Walter Roberts: The Impact of U.S. Cold War Public Diplomacy -- "The Most Effective Way of Influencing...Was the Voice of America"

At the end of my two 2010 interviews with Walter Roberts, I asked him which U.S. government public diplomacy programs had had the biggest impact during the Cold War.  His response was unequivocal.   As Walter reflected on the question, approaching it from his seventy-some years of professional involvement in the field of international information and cultural programs, his views carried a unique degree of credibility:

You have to divide the Soviet bloc, Yugoslavia and the West.  As far as the Soviet bloc is concerned, I have not the slightest doubt that the most effective way of influencing the Hungarian, the Romanian and the Soviet peoples was the Voice of America.   Far above everything else, because everything else was restricted and even though the Voice of America was jammed in the indigenous languages, it was not jammed in English. 

In 1959, when I visited the Sokolniki Park exhibit, I was also instructed to call on the Foreign Office to protest the jamming.  The Deputy Foreign Minister – I forget his name now -- who received me was obviously prepared that I would object to their jamming the Russian programs.  When I walked into his office, I immediately realized that he was going to play a trick here because he had on his desk a large Grundig radio receiver.   When I started talking, he said:  “Well, Mr. Roberts, we don’t jam the Voice of America.”   I said: “Well, of course you do.”   He said, no, and he turns and turns the radio on and there was the Voice of America in English coming in loud and clear.  I said, “Yeah, but that’s in English but you jam the Russian.”  He said:  “Mr. Roberts, is Russian your language?”  I said “No, but we broadcast in Russian in order to converse with the Russian people.”  He said:  “But that is an interference in our internal affairs.”  And so on and so on – a typical conversation.  But they did not jam the Voice of America in English. 

Jazz program host Willis Conover and Louis Armstrong on the VOA

I believe that the Voice of America – and Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe – made an enormous difference.   The Eastern European peoples and the Soviet Union peoples were ready for a change.  In my opinion, the enormous barrage from the West – VOA, Radio Liberty, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale, the Vatican Radio and so on – made an enormous difference.  The cultural exchange programs, yes, of course, they had individual impressions – but that was a very individual, whereas the Voice was a mass appeal.  The libraries in Yugoslavia helped the cause but very frankly, the people who went to the library were people who already were in the American corner.  They were able to strengthen their beliefs, strengthen their arguments in conversations by what they read and what they saw in the libraries.  But the Voice of America and the other broadcasting organizations – they had a mass appeal.  I do not think that the approach to the Cold War of the information and cultural program changed very much except through the broadcasting media.  That’s at least my opinion.

  

Walter Roberts: George Kennan and Public Diplomacy -- "Basically, George Kennan Was an Old-Line Diplomat"

Walter's friendship with George F. Kennan was forged in Yugoslavia; Kennan was his boss but also became a mentor.  They continued to stay in touch over the years, until shortly before Kennan's death.  This connection grew up despite the fact that Kennan's perspective on U.S. public diplomacy was definitely from the old school -- respectful, perhaps, but aloof.  Both Walter and Milt Iossi, a former Foreign Service officer who also served at Embassy Belgrade under Ambassador Kennan, shared their memories of him in pieces posted on UNC's "American Diplomacy" online journal.

Amb.-Designate Kennan with JFK at the White House, Feb. 1961

…We in the Embassy in Belgrade were fascinated when the telegram came in to request accreditation for George Kennan.  We had known George Kennan – I personally had known him very, very slightly from previous incarnations – and we were very happy because it enhanced our own stature.  The fact that John F. Kennedy would select George Kennan, and that George Kennan would accept an appointment to be ambassador to Yugoslavia, having been Ambassador to the Soviet Union, was in my opinion an indication that the Presidency of John F. Kennedy would take Yugoslavia seriously.

When George Kennan came, he immediately showed an interest in what we were doing.   I might say that he showed an interest particularly because that was the time when the press law was published, so the entire American -Yugoslav relationship was somehow involved.  Because if the Yugoslavs had succeeded in eradicating USIS, that would have been a major setback in Yugoslav-American relations.   So George Kennan took an immediate interest, and talked to Tito about it.  He wanted that law to become a non-law.

Kennan with Tito, Belgrade 1961

But I have to tell you that basically George Kennan was an old-line diplomat.  He did not show a particular interest in the information program.  As far as the cultural program was concerned, he was more interested.  But I think if you had woken him up at 3 o’clock in the morning and asked him whether he’s happy with USIS, he would probably have said “I’m happy with USIS, but I don’t think it ought to be in the Embassy.”  I think he was much more taken with the British approach, whereby the cultural program was a self-standing operation outside the Embassy.  But he was kind enough, and smart enough, not to show this openly.  And in particular, it was his personal relationship with me – he somehow liked me – and I think I was probably the one officer in whom he confided most.  But not because I was a USIS officer, but because I was who I was.  

