Office of the Historian

74. Information Memorandum From the Assistant Director, North Africa, Near East, and South Asia, United States Information Agency (Nalle) to the Director (Reinhardt)1

Washington, June 28, 1977

SUBJECT

  • Formation of Middle East Peace Effort Working Group

Acting on the conviction that public diplomacy can make a critical contribution to the U.S. effort to bring peace to the Middle East, INA has formed a “Middle East Working Group” to increase and focus Agency programming in support of this peace effort.

The principal function of the Working Group will be to stimulate development of programs and media materials for use by the concerned posts (and VOA) in communicating with appropriate audiences about U.S. policy in the Middle East. In this pre-negotiation stage of the peace effort, we see a basic imperative to “keep the record straight” on just where the U.S. Government stands. It is also important to inform area elites of U.S. public and media attitudes toward Middle East issues. The group will also explore ways to take advantage of the USG role as “honest broker” by making available to the Israeli leadership and public opinion the viewpoints of moderate Arabs, and to Arab leaders the opinions of moderate Israelis.

We foresee that we may have to ask for additional funding, beyond that granted in the Mid-year Program Review. We are particularly interested in expanding activity in the exchange of persons field, and we are working with CU on cost projections of several promising projects.

The Middle East Working Group will meet in INA every Monday at 12:30 pm for a brown-bag working session to consider new program ideas and to evaluate programs already underway. We are inviting attendance by representatives of concerned State and USIA offices. INA Desk Officer Bill Thompson will serve as coordinator of the Working Group.

  1. Source: National Archives, RG 306, Office of the Director, Executive Secretariat, Secretariat Staff, Correspondence Files, 1973–1980, Entry P–104, Box 127, 7702350–7702359. Unclassified. Copies were sent to Bray and Schneidman. Reinhardt and Fraser initialed the memorandum, indicating that they saw it.↩