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By
Nicholas J. Cull
Abstract
This article reviews the performance of the United States Information
Agency (USIA) during the Gulf Crisis and War of 1990-91. It
pays particular attention to the role of USIA as a major participant
in the Inter Agency Working Group on Public Diplomacy, to Voice
of America broadcasting and USIA's counter disinformation work.
In its conclusion, the article contrasts the effective US use
of public diplomacy during this period with the problems encountered
following 9/11 drawing attention to the amalgamation of USIA
into the State Department in 1999 and the downgrading of public
diplomacy which accompanied it.
Introduction
Since the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September
2001 much hot air has been vented and angry ink spilled on the
subject of the failings of American public diplomacy.(1) Reports
routinely note that the United States was not always so ill-equipped
to address public opinion around the world. From 1953 to 1999
the US benefited from the presence of an independent United
States Information Agency charged with the task of conducting
international advocacy, broadcasting and information activities
and coordinating the US government’s exchange programs.
This case study will look at how USIA and its key charge Voice
of America operated during the Gulf crisis and war of 1990 and
1991 and in so doing show a little of what was lost when the
Clinton administration, under pressure from Republicans in the
Senate, folded the agency into the unsympathetic arms of the
State Department in 1999.
US policymaking
during the Gulf Crisis and War—Operations Desert Shield
and Desert Storm—was dominated by media considerations.
Washington displayed a marked eagerness to apply the supposed
lessons of Vietnam. This time the US presence would firmly be
associated with an international coalition, supported by multiple
UN resolutions, and strictly limited in its scope. US planners
assumed that sustained American losses would undercut domestic
support for the war and hence planned a largely aerial campaign
with a brief ground war at its end. The war saw intense media
management, as the US government established a system of pools
to coral foreign and domestic journalists covering the fighting
and deployed psychological warfare against their enemy. One
of the enduring images of the Gulf War would be the dusty columns
of Iraqi troops surrendering while clutching air-dropped leaflets
and safe conduct passes. It is not remembered as an especially
heroic episode in the history of the domestic US media; rather,
coverage seemed superficial and dominated by an uncritical patriotic
agenda. From the US military point of view, this was a triumph.(2)
Unlike the
case of Vietnam, theatre media and psychological operations
for Desert Shield and Desert Storm were not the task of the
United States Information Agency, but rested with the Defence
Department. USIA, however, played a valuable support role as
a key point of contact with the members of the fragile allied
coalition. More significantly, Desert Shield and Desert Storm
would see arguably the single most sustained example in the
history of the agency of USIA opinion research, cultural awareness
and experience being channelled directly into policy making.
Tom Korologos, vice chairman of the Advisory Commission on Public
Diplomacy, told Congressional hearings: “The agency’s
professionals were full partners ‘at the table’
in developing a public diplomacy strategy and in carrying it
out.” In an overview prepared as part of the director
transition in 1991, the agency itself reported “close
daily coordination with a number of White House, State Department
and Pentagon offices, both in Washington and in the field”
and noted:
With that coordination, we were able to mobilize the
full array of resources in support of Operation Desert Shield
and Desert Storm rapidly and effectively, putting into action
a public diplomacy plan and revising its thematic and operational
portions many times as the crisis unfolded and we faced new
challenges. From the start, USIA kept US policy makers informed
of trends in international public opinion as reflected in the
foreign media and by means of our own polling. Armed with well
calibrated information and products provided by USIA in Washington,
USIS foreign service officers were able to advocate US Gulf
policy vigorously and effectively.(3)
The result of the immense attention to media relations at home
and abroad was an unprecedented and carefully controlled combination
of force and image in the Persian Gulf. In media scholar Douglas
Kellner’s ironic phrase, it was “The Perfect War.”
The Bush administration’s achievement only became truly
apparent a decade later when American enterprises in the same
region went awry to the detriment of the US image in the Middle
East and the world.(4)
The
Buildup to the Crisis
For VOA’s editorial writers, the first taste of the Gulf
Crisis came not in August 1990 but five months earlier when
the Voice ran foul of State Department attempts to “appease”
Saddam Hussein. On 15 February 1990, Voice of America broadcast
an editorial in multiple languages discussing the changes in
the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Written by Bill
Stetson under the title “No More Secret Police”
it noted that despite the collapse of dictatorships in places
like East Germany and Romania in 1989, many totalitarian regimes
remained elsewhere:
Secret police are also widely entrenched in other countries,
such as China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba and
Albania. The rulers of these countries hold power by force and
fear not by the consent of the governed. But as Eastern Europeans
demonstrated so dramatically in 1989, the tide of history is
against such rulers. The 1990’s should belong not to the
dictators and secret police but to the people.
Saddam Hussein apparently heard the editorial and sent a formal
complaint to the luckless US ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie.
He objected to the comparison of his regime to that of Ceausescu
in Romania, which he felt invited rebellion. The King of Saudi
Arabia also objected and, on the orders of Secretary of State
James A. Baker, Glaspie apologised profusely. The State Department
investigated the matter and found that Iraq was not yet on the
list of subjects requiring special State Department clearance
before an editorial could be broadcast. They took no further
action against VOA but insisted that further editorials on Iraq
be authorised. Smarting from the rebuke, Stetson noted that
it was odd that VOA could not even name Iraq on a list of dictatorships
while the US Ambassador to the UN Armando Valladares, speaking
to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva on 16 February, could
devote an entire paragraph to Iraq’s “abysmal”
human rights record, as documented by a recent State Department
report on torture. Stetson felt that certain quarters in the
State Department had failed to grasp that the aim of public
diplomacy was to reach out to other peoples not their governments.(5)
Some weeks
later the issue emerged once again. On 12 April, Republican
Senator Bob Dole of Kansas raised the case during a meeting
with Saddam. As part of an effort to assure the dictator that
the US sought “better relations with Iraq,” Dole
informed Saddam that the VOA “commentator” responsible
for the editorial had been “fired.” Saddam secretly
recorded the meeting and published a transcript on Iraqi radio.
William Safire of The New York Times mentioned this
story in March and April in columns attacking the appeasement
of Iraq, delighting in informing readers that Stetson had not
been fired. In September, Safire published the complete story
based on material obtained under the Freedom of Information
Act, to the embarrassment of Dole and the Bush administration.(6)
The incident served as a reminder that the policy needs of diplomats
in time of crisis and the duties of international broadcasters
could easily come into conflict, and that there were plenty
of observers in the domestic media eager to magnify any slip
into a critique of the administration’s foreign policy.
Responding
to the Invasion of Kuwait
In the early hours of 2 August 1990, Iraqi tanks crossed the
border into neighbouring Kuwait and began a thrust towards the
capital. The invasion followed several months of diplomatic
wrangling and increasingly ferocious propaganda broadcasts from
Baghdad. It came as a surprise to the Kuwaiti royal family who
had confidently expected a diplomatic solution. It did not come
as a surprise for VOA. Eight days before the invasion, the Voice
attempted to broadcast another editorial by Bill Stetson headed
“New Persian Gulf Threats,” which noted aggressive
Iraqi language towards Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates and
the alarming build-up of Iraqi forces on the Kuwait border.