1973 Note to George Kennan

So my relationship with George Kennan continued to become a friendship.  I continued to visit him in Princeton after he retired or resigned.  I was basically in touch with him until about a year before he died, when he really didn’t want to talk on the telephone anymore.  As you know, he reached 101 I think, and I think the last time I saw him in Princeton was when he was 98 or 99.  He was still mentally completely, at the time I saw him, but I understand when he reached 100, things went wrong a little way.  But he continued to live in his own house, they had a couple working for them, and he was one of the sweetest and kindest and nicest persons I ever encountered in my whole life.

Walter Roberts: USIS Magazines and Exhibits in Yugoslavia -- "I'm Red-Faced. I Apologize."

Walter and his USIS staff faced some of the same petty challenges and obstacles that other U.S. public diplomats wrestled with in closed societies during the Cold War period, even if Yugoslavia featured a less obdurate program environment than the Communist Bloc countries under Moscow's direct sway.  Information that was neither vetted or approved by the authorities, and especially from a foreign capitalist country, was anathema to the security services.  One of Walter's favorite stories about tangling with the Yugoslav apparatchiki was this one:

We had a mailing list for our magazine called Pregled.  One day, at some occasion, one of the Yugoslavs approached me and said:  “Have you discontinued Pregled?” And I said, no, not at all.  “Well, I didn’t get my copy this month.”  Well, I said, give me your name and I’ll see that a copy be sent to you.   In the next two or three or four days, other people on the staff, both local employees and Americans, said they had heard that Pregled was not distributed.  So finally I came to the conclusion that Pregled was not sent out by the post office.  So I took my jacket and went to the Foreign Office.  And I said:  “Pregled was not distributed – what happened?”  And Mr. Milan Bulajic, who was the American desk officer said:  “Out of the question.”   I said, “No out of the question, it’s a fact but let’s find out what happened.”

Pregled Cover, December 1963

One Sunday, a week later, the telephone rings and Milan Bulajic calls me at home and he asked me whether he could come over.  I said, well of course.  So Milan came over to my house and he said:  “I’m red-faced.  I apologize.  Pregled was thrown by the Ministry of the Interior into the Danube River.  Lock, stock and barrel.”  We found out. 

But that was the only time.  It was very different from a program in France; but it was very different from a program in Bucharest.  It was a very enjoyable stay for me because I was able to do things that I knew I could not do in Bucharest.  For instance, exhibits.  We had beautiful exhibits coming from the United States, and they were always part of the Belgrade fair.  As a matter of course, and policy, Tito came to these fairs.  I got to know him through these fairs because I took him around the American pavilion.  That was much more widespread – yes, we had the Sokolniki Park exhibit in Moscow but I don’t know when the next exhibit was in Moscow because I was not in the line of command anymore at that time because I had gone to Yugoslavia. Tito was very interested.  I remember the capsule in which Glenn, later Senator Glenn, circled the Earth; we got that capsule to show it.  I remember I showed it to Tito and Tito said “Well, I’d have to lose a lot of weight to get into it.”

John Glenn's Friendship 7 Capsule Arrives at Belgrade Airport

Walter Roberts: The Fulbright Program in Yugoslavia -- "Tito Thought It Was An Excellent Idea"

It was very interesting period for me, because I began to realize that my Serbo-Croatian, which I had learned – I think I should put the word “learned” in quotation marks – at the Foreign Service Institute, was not adequate for me to conduct these negotiations with the Yugoslavs.  But the main negotiator on the Yugoslav side spoke French, and so we discussed the agreement in French, and that I was able to do.  If you ask me now, what kind of agreement we reached, I’m not quite sure.  But obviously it worked, because in the end our program continued as it was before.

We always had difficulties [with the Fulbright program] but I made it one of my priorities that during my tenure as Public Affairs Officer there, I would reach a Fulbright agreement.   And I didn’t give up.  I used cocktail parties, I used lunches, I used my calls on the Foreign Office or with other people.  We always would say “Well, things will not be the same until we have a Fulbright agreement.” 

Kennedy and Tito at the White House

The story goes, and I have no reason to doubt it, that Tito, who was the last head of state to visit John F. Kennedy alive, he came at the end of October or early November 1963, and apparently established a very good rapport with the President.  He was happy with his trip to the United States.  Allegedly, upon his return, he said to his immediate staff that he wants to show his gratitude for the way Kennedy received him.  And was there anything in American-Yugoslav relations that he could do to further that?  The American desk officer in the Foreign Office, to whom I had told every day of the week that we wanted a Fulbright agreement, told his Foreign Minister to tell Tito that maybe we can sign a Fulbright agreement.  

