather than producing media materials of all kinds. Excluding only VOA, we should produce only what is essential and cannot be acquired elsewhere.
9. IOP will be reconstituted to serve as the intellectual nerve center of the Agency, responsible for policy, long- and short-term planning, evaluation and focused, meaningful research.
10. VOA is the dominant medium of the Agency. It should be viewed and utilized by PAOs as an integral element of programming, excepting only VOA’s independent news operation.
11. Proper management dictates that Agency programs and activities have a certain worldwide coherence, thrust and unity of purpose, while still encouraging an appropriate degree of local initiative and flexibility. We must recognize and accommodate local differences. But we must also operate from the premise that our activities have certain worldwide priorities and commonalities. We should think of ourselves as a unified communications system explicating the same foreign policy and the same society worldwide.
12. Proper management also dictates the development and application of a rigorous and consistent set of standards by which all programs and activities can be justified and evaluated.
13. An FSIO must be two things: a communicator as well as the manager of a communications process. This means that he or she must be thoroughly conversant with substantive foreign policy issues. In particular, a USIS officer must keep abreast of the major bilateral issues involving the U.S. and the country in which he or she is posted. An FSIO is not expected to be an expert in every policy issue; but in order to be an effective explicator of U.S. policy, he or she must be able to discuss major policy issues in an intelligent, well-informed manner. What distinguishes and defines an FSIO is that he or she is also expected to manifest an up-to-date, thorough grounding in communications theories, techniques and practices. The two elements—communications skills fused with substantive policy knowledge—go hand-in-hand for an FSIO.
- Source: National Archives, RG 306, USIA Historical Collection, Office of the Director, Biographic Files Relating to USIA Directors and Other Senior Officials, 1953–2000, Entry A–1 1069, Box 24, John E. Reinhardt, Speeches, 1977–1978. No classification marking.↩
- No classification marking.↩
- Reinhardt served as a Foreign Service Officer in USIA at that time.↩
- See footnote 2, Document 1.↩