The editorial stated that “US officials have stressed
that there is no place in a civilized world for coercion and
intimidation.” The State Department spiked this editorial
in an apparent last minute bid to avoid antagonising Saddam.(7)
In the wake
of the invasion of Kuwait, the Bush administration began the
slow and delicate process of building a coalition to deploy
troops in Saudi Arabia to head off further conquest and prepare
to fight for Kuwait. VOA initiated a series of emergency program
measures to support these ends. The Arabic Service expanded
from seven to nearly 10 hours. It would eventually fill 15-and-a-half
hours a day. English-language programming doubled to the Middle
East, and expanded to fill the entire schedule round the clock,
borrowing transmitter space from RFE/RL inaugurating a special
Middle East network on 5 September over 45 medium and short
wave frequencies. During the course of the crisis, USIA worked
to increase its medium-wave capacity in the Gulf region. Russia
loaned transmitter time and Bahrain agreed to host a portable
VOA transmitter but then refused to carry VOA Arabic broadcasts.
VOA found an alternative site in Kuwait following the liberation.
But VOA’s own transmitters were not the sole channels
for its signals. Early in Desert Shield, the Voice created a
dial-in service to allow anyone to pick up a VOA news feed in
Arabic. The service received over 200,000 calls in its first
year, including calls from inside Iraq. Stations in seven Arab
nations, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Bahrain,
ran VOA news reports in Arabic, while worldwide VOA news could
be heard in some form on 1,800 local stations in 75 countries.
Programming at the start of the conflict included full coverage
of the UN Security Council debate on Iraq in 43 languages and,
from October to December, a special program called Messages
from Home that enabled relatives of Americans stranded
in Iraq or Kuwait to speak directly to their loved ones. US,
Iraqi, Kuwaiti and Egyptian diplomats appeared on VOA Arabic
Service call-in shows during the Desert Shield phase. Needless
to say, the Voice also had correspondents in the field covering
the crisis as it unfolded.(8)
VOA broadcasting
to Middle East during the crisis proved controversial. The American
approach to news baffled the US government’s Arab allies.
Both the Saudis and Egyptians objected to VOA interviews with
Iraqi and Palestinian supporters of Saddam. The Saudi government
noted that its people had nicknamed VOA the “Voice of
Baghdad.” In at least one instance their objection was
justified. VOA broadcast a Reuters story with a Cairo dateline
describing a pro-Saddam demonstration in Damascus. Despite a
second source, the story proved untrue and VOA had to transmit
an apology. For the domestic US media, the hint of VOA disloyalty
proved irresistible. Voice staffers caught the sour reek of
McCarthyism on the breeze. VOA’s deputy director, Bob
Coonrod met the criticism head on by commissioning two independent
studies of VOA during the Desert Storm phase from the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and Hudson
Institute of Indianapolis. USIA director Bruce Gelb also commissioned
an investigation from the USIA’s Office of the Inspector
General.(9)
Early
Initiatives
The first major set piece in the propaganda war against Iraq
was President Bush’s message to the Iraqi people, taped
at the White House on 12 September and broadcast unedited on
Iraqi television on 16 September as part of an exchange of messages
with Baghdad. “We have no quarrel with the people of Iraq,”
the President explained. “I've said many times, and I
will repeat right now, our only object is to oppose the invasion
ordered by Saddam Hussein.” Standing in front of his desk
like a teacher experimenting with informality, Bush stressed
the international nature of the response. “Never before,”
the President noted, “has world opinion been so solidly
united against aggression.” His final parry was to quote
Saddam Hussein himself in a speech to Arab lawyers from 1988.
Taking a slip of paper from his pocket the President read:
An Arab country does not have the right to occupy another
Arab country. God forbid, if Iraq should deviate from the right
path, we would want Arabs to send their armies to put things
right. If Iraq should become intoxicated by its power and move
to overwhelm another Arab State, the Arabs would be right to
deploy their armies to check it.(10)
USIA’s television service worked into the night preparing
the tape to be handed to the Iraqi Ambassador. VOA’s Arab
service provided both on-screen subtitles and a voice over translation
in Arabic. Iraqi-born Near East and South Asian division chief
Sam Hilmy insisted on locating the Arabic source text for Saddam’s
remarks, mindful of the potential for disaster if translators
merely guessed at the original form of words. Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State David Mack delivered the finished cassette
to the Ambassador who, he recalled, “received it as one
might a large turd.”(11)
Iraqi television
carried the message unedited but without any special announcement.
Rival attractions included cartoons on another channel and a
deliberately timed nation-wide street demonstration in support
of Saddam. Bush had little audience. But the President’s
message also was intended to explain the US response to the
uncommitted quarters of the world. Here USIA proved its worth.
The President later acknowledged the “extraordinary efforts”
of USIA director Bruce Gelb and the agency in preparing this
message for international dissemination. “Your success
in getting the message around the world so quickly in every
language and on such short notice was quite an achievement.
The professionalism and dedication of your staff is to be commended,”
he said.(12)
The
Inter-Agency Working Group on Public Diplomacy
As the White House contemplated the delicacy of the coalition
building process, it became clear that the Arab world was a
minefield in which the unguarded President could swiftly stumble
into disaster. In the new world of CNN and real-time satellite
news coverage, a mistake could get around the world instantly
and the damage considerable. In countries like Turkey and Egypt,
the population did not share the government’s support
for the US position. There was no room to allow the message
to drift. In September, the White House assembled an Inter-Agency
Working Group on Public Diplomacy for Iraq to oversee the media
aspects of the crisis. The group needed to ensure that the US
government spoke with one voice on the Gulf Crisis and that
that one voice was sensitive to the delicate cultural concerns
of the Arab world. The assistant director of USIA for the Near
East, William A. Rugh, chaired the group with Gerald B. Helman,
the State Department’s director of the Office of International
Communications. Bill Rugh was USIA’s most respected Arabist,
having served in Beirut, Cairo, Jeddah, Riyadh and Damascus
and then as US ambassador to Yemen. The full committee of 20
or so—including several USIA members—met weekly,
but an executive steering group met a couple of times a week.
A smaller group also met weekly to consider intelligence materials.
Working Group members included the former US ambassador to Iraq,
April Glaspie, and the deputy assistant secretary of state (and
former Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates), David Mack.
The committee structure supplemented existing daily liaison
between the State Department and the Pentagon. Rugh and his
colleagues twice briefed the president on world public reaction,
coached him before a major interview with the Arab media, and
kept him posted with information on reaction and suitable themes
for inclusion in his speeches.(13)
There was
a marked divergence between the international message of the
Bush administration, with its emphasis on clear limited aims,
references to “President Hussein,” and respectful
awareness of Iraq’s cultural heritage, and the rather
more bellicose tone used for the domestic American audience.