Tito thought that was an excellent idea.  The Yugoslavs relented on their insistence that all exchangees – and that was the stumbling block, they wanted to choose the people, and they would not want to give that to a commission – they relented that a Fulbright commission be established in Belgrade, of which the cultural officer of the United States would be the chairman.  So we had a Fulbright agreement and Bill Fulbright himself came for the signing in 1964.  It was absolutely the first Fulbright agreement in Eastern Europe; from what I hear it is still thriving.  

Senator Fulbright and LBJ, April 1964

Walter Roberts: U.S. Public Diplomacy in Yugoslavia -- "We Had Quite a Program There"

In 1960, Walter was offered the choice of a promotion to the European area director job at USIA -- or the position of Counselor for Public Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.  The latter was one of the most responsible U.S. public diplomacy jobs in the field because of Yugoslavia's unique position as a non-aligned Communist state, and Walter opted to go overseas.  It was not an easy decision, Walter acknowledged (the USIA area director position was viewed as a prestigious one), but he was later grateful he had chosen Belgrade.  As he chronicled in various articles over the years, Walter's tour there turned out to be a rich experience that led to a continuing relationship with Yugoslavia and its successor states long after he retired from the Foreign Service.

Perhaps [the] best [way to] describe the situation in Yugoslavia is by a story that I told a USIA director when he asked me:  “How is it to work in Belgrade?”  And my answer was, at the time,  if you travel from Sofia to Rome, Belgrade looks like Rome.  But if you travel from Rome to Sofia, Belgrade looks like Sofia. 

What I meant is, that in contradistinction to all the USIA programs behind the Iron Curtain, including of course Moscow, we had a large program in Yugoslavia.  At the time I came, I had the distinct feeling that while of course I worked in a Communist country, that in many respects our USIS program in Yugoslavia was more like a USIS program in Austria than in Budapest. 

Belgrade in the 1960s

But I spoke too fast.  Within six or eight months of my arrival in Belgrade, the Yugoslavia government issued a press law.  If you read that press law from A to Z, it meant the end of USIS.  It did not mean the end of the British Council, because as you know the British Council is a non-governmental organization.  They had to register and were there as a Yugoslav incorporated organization.  USIS could never have done that. 

I personally was convinced that my days were numbered.  I had arrived in the summer of 1960, this was in the spring of 1961.   I said this was not the way we could operate, because the press law denied diplomatic status to any foreign information program, or cultural program.  In other words, it denied diplomatic status to the relationship with the Yugoslav people.  It was the view of the Yugoslav government, which adopted this law,  that a diplomat had to deal with the Foreign Office.  Not even with the Minister of Culture.  Not even with the Minister of Information.  You had to go to the Foreign Office, and if the Foreign Office allowed you to speak to the Minister of Information, then you could talk to him.  And of course, we bitterly protested, but in vain.  They told us, “confidentially,” that this was done to rein in the Soviets.  I personally had no doubt they told the Soviets that they did it in order to rein in the Americans. 

Former USIS American Center, Ljubljana

Because we had quite a program there.  We had ten or twelve American officers, we had about one hundred Foreign Service nationals, we published a magazine, we had information centers in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Novi Sad and Sarajevo, to the best of my recollection, and of course in Belgrade.  And a very eager audience.   Literally thousands of people came every day and picked up the news bulletins.  I never quite understood why the Yugoslavs allowed us to do that.  But they did until the press law was published.  We then started negotiations about how to make our program livable.  And in the course of it,  we used certain gimmicks, like putting an American resident in Belgrade in charge of our library.  And as the weeks and the months went by, the Yugoslavs became less interested in enforcing it.  So within a year or so, we were back to where we were before. 

Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln's Washington -- "Republics Fill Positions of General Esteem and Power with Carpenters Like Abraham Lincoln"

In diplomatic parlance, it could be called a “courtesy call.”  These are meetings, usually offered out of a sense of obligation, by prominent officials:  ministers, ambassadors and so forth.  They are intended to be short; they almost never have a prearranged agenda.  Usually, the demandeur of the courtesy call wants to shake the prominent person’s hand – at a minimum -- and ideally establish some sort of connection.    Duvergier de Hauranne had requested such a meeting, and it did take place eventually, with the young Frenchman introduced to Lincoln by Charles Sumner, at what amounted to the President’s open office hours.  In fact, throughout his presidency, Lincoln made a practice of receiving visitors and petitioners on this wildly democratic basis,  in what he labeled “public opinion baths.”

