The United States Information Agency (USIA) was a United States government agency devoted to the practice of public diplomacy which operated from 1953 to 1999.
Previously existing United States Information Service (USIS) posts operating out of U.S. embassies worldwide since World War II became the field operations offices of the USIA. In 1978, USIA was merged with the Bureau of Educational Cultural Affairs of the Department of State into a new agency called the United States International Communications Agency (USICA). Use of the name United States Information Agency (USIA) was restored in 1982.
In 1999, prior to the reorganization of intelligence agencies by President George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton assigned USIA's cultural exchange and non-broadcasting intelligence functions to the newly created under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs at the U.S. Department of State and the now independent agency, the International Broadcasting Bureau. USIA's broadcasting functions were moved to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which had been created in 1994.
Since the merger of USIA with the Department of State, public diplomacy and public affairs sections at U.S. missions have carried on this work. When USIA was abolished in 1999, USIS posts once again were operated by the Department of State.
Former USIA director of TV and film service Alvin Snyder recalled in his 1995 memoir that "the U.S. government ran a full-service public relations organization, the largest in the world, about the size of the twenty biggest U.S. commercial PR firms combined. Its full-time professional staff of more than 10,000, spread out among some 150 countries, burnished America‘s image and trashed the Soviet Union 2,500 hours a week with a 'tower of babble' more than 70 languages, to the tune of over $2 billion per year". The USIA was "the biggest branch of this propaganda machine."
Stated mission
President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the United States Information Agency on August 1, 1953, during the postwar tensions with the communist world known as the Cold War. The USIA's mission was "to understand, inform and influence foreign publics in promotion of the national interest, and to broaden the dialogue between Americans and U.S. institutions, and their counterparts abroad". The USIA was established "to streamline the U.S. government's overseas information programs, and make them more effective". It operated all of the foreign information activities formerly carried out by the Department of State's International Information Administration and Technical Cooperation Administration, as well as the Mutual Security Agency. USIA was also responsible for the overseas administration of the exchange of persons program formerly conducted by IIA. The USIA was the largest full-service public relations organization in the world, spending over $2 billion per year to highlight the views of the U.S. while diminishing those of the Soviet Union, through about 150 different countries.
Its stated goals were to explain and advocate U.S. policies in terms that are credible and meaningful in foreign cultures; to provide information about the official policies of the United States, and about the people, values and institutions which influence those policies; to bring the benefits of international engagement to American citizens and institutions by helping them build strong long-term relationships with their counterparts overseas; and to advise the President and U.S. government policy-makers on the ways in which foreign attitudes would have a direct bearing on the effectiveness of U.S. policies. The Department of State provided foreign policy guidance.
During the Cold War, some American officials believed that a propaganda program was essential to convey the United States and its culture and politics to the world, and to offset negative Soviet propaganda against the US. With heightened fears about the influence of communism, some Americans believed that the films produced by the Hollywood movie industry, when critical of American society, damaged its image in other countries. The USIA "exist[ed] as much to provide a view of the world to the United States as it [did] to give the world a view of America". Films produced by the USIA could by law not be screened publicly within the United States. This restriction also meant that Americans could not view the material even for study at the National Archives.