Within the USA, Saddam was depicted as a monstrous equivalent
to Hitler. The Inter-Agency Working Group deliberately played
down such rhetoric overseas and avoided the domestic impulse
to characterize the war on Bush’s side as personal. Their
international line stressed the workings of Congress and US
democracy, international condemnation enshrined in multiple
UN resolutions, and the role of the coalition.(14)
The Inter-Agency
Working Group produced papers channelling specific pieces of
detailed research relating to the allied mobilization, investigating
press reports collected in particular problem places like Algiers
or Tunis, tracking the path and impact of Iraqi propaganda gambits.
The group monitored demonstrations against the coalition, paying
particular attention to their size. A demonstration of 20 people
in Cairo was nothing to be concerned about, but gathering of
a thousand sparked concerns. By the same token, positive press
would be rapidly relayed. If the committee noticed a helpful
editorial in an Egyptian paper, this would be reproduced and
hurriedly faxed to posts and distributed quickly. The Working
Group knew that an indigenous voice had much more impact that
the most eloquent US spokesman relaying the same information.(15)
The Working
Group also paid particular attention to the slower media, creating
supporting materials for Public Affairs Officers (PAOs), generating
guidelines, and—in what Rugh considered one of their most
effective projects—writing and disseminating talking points
for personnel in the field. Rugh asked USIA’s PAOs attached
to posts in the Middle East and North Africa to compile a running
survey of local opinion and their sense of the weak and strong
points of the US case. A team of Foreign Service Officers (FSOs)
in Washington then developed talking points, which were cleared
by the State Department’s policy team and then distributed
back to ambassadors and their staff in the field and used around
Washington DC. This became an ideal mechanism to counter the
tide of Iraqi disinformation that began to flow from that country’s
diplomatic posts around the world. (16)
Facing Iraqi Propaganda
The raison d’etre for the Working Group on Public
Diplomacy was, of course, the phenomenal output of propaganda
from Baghdad. From his emergence as the dominant figure in the
Ba’athist government in the 1970s, Saddam Hussein had
made skilled use of propaganda at home and abroad. His image
had been carefully crafted by poet and journalist Abdul-Amir
Malla with copious references to the glories of the Iraqi past.
In vast murals and ubiquitous posters Saddam rendered himself
as the successor to Nebuchadnezzar or Saladin. He claimed direct
descent from Ali the fourth caliph of Baghdad. He styled himself
as a leader for the Arab masses against the West and their own
corrupt regimes, and a defender of Islam. Iraq’s powerful
radio stations and frenzied press operations hammed this message
home in Arabic. Gambits following the deployment of US troops
included a number of stories around the theme that American
Christians were desecrating Mecca. USIA hit back with an immediate
and worldwide denial.(17)
As Desert
Shield progressed, Iraq also spread stories that coalition forces
in Saudi Arabia included Israelis in disguise, were spreading
AIDS, and had imported thousands of Egyptian women to serve
as prostitutes. In the autumn, they claimed that Saudi leaders
were drinking alcohol on US bases, Americans were building churches,
and that Iraq had only invaded Kuwait to head off an American/Saudi
plan to seize the kingdom for themselves. Not all Iraqi stories
were effectively quashed. Iraq scored an early success in September
by releasing the transcript of an interview between Saddam and
Ambassador Glaspie in the run up to war. Shamelessly manipulative
editing created the impression that Glaspie had given a green
light to the invasion of Kuwait and the State Department took
no steps to correct the record at the time, allowing the Iraqi
version of events to gain unnecessary credence.(18)
Saddam proved
less effective at playing the Islamic card than the team had
feared. Early reports revealed that even where populations disliked
the idea of a US military response they were frequently sceptical
of Iraq’s pretence to Islamic leadership. But Rugh and
his colleagues had to work hard to keep the issue of Israel
out of the equation. Yasir Arafat’s vociferous support
for Saddam did not help matters. Saddam, for his part, quite
cynically championed the Palestinian cause, despite a history
of violence between Iraq and representatives of the PLO. Moments
of particular crisis included the clash on 8 October between
Orthodox Jews and militant Palestinians near the Dome of the
Rock in Jerusalem. Police opened fire, leaving 17 Palestinians
dead and over 100 injured. The incident raised the profile of
the Arab-Israeli conflict at exactly the wrong time.(19)
WORLDNET
and Visual Communication
Early in the course of Desert Shield, the Inter-Agency Working
Group commissioned a film called A Line in the Sand.
As Rugh recalled, it took an agonizingly long time to create,
largely because of the need for complicated clearance of military
footage culled from various Pentagon and coalition sources.
Its purpose was simple: to showcase the collective response
of the world to Saddam’s aggression from the consensus
in the United Nations to the superbly equipped coalition military
force deployed in Saudi Arabia. A US military production team
working in Saudi Arabia edited the compilation footage into
a dynamic form and added a soundtrack, which included wall-to-wall
narration, quotes from the Koran, and much Arabic music. At
USIA’s satellite TV service—WORLDNET—a veteran
agency filmmaker named Jerry Krell acted as a film doctor on
the final version of the military’s cut, further sharpening
its impact by eliminating the music, minimizing the commentary
and allowing the images and associated sound effects to speak
for themselves. The film had a target audience of just one man:
Saddam himself. The Working Group hoped that the show of power
might deter the dictator, and cut through the presumed poor
advice and underline the resolve of the West and its coalition.
The US presented copies of the video to Arab embassies including
Iraqi embassies around the world, and trusted that the film
reached its intended viewer. But Saddam’s forces in Kuwait
held firm.(20)
WORLDNET
also mounted a series of special programs that allowed journalists
around the world to interact with the senior administration
figures concerned with the crisis. John Kelly, the assistant
secretary of state for the Near East, did three WORLDNET sessions.
David Mack also became a regular guest sometimes working in
Arabic.(21)
The
‘Rape of Kuwait’
USIA based its approach to the Gulf Crisis soundly on sober
appeals to international law. Its principal publication during
the crisis would be an anthology of the apposite UN resolutions,
however some material touched on more emotive issues. The Inter-Agency
Working Group also placed considerable emphasis on the story
of the so-called rape of Kuwait to establish the morality of
the coalition case. Kuwait led the way, forming a group called
Citizens for a Free Kuwait, which in turn hired the public relations
firm Hill and Knowlton. H & K launched an $11 million campaign
to publicise the plight of Kuwait before the American public
under the direction of a former USIA FSO, Lauri J. Fitz-Pegado.
Rugh travelled to New York to work with the US ambassador to
the UN, Thomas Pickering, and the Kuwaiti ambassador to present
the Kuwaiti case to the world. USIA’s output on the theme
included a couple of 30-page chronologies, created in magazine
form, showing the evidence for Iraqi brutality. The agency took
care selecting its text and pictures, checking not only accuracy,
but political and cultural acceptability. USIA did not merely
repeat Kuwaiti allegations, which proved wise. Testimony presented
to a congressional Human Rights Caucus hearing on 10 October
about babies being turned out of incubators by marauding Iraqi
troops and left to die proved to be untrue and delivered not
by a genuine eyewitness but by the ambassador’s teenage
daughter. Plenty of domestic politicians were less skeptical,
and the incubator story figured in numerous speeches on the
Hill running up to the vote authorising military action. The
President himself told the story on eight occasions, initially
flagging it as unverified but then giving credence by repetition.