In early 1865, Abraham Lincoln held in his hands the future of the country and the American people.  The outcome of a devastating and traumatic Civil War was no longer in doubt, but a vast challenge of reconstruction and reconciliation lay ahead.  Few of Duvergier de Hauranne’s conversations in Washington that winter would have gone at any length without reference to the President and his plans for the postbellum future.  But Lincoln was still in the minds of most of his countrymen a rough and tumble politician, successful for sure but not universally admired, not yet a haloed martyr for a sacred cause. 

Duvergier de Hauranne was inclined even before he met Lincoln to defend the incumbent President.  “How can I believe,” he asks, “in the reputation for incompetence that is imputed to him in Europe?  This man who has raised himself by his own unaided efforts from a “log cabin” deep in the Indiana woods to the presidency of the United States cannot possibly be a run-of-the-mill person.  He needed a great deal more than just intelligence – a gift less rare than we commonly realize – which counts for nothing without character.  He also needed the moral force, those virtues of perseverance and resolution which are, indeed, the American virtues par excellence.”

As he awaits his turn to meet the President, Duvergier de Hauranne marvels, again, at the ease of access to the White House:

For a foreigner, the White House possesses a certain prestige…Yet its doors stand open to every American:  like a church, it is everybody’s house.   At all hours of the day, you will find curious or idle people milling about in the great reception room where the President holds his popular audiences.  It is said that some visitors – country bumpkins no doubt – cut pieces from the silk curtains to take home as souvenirs of their pilgrimage.  You may think that a policeman or at least a guard has been posted.  Not at all!  There is only a notice asking visitors to respect the furnishings, which belong to the government.

Ushered into the President’s suite, Duvergier de Hauranne watches Lincoln interact with a pretty young woman in velvet who flirtatiously seeks a favor from him.  He is unmoved, the Frenchman reports, urging her to come to the point and dismissing her after jotting down some notes behind “a huge desk piled so high with papers that it seemed to enclose him like the walls of a confessional.”

Lincoln in his office, 1864

While other supplicants sit in a row awaiting their turn, Duvergier de Hauranne is invited over to meet Lincoln:

The President rose to receive us; it was then that his great height was revealed.  I looked up and saw a bony face, framed by a shock of carelessly combed hair, a flat nose and a wide mouth with tightly closed lips.  His face was angular and furrowed by deep wrinkles.  His eyes were strangely penetrating and held a sardonic expression; he seemed sad and preoccupied, bent under the burden of his immense task.  His posture was awkward and like nothing I’ve ever seen before – partly rigid and partly loose-jointed; he doesn’t seem to know how to carry his great height.  We all opened our mouths after the customary handshake, I to pay him a compliment, Mr. Sumner to explain who I was, and he himself to respond to my remark and to pretend that he already knew my name.  His voice is far from musical; his language is not flowery; he speaks more or less like an ordinary person from the West and slang comes easily to his tongue.

It may be that Duvergier de Hauranne is underwhelmed by the Lincoln he meets in the flesh, as opposed to the conceptual Lincoln he reveres as the embodiment of republican virtue.  Or, perhaps, Duvergier de Hauranne is simply being objective when he argues that the desiderata of leadership in a republic is inherently different from that of a monarchy like his native France:

…He is simple, serious and full of good sense.  He made some comments on Mr. Everett and on the unrealistic hopes the Democratic party entertained four years ago that it could impose its policies on the victorious Republicans.  These remarks may have been lacking in sparkle, but the thought behind them was subtle and witty.  There was not a single burst of clownish laughter, not a single remark in doubtful taste, not one of the “jokes” for which he is famous.  We shook hands again and left him to his chores.  I took away from this ten-minute interview an impression of a man who is doubtless not very brilliant, not very polished, but worthy, honest, capable and hardworking.  I think the Europeans who have spoken and written about him have been predisposed to consider it amusing to exaggerate his odd ways – either that or else they went to the White House expecting to see some splendid, decorative figure, wearing a white tie and behaving in a manner both courteous and condescending like some sort of republican monarch.  What a stupid and egregious error to expect that Abraham Lincoln, the former Mississippi boatman, could have the manners of a king or a prince.

…In a republic, people are more practical and down to earth.  The President is chosen to perform his political functions, not to dance royal quadrilles nor to gallop up and down in a plumed hat at military reviews.  It is not necessary that he be a man of letters or a scholar; he need not have written philosophical treatises, nor published a ten-volume set of collected works.  He doesn’t even have to be what Americans call “a fine gentleman.”  Uncalloused, perfumed hands are useless in the rough game of American politics.  Provided he does his job well and honestly, no one troubles to ask whether he writes in a “classical” style or whether he is dressed in the height of fashion.  Despotism holds up little idols for the crowd’s adoration; but republics fill positions of general esteem and power with carpenters like Abraham Lincoln.

Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln's Washington -- "Let Them Talk, and Come With Me to One of Mrs. Lincoln's Receptions"

While Duvergier de Hauranne has only managed to catch sight of President Lincoln at a distance during his first weeks in Washington – a mere glimpse of “a long-legged giant who was leaving the White House lobby wrapped up to his nose in an enormous scarf” – the visitor does manage to enter the Presidential mansion on a different basis.  His account of attending one of Mrs. Lincoln’s receptions leads him to comment on the no-frills lifestyle she and the President maintain, in marked contrast to the luxurious trappings of kings and potentates in other countries.  Duvergier de Hauranne came to the U.S. heavily influenced by de Tocqueville’s accounts of American egalitarianism, and his sympathy for the Lincolns is evident.  Many other European visitors during Lincoln's time in office took the opposite tack; they often lampooned the President and his wife as country rubes, a nineteenth century version of the Beverly Hillbillies.

Mary Todd Lincoln

After relating that Mary Todd Lincoln had been savaged in American newspapers for charging the government for unofficial dinners and for not paying her bills on a timely basis, Duvergier de Hauranne comments that “in spite of all the thievery they are accused of, these American leaders are not very rich.”  He reports, admiringly, that Lincoln refused to take payment of his annual salary of $25,000 in gold rather than in paper money -- at that time an uncertain monetary instrument at best.  When the Frenchman asked Robert Todd Lincoln if he had any plans to visit Europe, the President’s son replied that the trip would cost too much.  “I know of no other country where the Chief of State is too poor to afford a trip abroad for his son,” Duvergier de Hauranne writes.   He continues:

Let them talk, and come with me to one of Mrs. Lincoln’s receptions.   You arrive on foot, you enter the huge, bare vestibule of the White House.  There are no honor guards with golden breastplates, no swarms of glittering lackeys, not even a sentry at the door.  A lone servant in a black coat asks for your card and opens the drawing-room door for you.  It is a simple, plain room, hung with red damask.  The mistress of the house rises and comes forward; her welcome is so open and friendly that you think she is going to offer you her hand like an old acquaintance. 

White House vestibule, 1860s

The heavy stiffness of your formal bow recalls her to the cold conventions of official etiquette.  This former country-woman looks no worse in her velvet gown than any other aging lady who is a little bit plump and middle-class.  Her manner is dignified, kindly, reserved and almost shy; I must admit that her conversation is not phenomenally brilliant, and it seems that she feels an easily understandable diffidence when speaking with strangers from Europe, thought by her to be very severe judges --- especially after all the indecent mockery that has been showered upon her. The joke is on those who scoff at her, for there is nothing to laugh at in this respectable household, and I have a poor opinion of those who jeer at this modest simplicity as though the Lincolns were crude backwoodsmen.

Duvergier de Hauranne: A Frenchman in Lincoln's Washington -- "The Political Milieu Will Always Be a Grab-bag of People From All Classes and Backgrounds"

What makes Duvergier de Hauranne’s travel narrative Huit Mois en Amerique a classic?   His epistles home to Paris have many qualities:  the author’s malleable prose, his sense of the historical moment, his gift for quick and true portraits of the people he meets -- from high society and low -- and his pointed descriptions of American mores and foibles.  On occasion, his observations – some one hundred and fifty years later – can even pierce the wall of time and circumstance and feel as fresh and relevant today as when they were first written. 

U.S. Capitol Under Construction, 1860

Viewed from his perch at Willards Hotel,  rubbing shoulders with senators, generals and other notables, Duvergier de Hauranne describes under the heading "The Men in Power" the distinctly American political class emerging at the end of the Civil War:

Unlike France, America will never have a true capital, a sort of sovereign queen imposing down to the smallest detail the rule of her whims on the inert body she drags behind her.  It is more appropriate to compare London with the future capital of the United States because in London there is only one society, gathered together for one purpose – politics.  Apart from this select circle, London is really nothing but a particularly large provincial city, a gigantic Manchester piled on top of a colossal Liverpool…

In England, inherited social position, the continuity of political alignments and the centuries-old institution of an aristocratic ruling class combine to give cohesion and unity to the temporary gathering that is called London Society.  In America, on the contrary, even allowing for the passage of several hundred years and even supposing that by that time customs and manners will have become uniform, I cannot imagine anything but a nomadic high society, full of shocking contrasts, with great diversity of dress and behavior, the faithful image of the democratic society in whose womb it was formed.  The political milieu will always be a grab-bag of people from all classes and backgrounds, united today only to be dispersed tomorrow, too fluid for habits to be fixed or for traditions to be passed on.  It will always be a patchwork affair, its members drawn from the four corners of the nation by the accidents of popular election.