Some commentators questioned the story at the time. Liberating
troops found incubators still in place in Kuwaiti hospitals
and in January 1992 an op-ed piece by John R. Macarthur in The
New York Times revealed the true identity of the anonymous
witness. Rugh noted that while the revelation of the Kuwaiti
sleight of hand became a big story in the West, the Arab media
paid little attention to it.(22)
USIA emphasised
the quest for a peaceful solution to the crisis. At the end
of November, President Bush proposed a fresh round of talks
“going the extra mile” with Saddam Hussein in preference
to bloodshed. The agency monitored international press response
in the first week of December and was delighted to report that
seventy five percent of editorials on the subject supported
Bush’s position. Figaro in France called it “the
act of a responsible statesman.” Critics generally felt
that the time to negotiate had passed and the time to act had
come. It was an ideal foundation for the next act of the drama.(23)
The
Deadline Approaches
On 8 January 1991, President Bush addressed the allied nations
of the anti-Iraq coalition over USIA’s WOLRDNET television.
He stressed the final deadline of 15 January for Iraqi withdrawal
from Kuwait and reiterated the history of US attempts to resolve
the crisis peacefully.(24) With the deadline approaching, the
National Security Council prepared a message from the president
to the Iraqi people to be read on 14 January. The text emphasised
yet again that war would be the choice of Saddam and the US
and the 28 other members of the coalition had no quarrel with
the Iraqi people. He stressed the importance of Voice of America
telling Iraq “the truth about Saddam Hussein—the
truth about the world’s determination to stop his aggression.”(25)
In addressing
his own people and the wider world, President Bush broadened
the stakes, arguing that the coalition would be fighting for
more than just one country. On 16 January, in his address to
the nation announcing military action, President Bush spoke
of an “opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future
generations a new world order.” The phrase “new
world order” became a mainstay of his rhetoric thereafter.
(26) At the time of the outbreak of war, USIA’s Media
Reaction Staff could at least report widespread admiration for
George Bush, appreciation for his efforts at compromise, and
an understanding that the blame for the bloodshed ahead rested
with Saddam.(27)
During the
crisis and war, the Iraqis tried a range of tactics to undermine
the coalition position. Iraqi broadcasters championed the Palestinian
cause, paraded prisoners of war, and attempted to demoralise
the American forces by alleging that their wives might be at
home having sex with Hollywood stars. Saddam variously appeared
petting a British child hostage, praying (despite his secular
Sunni background) in the manner of a religious Shiite, posing
in a variety of other garbs and pledging to unleash “the
Mother of all Battles.” His use of Scud missiles to attack
non-combatant Israel was as much a propaganda play for the Arab
street as a military move.(28)
Countering
Disinformation
Iraq continued to make extensive use of disinformation. Fortunately,
the US government still had its Cold War counter-disinformation
apparatus. At USIA, Todd Leventhal, the senior policy officer
for countering disinformation and misinformation, served as
the US government’s chief analyst of and spokesman on
Iraqi propaganda, monitoring the spread of rumours and moving
swiftly to refute them. Leventhal’s activities included
a marathon nine-and-a-half hours on WORLDNET, taking questions
on Iraqi disinformation from journalists from 35 countries.
He had no shortage of stories to rebut. Following the outbreak
of the air war, Baghdad focused on exaggerated Iraqi successes
in shooting down coalition planes, false claims that Israel
was secretly participating in the air campaign, and colourful
reports of mutinies and clashes between US and British troops
and Muslim members of the coalition. On 16 January, the Pakistani
newspaper Markaz claimed that Pakistani troops had
opened fire on Americans and killed 72. Shortly thereafter,
the Pakistani government expelled the Iraqi press counsellor
in Baghdad for “providing financial assistance for publication
of propaganda materials against the state” and “inciting
street demonstrations.” Other stories included a report
in Pakistan that the notorious singer Madonna had arrived in
Saudi Arabia to entertain the troops, in Algeria that coalition
casualties were being secretly buried on the island of Crete,
and in Indonesia that the CIA was plotting to overthrow King
Hussein of Jordan. USIA’s media reaction staff drew comfort
from the fact that these stories were almost never dignified
by editorial comment in the Middle East. They were, however,
repeated on Cuban and Soviet channels and even found their way
onto the Arabic service of Radio Monte Carlo.(29)
Saddam’s
most effective propaganda mechanism would be the same tactic
used by the British during the Nazi blitz on London—merely
opening his home front to selected foreign journalists and specifically
the reporters and cameras of CNN. From the beginning of the
air war on 16 January, the Iraqi regime alleged that coalition
bombs had hit civilian facilities and invited CNN along to see.
Early examples included a “baby milk factory” bombed
on 20 January and displayed on CNN the following day. USIA used
its “talking points” and counter disinformation
team to circulate refutation, noting that the site was protected
like a military installation. The civilian target theme struck
a chord around the world. The media reaction staff noted that
La Presse, a government owned paper in Tunis, went
so far as to claim that “civilians… are threatened
with a real genocide.” Opinion in moderate Western European
papers like Westdeutsche Allgemeine wavered, as some
suspected that the war might now be exceeding the objective
of liberating Kuwait. The darkest moment came on 13 February
with the bombing of a bunker in the Amirya district of Baghdad,
which the US insisted had a military function, but produced
horrific images of 314 civilian casualties. The USIA media reaction
staff reported a surprising level of acceptance in coalition
editorials that events like the Amirya bunker were “unavoidable
in war” or more specifically “Saddam’s fault”
for sheltering civilians in a military installation. Unfortunately,
these understanding newspapers also acknowledged that the masses
would be driven away from the US camp by the images. In the
hours following broadcast of the Amirya pictures, protestors
attacked the US embassy in Bonn.(30)
As early
as 17 January, the coalition set up its counter argument. Colin
Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed that
the coalition’s desire to avoid civilian damage was a
major reason that 20 percent of coalition aircraft returned
without having dropped their bombs. If the target was not clearly
identified, the bombs came home. Sometimes the US could act
in time to defuse a story. When the Iraqis claimed that US planes
had bombed the mosque in the city of Karbala, the Inter-Agency
Working Group prevailed on the Pentagon to investigate, collect,
declassify and publish aerial photographs. The pictures proved
that Saddam’s forces had parked vehicles next to mosques
in the knowledge that the US Air Force was avoiding such targets.