Dividing the National Map, 1860

The differences between “Easterners” and “Westerners” in Washington’s political circles are more than evident to Duvergier de Hauranne, who is willing to see the good qualities in both camps, without turning a blind eye to the less salutary.  While we may worry today whether the American "Everyman" can truly aspire to political office in an era of fat cat contributors and K Street lobbyists, there are echoes in the Frenchman's account even now of what makes “Blue” and “Red” state politicans distinguishable from one another:

There are, moreover, two distinct types among the residents of Washington:  the Easterners who are much like us Europeans – the most distinguished among them unconsciously copy British ways – and the Westerners who, almost to a man, are six-foot giants, coarse-featured, robust in build, and have mops of hair as thick as horses’ manes…Almost all these vigorous Westerners have something very attractive and likeable about them.  You musn’t expect them to exhibit refinement of language nor politeness carried to the point of foolish exaggeration; but for frankness, openness and good fellowship mixed with shrewdness they have no equals.  

Rep. James M. Ashley (R-Ohio)

I am not talking about Mr. Chase, who is not so much typical of the West as he is of New England, where he was born.  As an excellent example of the Westerner at his best I propose a certain Mr. Ashley, of Ohio, one of the most influential members of the House, a tireless foe of slavery, a man of generous, jovial aspect who cuts a lively, even a heroic figure; he is cordial, obliging, informal without being rude, courtly in his relations with women, and pleasing in his speech.  He also shows more genuine zest for living than any man I’ve ever met.  Powerful, elemental natures such as his continually fill me with amazement and make me feel like the small, stunted fruit of a kitchen-garden civilization.  When I stand near the entrance to the Senate at the end of a session and watch all these lusty, raw-boned fellows come striding out, I feel the same twinge of awe as if a troop of Horse Guards were parading in front of me…

  

Walter Roberts: Cold War Cultural Policy and USIA -- "USIA Followed the Policy Directives of the Department of State"

Walter emphasized that, at least until the late sixties, USIA closely followed the State Department's foreign policy lead.  When Khrushchev came to power and shifted Soviet policy towards a less confrontational approach in the mid-fifties, USIA followed State's lead in pursuing openings in the U.S.-Soviet relationship, including the negotiation of the groundbreaking 1958 cultural agreement.

The role of USIA in the Cold War was very much, policy-wise, directed or at least influenced, by the Department of State.  An officer of the policy office of USIA would attend daily the meetings of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the State Department, where the questions as to how to answer at that time mostly American  correspondents, not yet very much foreign correspondents, mind you in the fifties, was discussed.  And the policy officer came back and more or less then sent out a policy note to the field, and particularly to the Voice of America.  So if there was a change in 1956 in State Department thinking about the Cold War, then there was one in USIA.   Not until a few years later, quite a few years in the Nixon administration with Frank Shakespeare as director, was there ever a policy disagreement between the State Department and USIA.   Now the Voice of America may have raised a point “Surely we don’t want to say this, we want to say it this way” or something like that.  I’m not saying that all possible differences between the Department of State and USIA, that there were none – of course, there were.  But, on the whole, the United States Information Agency followed the policy directives of the Department of State. 

Eisenhower, Khrushchev at Geneva Summit, 1955

I might add, that the attitude in the Department was changing in the fifties, including John Foster Dulles’ attitude, because I think the Department regarded Khrushchev’s efforts to distance himself from the Stalin policy, with approbation and I think our Cold War line was not as strong after Khrushchev made his speeches, went to Belgrade for a trip.  Even, I think, the meetings in Geneva sort of made it clear that there was a way to negotiate. 

For me, [the U.S.-Soviet cultural agreement negotiation] was personally a very interesting experience because I had known the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Mr. Zarubin, from previous negotiations involving the Austria Treaty as a man without any sense of humor, as a stubborn, non-simpatico person whom I would never have asked whether he wanted to have a cup of coffee with me. 

New Soviet Ambassador Zarubin Arrives at White House, 1952

But then, when I was invited as the USIA representative to sit in on the Soviet-American negotiations regarding the future of cultural relations, I was absolutely stunned.  Here was a man who was nice, witty, cooperative and those negotiations actually were concluded in a very few weeks.  When I remembered that I had sat through Austrian negotiations for seven years, with Zarubin’s famous “nyet”, as famous as Gromyko’s “nyet” in the Security Council, I was absolutely floored.  

First Issue, Amerika Magazine, 1956

The Russians were quite ready to negotiate a cultural agreement.  It showed its results.  We had not only the Sokolniki Park exhibition in Moscow in 1959, but we started having an easier time distributing Amerika magazine, although it was limited, I think, to 75,000 copies and the kiosks in Moscow held them back, or sold them at higher prices, whatever.   I don’t think 75,000 copies of Amerika were ever distributed, even in the best of times.  But nevertheless we had, at least on the cultural level, a much better atmosphere after the cultural agreement.