Before and after shots demonstrated the “pinpoint accuracy”
of allied strikes. Reconnaissance pictures and on-board video
footage of strikes, which looked disturbingly like video game
play, became a staple of CENTCOM daily briefings in Riyadh.(31)
As the war
developed, Rugh and his colleagues became increasingly unhappy
with the CNN correspondent in Baghdad, Peter Arnett. Rugh and
Mack both felt that Arnett was very naïve. While the network
acknowledged Iraqi censorship, he appeared to believe that his
interviews conducted in the Iraqi street were an accurate expression
of free opinion. Rugh well recalled viewing a CNN report of
civilian bomb damage transmitted on 1 February, which included
a vox pop in English from an eloquent and angry woman:
“all of you are harming the people for the sake of oil
as if we are Red Indians. We are human beings.” To Rugh’s
surprise, April Glaspie, who was watching the report next to
him, recognized Arnett’s interviewee as an employee of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs named Suha Turayhi. He concluded
that her “spontaneous” remarks were scripted and
probably even rehearsed.(32)
USIA’s
media digests revealed a widespread international understanding
of the limits imposed on journalists in wartime, not only by
the Iraqis, but by the Americans as well. On 1 February, the
agency reported as “typical” a complaint in the
centrist Der Morgen in Berlin: “Slowly but surely
it is coming out that every word, every photo and every TV picture
should be accompanied by a red warning sign reading: ‘Caution,
Lies.’”(33)
VOA presented
its own problems to the Working Group. Rugh felt that the VOA
stringer in Baghdad, who worked part-time for the Iraqi government,
was even more troublesome than Arnett. The Voice stopped using
this stringer when the air war began on 16 January. Rugh also
grew irritated with VOA’s editorials on and around the
crisis, which he felt to be composed as for a domestic American
audience and lacking the awareness of the workings of Arab public
opinion that an FSO experienced in the region would bring. Rugh
regularly took examples of flawed editorials to the VOA director
Carlson and his deputy Coonrod, but he was swiftly made aware
that the Voice and its champions on Capitol Hill would defend
its right to editorial independence. The Egyptian and Saudi
governments continued to complain about VOA, though the Saudis
were actually even more critical of the BBC. Helman and Rugh
travelled to London to speak and compare notes with the head
of the Arabic Service.(34)
Saddam continued
to hope that US resolve would crumble after a single major engagement.
On 28 and 29 January, he launched a series of armored thrusts
across the frontier into Saudi Arabia. Television reporting
focused on the fighting in the border town of Al-Khafji, recaptured
by Saudi and Qatari forces on 31 January. Despite the counterattack,
USIA reported a widespread perception of a propaganda victory
for Saddam Hussein. Westdeutsche Allgemeine went so
far as to suggest that “the brutal side of this war”
as revealed in the first ground casualties “will become
a heart-gripping reality for the American population now. It
could change the US public’s stance…” Despite
evident chaos on the ground, the Inter-Agency Committee, like
the US commanders in theatre, sought to use the incident as
a vehicle to stress the role of allies concealing the actual
role of US forces in repelling the Iraqis. The Qatari Ambassador
joined David Mack on the podium at USIA’s Washington Foreign
Press Center for a special press conference on the battle for
South Asian journalists. The ambassador was recognised as something
of a star performer for his government and later became the
Minister of Information.(35)
Around the
same time the US scored a particular coup. In January, Washington
leaked an intelligence report about Saddam’s family leaving
Iraq. This was reported back to Iraq, and then further reaction
and Iraqi responses were covered by VOA. As the story gathered
momentum, newspapers variously reported that Saddam’s
wife had fled to Mauritania, Zambia, Algeria or even Switzerland.
The story was calculated to sow resentment against the leader
among the ordinary people of Iraq. (36)
Themes in the coalition’s overt presentation of this phase
of the war included emphasis on the environmental impact of
oil fires set in Kuwait and oil slicks dumped into the Gulf.
As images of thousands of oil-drenched dying sea birds played
on televisions around the world from 25 to 27 January, Saddam
was demonized by the criteria of the 1990s as an eco-criminal.
On 5 February, a VOA editorial denounced “Saddam’s
Environmental Terrorism.” It noted that US laser-guided
bombs had closed off the main pipeline through which oil had
been spilling and that President Bush had pledged “all
possible US assistance to the people of Kuwait in restoring
that which Saddam has befouled.”(37)
The
Ground War
At 4 am local time on the morning of 24 February, following
yet another round of initiatives to affect a diplomatic solution,
the coalition launched its ground war to liberate Kuwait. Victory
came swiftly and on 27 February President Bush announced the
ceasefire: “Kuwait is liberated. Iraq's army is defeated.
Our military objectives are met. Kuwait is once more in the
hands of Kuwaitis, in control of their own destiny.”(38)
USIA’s media reaction staff noted widespread international
approval for President Bush. The London Times opined
that “It will be very difficult for anyone to mount a
challenge to the president in 1992.”(39) The ground war
had lasted just one hundred hours. Following days revealed the
scale of slaughter dealt against Iraqi convoys retreating along
the Basra Road. Its closing images were a stark reminder of
the brutality of war.
From the
outbreak of Desert Storm, USIA cast an occasional eye towards
the likely end of the war. Between 24 and 26 January the agency
sponsored a telephone survey in Western Europe, which intriguingly
included a question about whether force should be used not only
to fulfil the UN mandate and liberate Kuwait but also to exceed
it and remove Saddam. Out of those polled, 90 percent of French,
83 percent of Britons and 69 percent of Spanish endorsed fighting
on to overthrow the Iraqi dictator.(40) Conversely, a USIA report
of 19 February pondered the situation if the US remained within
the mandate and liberated Kuwait, but Saddam remained in power
and thereby become a hero merely for having survived. Bud Hensgen,
chief of the media reaction staff, noted that unlike their European
counterparts, Arab editorial writers had not commented on this
possibility. He speculated that pro-Saddam writers would not
discuss an Iraqi defeat while for others the “win despite
loosing scenario” was either too likely or too obscure
for comment.(41)
On 21 February,
on the eve of the land war, the division of world opinion three
ways between action, further negotiation along lines recommended
by Gorbachev, and indifference, suggested a dwindling international
consensus over the war. Many supporters of the Gorbachev plan
raised concerns about the United States exceeding its UN mandate
and extending its power. It seemed increasingly unlikely that
President Bush could risk continuing beyond the liberation of
Kuwait.(42) Similarly, early in the ground war, a USIA world
media survey reported that “many” editorials now
“judged Saddam Hussein’s overthrow would be necessary
to secure stability in the Middle East, but almost all warned
that the Allies should not play a direct role in his demise.”(43)
The conclusion
of Desert Storm fell short of White House expectations. Despite
careful use of words in public, some in the Bush administration
clearly had hoped that defeat in Kuwait would light the fuse
on anti-Saddam rebellions within Iraq. On 15 February, after
Saddam issued his “cruel hoax” statement of unconditional
withdrawal from Kuwait, President Bush finally took the plunge
and declared:
But there's another way for the bloodshed to stop. And
that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take
matters into their own hands—to force Saddam Hussein,
the dictator, to step aside, and to comply with the United Nations
resolutions and then rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.
Voice of Free Iraq, a covert American-backed operation, was
yet more encouraging of rebellion. On 3 March, Iraq responded.
A returning Shiite tank commander in Basra fired a shell into
a massive portrait of Saddam and triggered a Shiite rebellion
across the South. In following days, Kurds in the north also
rose. Both groups called for US aid, but none came. Saddam’s
regime exploited a window in the ceasefire agreement allowing
helicopter flights to wipe out the rebels. Reporters in northern
Iraq, now free from restriction, delivered heart-rending images
of Kurdish suffering to the world. Saddam remained in power
while in Saudi Arabia extremists rallied against the presence
of American forces in their country. The unresolved issues would
spring up like hydra’s teeth a decade later.(44)
The
Aftermath
In the aftermath of the war, VOA considered the results of the
two major studies of its performance during the crisis. A survey
by the Center for Strategic and International Studies published
in June 1991, praised the content of VOA’s news, but raised
concerns over its feature material. One reviewer remarked on
the disparity between VOA coverage of Scud missile attacks on
Israel and more muted coverage of Scud attacks on Saudi Arabia.
The Wall Street Journal noted “a surprising anti-American
tilt” in the Arabic programs during the week of 20 January—the
second week of the air war—when 75 percent of interviewees
criticised Bush or coalition policy, and over 50 percent of
newspaper articles cited expressed negative views. On 22 February,
VOA Arabic carried Iraqi high command “communiqué
no. 58” live, hailing Iraqi military successes and criticising
the Bush administration for undermining the chances for peace.
Subsequent communiqués included wildly exaggerated claims
about US losses. The Hudson Institute, which studied programming
on selected days, reported in May that despite an over reliance
of US official sources and neglect of anti-war views, VOA “did
an effective and responsible job in reporting a difficult and
complex story.” The internal USIA Office of the Inspector
General called for a procedure to log Embassy complaints in
future crises. The breadth of criticism from multiple perspectives
suggests that for the most part VOA covered the Gulf War story
correctly.(45)
Looking
back on Desert Shield and Desert Storm, President Bush paid
tribute to the role of public diplomacy in sustaining the coalition.
On 7 June 1991, in a gesture requested by the new director of
USIA to boost flagging morale, he personally visited USIA to
swear Henry Catto into office. The President praised USIA as
a whole and paid tribute to the work of Dick Carlson at VOA
and the work of USIA around the Iraq crisis. The president told
assembled USIA staff:
The expertise of your people in the field, the fine
Gulf War pamphlets that you produced, all the extra hours behind
the microphone at VOA and in USIA’s TV studios helped
us to get the word out, helped people in the Middle East and
around the world separate fact from fiction about Iraq’s
aggression and the intentions of Saddam Hussein. We were up
against an enormous propaganda machine from various quarters
overseas. And I think that you all distinguished yourselves
with great honor and great credit to the United States of America.
So, thank you from this grateful heart.(46)
US
Public Diplomacy and the Middle East Post 9/11
USIA’s
overall performance in the first Gulf War should have secured
the agency’s future, more especially given USIA’s
obvious contemporaneous role in supporting the process of political
change in Eastern Europe. This did not prove to be the case.
Instead, “victory” in the Cold War set Congress
on the path towards some form of a “peace dividend.”
Budgets shrank and the agency began a course of drastic cutbacks
in its provision. In 1996, the agency lost its ability to rebut
disinformation as its sole resident expert in the field Todd
Leventhal was bumped back to a post at Voice of America. But
there was worse to come. Around the same time, Senator Jesse
Helms of North Carolina began a campaign to see the agency and
other independent elements in the US foreign policy machine
rationalised into the main body of the State Department. Some
voices at the State Department—most notably the secretary
of state in Clinton’s second term, Madeline Albright,
and her assistant secretary of state for public affairs, Jamie
Rubin, saw advantage in such a move and worked to create a new
structure whereby public diplomacy would be the responsibility
of an under secretary of state and its machinery fused into
the main body of the State Department. On 30 September 1999
USIA ceased to exist.(47)
The architects
of the plan to consolidate USIA into the State Department clearly
hoped that the agency’s sensitivity to matters of public
opinion might somehow be blended into the traditional outlook
of the State Department and act as leaven in that dough. This
did not prove to be the case; rather, the traditional culture
of the State Department prevailed. State marginalised public
diplomacy concerns and personnel, prompting a draining away
of USIA expertise through resignation and early retirement.
The rearrangement of budgets, redistribution of responsibilities,
in addition to such developments as the reassignment of Voice
of America to a Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), meant
that it was not possible to produce a direct comparison of resources
and personnel applied to public diplomacy before and after 1999.
Nevertheless, a consensus soon emerged among staff that the
US capacity and resources had been much diminished. While the
considered and engaged public diplomacy which was the hallmark
of USIA would not have prevented the 9/11 attacks, there can
be little doubt that it would have helped to open America’s
experience of the attacks and its policy in the aftermath to
the Islamic world.(48)
On the morning
of 11 September 2001, the United States awoke to the nightmare
of terrorist attack and swiftly realised that it needed an effective
public diplomacy to underpin the national response. Had USIA
still existed, the US government would instantly have been able
to target local opinion makers in the Arab world with material
explaining the US reaction to the attacks and the response as
it unfolded. In the event, the US public diplomacy response
was half-baked: muffled by the heavy hand of policy concerns
or drowned out by statements from the White House crafted for
the domestic audience. Key elements were missing altogether,
such as the ability to rebut rumour. Stories of Israeli dirty
dealings around the 9/11 attacks and CIA links to Osama Bin
Laden went unchallenged.
In place
of the considered and culturally informed approach which experts
like William Rugh brought to US public diplomacy in the first
Gulf War, the War on Terror and the Second Gulf War developed
with an astonishing ignorance of—and disregard for—the
culture of the region. The most outrageous example of this was
the gaff during a press conference on 16 September 2001, in
which President George W. Bush spoke of a “crusade.”(49)
The first name for the military response—Operation Infinite
Justice—had overtones of blasphemy and had to be swiftly
changed to “Operation Enduring Freedom.” There also
were more subtle errors. The president’s apology for the
abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib delivered on 6 May 2004 focused
on his statement that he was “sorry for the humiliation
suffered’ by the prisoners,” but did not include
the follow up statement “and I ask you to forgive me,”
which is expected in Arab culture in order for such a statement
to be meaningful.(50)
The official
responsible for US public diplomacy during the aftermath of
9/11 was a former ad executive named Charlotte Beers. She was
a newcomer to Washington in the autumn of 1991 and suffered
from the cultural gap between Madison Avenue and Foggy Bottom.