I was not there on the day Nixon and Khrushchev had the famous “kitchen debate.”  But I was very impressed, [the 1959 American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park] was a very good exhibit, and I was most impressed of course with the enormous amount of people who wanted to see it.  I mean you had, just from a visual point of view, you had a feeling that there are hundreds of thousands of people, who obviously did not harbor any strong anti-American views who wanted to see the exhibit.  It was a very good exhibit. 

General Mills Demonstration Kitchen at Sokolniki, 1959

Walter Roberts: Relations With State, CIA -- "Most of the People in the Department...Were Happy to Get Rid of the Information Program"

Walter labeled USIA's relationship with the State Department during the fifties and sixties as "excellent" -- but made it clear that it was so partly because many State Department officers were relieved not to have to bother with USIA's media outreach and information programs.  The connections between USIA and the CIA were distant -- purposely so -- with the U.S. government international broadcasters -- VOA on the one hand, RFE/RL on the other -- eyeing each other warily.

Most of the people in the Department – and I stress the word “most” – were happy to get rid of the information program.   They certainly thought that the Voice of America did not belong in the State Department.  But even the old- line Foreign Service officers didn’t want to have very much to do with information work.  So I remember, for instance, sitting in meetings in the Department of State as the USIA representative, where on many occasions the chairman would say:  “Well, let’s not worry about this, let’s USIA handle it.”   Many, many old time Foreign Service officers in the State Department welcomed this, that this idea of trying to tell a correspondent how to write about a foreign policy action -- that was anathema to most of the Foreign Service officers.  They did not like that, and they were happy that there was another agency of the United States government that took on that responsibility.  So, in all the seven years, from ’53 to ‘60, when I went overseas, when I was in sometimes elevated positions in USIA, I can say nothing but the finest about my relations.  For instance, as deputy area director of USIA, I had a weekly meeting with the Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs.  Now, I will say very frankly, depending upon the personality of the Deputy Assistant Secretary, how much he told me and how much he didn’t tell me.  When people, for instance like Foy Kohler, was Deputy Assistant Secretary, it was a wonderful relationship.

Allen W. Dulles

Well, let me speak for a minute in general about USIA-CIA relationships.  …I was designated in 1950 to organize a USIS program in Austria, taking over the information and cultural activities, carried out quite well, I might add, by the United States Army.  I found at that time that certain operatives of the CIA were assigned to the State Department.  Ted Streibert found out that there were people in the USIS payroll who were basically employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, and he called Allen Dulles on the phone and designated me to work out an arrangement whereby USIA would not, in the future, house CIA operatives.  Such an agreement was reached sometime in 1954 or 55. 

As far as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty was concerned, I always had the feeling that the Voice of America was not happy with them, that they felt that they were encroaching on their territory and that they were saying things that might even be at cross purposes from what VOA said.   …Relations between the Voice of America and RFE/RL, I would designate them as cool, and maybe even cold.  As far as the USIA in general is concerned, we felt that despite the treaty that I negotiated, the CIA people were not always very open with us.  

Encounter Magazine

The relationships in the field usually worked better.   I’ll give you an example, for instance.  The CIA started several magazines, Encounter in Britain, Der Monat in Germany, and there was also one in Austria called FORVM.   It was the Public Affairs Officer who suggested to the local CIA representative a particular person who might be very good at editing FORVM.  And that man was hired; it was at the suggestion of the senior USIA officer.  But otherwise, I do not know how often Ted Streibert saw Allen Dulles, or even George Allen saw Allen Dulles.  Relations were either non-existent or cool. 

Walter Roberts: The First USIA Directors -- "As I Look Back Upon All USIA Directors...George Allen Is At The Top"

Walter worked closely with USIA's first directors -- several of whom he admired, one of whom he did not.

First, Ted Streibert.  I always think that Ted Streibert was a very good man to start the U.S. Information Agency, for various reasons.  One of them I would like to stress here is that when USIA was created, the overwhelming part of USIA was the Voice of America.  Only eight years had passed since the end of the war in which the Department of State was able to establish information programs in the different countries of the world.  Let’s take France, for instance.  It was a very small program.  The budget for the Voice of America was the overwhelming part of the budget of USIA.  There was one other very large area of USIA, where programs were really very developed, and that was in the occupied areas:  Germany, Austria and Japan.