Moreover, her efforts in the post of under secretary of state
for public diplomacy and public affairs were hampered by a weak
system. She had no managerial authority in matters like promotion
of public diplomacy staff in the field. Her best-known activity
in was the launch of a multi-million dollar campaign called
“Shared Values,” which put images of happy Muslim-Americans
onto television screens around the Middle East. The problem
was that the manifest anger of the masses in the Arab world
was not the product of a mistaken belief that Muslim-Americans
lived in the midst of intolerance, but rather a perception of
American deeds in the region. Beers’ campaign seemed like
a waste of time and money. Under heavy criticism from the press,
she resigned on health grounds on 3 March 2003. Two weeks later,
the second Gulf War began.(51)
State Department
programs limped on under the interim stewardship of Patricia
Harrison and a short-lived replacement for Beers, Margaret Tutwiler.(52)
Small victories included the reappointment in October 2002 of
Todd Leventhal and the slow reconstruction of a basic counter-disinformation
capability. Leventhal’s work underpinned a White House
exposé of Iraqi propaganda entitled Apparatus of
Lies: Saddam’s Disinformation and Propaganda 1990-2003.
On a dedicated section of the State Department Web site, he
and a small staff began to engage various myths of the era.(53)
The media
landscape of 2001 was radically different from that encountered
a decade earlier. Real-time technologies had diffused. The world
now was linked by the Internet, which provided the perfect mechanism
for anti-coalition rumours to circulate at the speed of light.
Moreover, the US no longer had a monopoly over satellite news,
and faced competition from major players in the region, most
notably Al Jazeera. Wisdom suggested that the US engage this
channel by embedding the station’s journalists with US
forces or presenting US officials to be interviewed on air in
Arabic, but this was not done.(54) There were other differences
at home.
Within the
Washington bureaucracy, the key difference between the world
of Gulf War I and that of the War on Terror and Gulf War II
was the far more prominent part played by the Pentagon. Just
as public diplomacy now took a back seat within the State Department,
so the State Department was forced into second place by an ascendant
Department of Defense. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
his deputy Paul Wolfowitz dominated US public diplomacy and
outflanked the moderating influence of Secretary of State Colin
Powell. Charlotte Beers consistently was upstaged by assistant
secretary of state for public affairs Victoria “Torie”
Clarke.(55) The implications of the Pentagon’s ascendancy
for public diplomacy were manifold. The entire approach to public
diplomacy shifted to view the activity as a force multiplier—a
means to an end—rather than a dimension of international
relations. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz placed particular store by
private sector contractors, specifically John Rendon and his
Rendon Group. Rendon had worked for the Kuwaitis during the
first Gulf War, stage managing footage of the liberation by
handing out thousands of Kuwaiti and American flags to be waved
by thankful Kuwaitis. The Pentagon engaged the Rendon Group
to manage the public relations aspects of their bombing campaign
against Afghanistan in 2001. The Pentagon’s apparatus
included an Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) which reserved
the right to feed black propaganda to neutral and allied media.
The plan caused a flurry of protest when it became public in
2002, leading to the closure of the OSI. Still, the underlying
“can-do” psychological war-driven approach to public
diplomacy remained.(56)
The shift
to a public diplomacy in which the Pentagon and its private
contractors have become key players has fundamental implications.
The Pentagon immediately brings an emphasis on communications
as a force multiplier, a means to the end of victory rather
than a dimension of international interaction. Furthermore,
there is a core difference between a public diplomacy based
on in-house capabilities of the sort provided by USIA and an
effort drawing on contractors. The basic need to secure and
maintain a contract makes the private sector player much less
likely to stress the limits on public diplomacy. Unlike a public
diplomat, a contractor is not paid to feed back into the policymaking
process and question the fundamental premises of their mission
or the policy that motivated it. In the past, this sort of feedback
has been rare in US public diplomacy, but given the emerging
paradigm of privatization, it promises to be even rarer in the
future, and to the detriment of the operation of US public diplomacy.
*
For Voice of America, the War on Terror brought its own set
of challenges and frustrations. Although technically free from
the foreign policy machine, VOA now was subject to a politically
appointed Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) instead. Some
at VOA experienced the BBG as political pressure un-moderated
by the cushioning influence of the old USIA. In the wake of
the attacks, the VOA’s Pashto service to Afghanistan recorded
an interview with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and immediately
came under immense State Department pressure not to broadcast
the item. The Voice broadcast the item regardless. The senior
member of staff involved—news chief Andre DeNesnera—was
honoured externally for his public stand, but in 2004 VOA management
shifted him into the Siberia-post of diplomatic correspondent.(57)
The centrepiece
of the US broadcasting following 9/11 was a BBG project to create
two entirely new Arab language services for the Middle East:
Radio Sawa (from the Arabic for ‘together’),
a blend of music and news aimed at a young mass audience in
the region, and a television network call Alhurra (The
Free One), which sought to challenge the influence of regional
satellite stations like Al Jazeera. While Sawa made
notable headway in capturing an impressive audience share in
some localities, it was created at the cost of VOA’s Arabic
service. The architect of the Sawa project—BBG member
and US radio magnate Norm Pattiz—argued that VOA Arabic
simply had too small an audience to justify its continued existence.
Defenders of the service argued to no avail that its audience,
while small, was influential. Audience research figures with
indicated a measure of success for Sawa and Alhurra were disputed
by defenders of the old VOA and the stations bogged down at
home in disputes over cronyism and “Lebanese bias”
in its administration.(58)
Veterans
of USIA were appalled by the scale of disarray in US public
diplomacy and were active as lobbyists for reform through such
forms as the Public Diplomacy Council or membership of any number
of panels dedicated to examining the crisis. William A. Rugh
headed a Public Diplomacy Council study, which called for a
renewed engagement with the Arab public in late 2004 through
measures as diverse as the restoration of VOA Arabic and reopening
of cultural centres in the region, and the quadrupling of the
global US public diplomacy budget to $4 billion dollars a year.(59)
By 2005, there was some evidence of a new approach to public
diplomacy. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stressed the
need for better public diplomacy in her confirmation testimony
in January.(60) In the autumn of 2005, a close associate of
the president named Karen P. Hughes assumed the post of Under
Secretary of State. Rice increased the internal administrative
reach of her office while the president gave Hughes chairmanship
of an Inter-Agency Public Diplomacy Group, creating a mechanism
for a common approach to the field. Hughes’ choice of
deputy under secretary of state for educational and cultural
affairs also reflected innovation as she chose a young Arab-American
Dina Habib Powell. Hughes pledged herself to place particular
emphasis on listening to the Arab world, though her initial
foray into the field was treated with derision by domestic and
regional observers as she allowed herself to be drawn into defending
US policy and culture rather than merely listening. Yet her
“clout” at the White House gave her the opportunity
to respond to at least some of the problems which had dogged
US public diplomacy in recent years.(61)
Conclusion
In contrast to the difficulties of US public diplomacy in recent
years, the historical evidence suggests that USIA and VOA both
performed well during the first Gulf War. USIA’s input
into the Inter-Agency Working Group on Public Diplomacy emerges
as particularly significant, as does the agency’s expertise
in rebutting disinformation, which is a key weapon of the enemy.