Theodore C. Streibert, USIA Director 1953-57

So when Eisenhower appointed Streibert, who was a station manager of a radio station in New Jersey, if I remember correctly, and a good administrator, I had the feeling that the President did the right thing.  I personally got along famously with Streibert.  We became friends, and stayed friends after he left.  May I tell an anecdote?  One day I sat in my office, and Streibert called me, and he said: “Walter, can you arrange for me to see the Pope next week?”  I said:  “What?”  And he had a slightly Brooklyn accent and said:  “You hurd me.”  And I was absolutely flabbergasted.  That was something that I had never been connected with.  So finally I got up and went down to his office, went in there and I said:  “Ted, why in the world would you want to see the Pope?”  He said to me:  “Walter, you don’t understand.  He’s in the anti-communist business; I’m in the anti-communist business.  Don’t you think he and I should talk?”  That was Ted Streibert.  He was a very good witness before the appropriations committees; we did quite well under Streibert.  But he wanted to stay only one term.   

So then, for reasons which I often thought about a great deal and never quite understood, the President appointed the Under Secretary for Labor, a lawyer, with the name of Arthur Larson.  And he was a disaster.  And it was all due to one stupid speech that he gave in Hawaii, in which he called the New Deal “an importation from socialist Europe.”  And that annoyed Lyndon Johnson very much, who at that time was the chairman of the subcommittee that handled USIA appropriations.  I was at that hearing.  There was only blood on the floor.  We lost 25 % of our budget.

Arthur Larson in ABC Interview with Mike Wallace, 1958

Now, I happened to have been in a carpool, with the Assistant Secretary of State for public affairs, a former high official of USIA, the third ranking official, who had gone to the meetings with the Russians in Geneva as USIA policy representative, obviously made a very good impression on John Foster Dulles and John Foster Dulles one day asked him to be Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs.  His name was Andy Berding, and I told him about this disastrous appropriations committee hearing, and obviously Andy told John Foster Dulles.  And John Foster Dulles for various other reasons already had some doubts about Arthur Larson.   And the story goes that he asked for his car for an immediate appointment with the President, and went to the President and said:  “Mr. President, we need another USIA director.”   And again, according to what I’ve heard, Eisenhower did not object.  In view of the history that says that John Foster Dulles was utterly disinterested in information and cultural programs, he took a great interest in leadership of USIA and he selected in his own mind one of the top Foreign Service officers, a man with the rank of career ambassador, George Allen.   And he asked George whether he wanted to be USIA director, and George said yes. 

George V. Allen, USIA Director, 1957-60

George had a public affairs, public diplomacy background.  In 1948, he was assistant secretary for public affairs, and therefore,  at that time, had already supervision over the programs from the OWI and the OCIAA, meaning the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, that came into the State Department.  So he knew about the programs from way back.  So this was 1957 and 1948  -- so this was nine years.

George was brought back for a meeting with the President, the meeting went well, and George Allen was appointed USIA director in 1957.  As I look back upon all USIA directors – and I knew them all – George Allen is at the very top.   One of the finest minds, fully aware of what this was all about and I can again tell an anecdote which indicates how his thinking developed.

As you know, the USIA, when it was created, contained only more or less information programs.  The cultural programs, and by this I mean really only the exchange program, which Senator Fulbright sponsored and had so much faith in.  When the USIA was created, Fulbright put his foot down and he said “Well, that’s going to be a propaganda agency.  I don’t want the exchange program to be there.”   And he insisted that the exchange program stay in the Department of State, which it did.  But sometime in 1958, after George had been USIA director for a year or so, he wrote a memorandum to Loy Henderson, who was then the Under Secretary for Management in the Department, suggesting that CU -- Cultural Affairs from the State Department -- be transferred to USIA.  Henderson was very taken aback and asked George to go to lunch with him.  George Allen took me along, so I’m a first witness to that conversation. 

Loy Henderson started the meeting, to the best of my recollection, by saying “You know, in 1953, when USIA was created, we sent a memorandum to all top ambassadors and asked whether the split between information and culture made any sense, and what our position should be.  And you sent back a telegram saying that’s a very good idea to separate the two.  And now you want to reunite it?  What happened?

Livy Merchant

And George Allen, who always had wonderful stories, said:  Loy, let me tell you, when Livingston Merchant was assigned to Australia in the late forties, early fifties, he sent a memorandum to the Department saying “Times have changed, Australia and New Zealand should not be in the European Bureau any more, it should be in the Far Eastern Bureau.”  When Eisenhower became President, he appointed Livy Merchant as Assistant Secretary for European Affairs.  One of the first memoranda that he had to sign is that the Office of European Affairs had to give up Australia and New Zealand.  He objected, and they pointed out to him “But Livy, this was your idea in the first place.”  And Livy answered saying, “Now that I’m Assistant Secretary of European Affairs, I’m being more objective.”  Loy, now that I’m USIA Director, I’m being more objective, and that’s why I want CU in USIA.  He was one of the finest minds I ever encountered in the Foreign Service.  A very, very nice guy.  And a superb USIA director.