Voice of America operated well throughout the crisis, on its
own terms. It maintained its charter obligation to cover all
sides of the story. Though its editorials were something of
an irritant to others in the foreign policy and public diplomacy
structure, this certainly was not inconsistent with its mission.
Perhaps
the most significant contribution of public diplomacy during
the first Gulf War was its presence in abstract form as an influence
on the grandest level of strategy, where concern for opinion
acted as a brake on the administration's strategy and required
strict adherence to the letter of United Nations mandate and
careful attention to building and maintaining a coalition. Such
structures would greatly have aided the US in the months and
years following 9/11 and such thinking at the highest level
would have counselled against any move as reckless and injurious
to the standing of the United States abroad as its unilateral
pursuit of the second Gulf War.
Nicholas J. Cull is professor
of Public Diplomacy and director of the Master’s in Public
Diplomacy in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University
of Southern California. He has written widely on issues of media
and history and is completing a major history of US public diplomacy
since 1945 for Cambridge University Press.
NOTES
1.
For a survey of these reports see US Government Accountability
Office (GAO), Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Science,
State, Justice, and Commerce and Related Agencies, Committee
on Appropriations, House of Representatives, US Public Diplomacy:
Interagency Coordination Efforts Hampered by the lack of a National
Communication Strategy. GAO-05-323, April 2005
on line at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05323.pdf and the Defense
Science Board Task Force Report on Strategic Communication at
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2004-09-Strategic_Communication.pdf
2. For background on the Gulf War see Philip M. Taylor, War
and the Media: Propaganda and Persuasion in the Gulf War,
Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1992, John R. MacArthur,
Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992; W. Lance
Bennett and David L. Paletz (ed’s), Taken By Storm:
The Media, Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy in the Gulf
War, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994 and Douglas
Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War, Boulder, Colorado,
1992. The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard argued that the
disjunction between the war as experienced by Iraq and the representation
seen on US television screens was such that ‘The Gulf
War Did Not Take Place’: Jean Baudrillard, trans.
Paul Patton The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995).
3. National Archives II (hereafter NA) RG 306 A1 (1070) box
3, USIA historical collection, reports and studies, 1945-1994,
Transition US Information Agency, March-April, 1991,
p 107.
4. Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War, p. 386. Kellner
goes on to stress the suffering and brutality beneath the image
of perfection and success.
5. Interview: Bill Stetson and Bob Coonrod, 4 January 1996;
VOA editorial 0-03982, ‘No More Secret Police,’
15 February 1990; contrary to the statement of April Glaspie
to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 20 March 1991 this
editorial was cleared for all language services and the condemnation
of Iraq and other countries outside Eastern Europe was not added
later. Bill Stetson, Memo to the file, ‘Public Diplomacy
and VOA editorials,’ 14 March 1990;
6. Interview: Stetson, Coonrod; William Safire, ‘Baltics
to Baghdad,’ New York Times, 30 March 1990, p. A31, ‘Country
of Concern’, New York Times, 9 April 1990, p.
A19, ‘Iraq’s US support,’ New York Times,
4 May 1990, p. A35, and ‘Broadcast to Baghdad’ New
York Times, 10 September 1990, p. A23. See also ‘Mosul
tapes,’ US News and World Report, 4 July 1990,
p. 21. For transcript of the Iraqi broadcast see FBIS-NES-90-074,
17 April 1990, p. 9.
7. Interview: Stetson; VOA editorial ‘New Persian
Gulf Threats,’ Alan Heil, Voice of America: A History,
New York, Columbia University Press, 2003 p. 320, Kellner, The
Persian Gulf TV War, pp. 12-13, the story of the editorial
became public in September see AP, ‘VOA criticism
of Saddam was squelched,’ Bangor Daily News,
15/16 September 1990, p. 3 also Newsweek, 1 October 1990, pp.
24-25.
8. Heil, Voice of America, p. 320-21. The VOA also supplemented
its Farsi service to Iran. Interview: Joe O’Connell (9
November 1995) see also ‘VOA Begins Broadcasting Messages
from Relatives to Hostages in Iraq,’ Washington Post,
4 October 1990, p. A38.
9.Interview: O’Connell, Coonrod; Robert S. Greenberger,
‘Angry critics say US Arabic language was not the Voice
of America during the Gulf War,’ Wall Street Journal,
13 June 1991, p.A18. Heil, Voice of America, p. 324-5.
10. PPP GB 1990, Vol. 2, pp. 1239-40, for press report
see Andrew Rosenthal, ‘Bush tapes message for Iraqi TV,’
New York Times, 13 September 1990, p. A9.
11. Interview: David Mack. Heil, Voice of America, p. 286; George
Bush Presidential Library (Texas A&M) hereafter GBL, WHORM
subject file, PR010, id 186172, Bush to Messinger, 28 September
1990. The use of both subtitles and recorded translation made
it much harder for the Iraqi regime to edit the broadcast without
this being obvious to viewers.
12. GBL WHORM subject file, FG 298, ID 186149, President to
Gelb, 28 September 1990 and for a digest of reactions to the
broadcast see ID 184448, Burson to Mike Schneider (P), 17 September
1990.
13. Interview: William A. Rugh, 14 December 1995.
14. Interview: Mack. On 15 October 1990 the President called
Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait ‘Hitler revisited’
but added ‘But remember, when Hitler's war ended, there
were the Nuremberg trials.’ His public papers for the
Desert Shield/Desert Storm period repeat this comparison in
some form on eight further occasions. On 1 November the President
pointed out that in his disregard for diplomatic convention
Saddam was worse than Hitler. For texts see PPP GB 1990,
Vol. 2, pp. 1411, 1509.
15. Interview: Rugh. For a sample of USIA materials passed to
the Working Group see GBL WHORM subject file, PU, ID 180078,
Gelb to Sununu, 3 October 1990 with attachments.
16. Interview: Rugh.
17. For a survey of Saddam’s propaganda and media policy
see Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, Saddam Hussein: A Political
Biography, London: Brasseys, 1991. Interview: Rugh.
18. For full account see Todd Leventhal, Iraqi Propaganda
and Disinformation During the Gulf War, (Emirates Occasional
Papers No. 36), Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research,
Abu Dhabi, 1999 also USIA fact sheet: Iraqi disinformation:
Allegations and Facts, 4 February 1991 archived online at http://intellit.muskingum.edu/othercountries_folder/iraq_dis.htm.
For an overview of Iraqi disinformation see White House Office
of Communications, Apparatus of Lies: Saddam’s Disinformation
and Propaganda 1990-2003, Washington DC, 2003, on line
at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ogc/apparatus/ accessed 25 March
2005
19. Interviews: Rugh and Mack. For a summary of early reports
see GBL WHORM subject file, PU, ID 180078, Gelb to Sununu, 3
October 1990 with attachments. Scepticism of Iraq was especially
obvious in Pakistan and Islamic India.
20. Interviews: Rugh and Jerry Krell (telephone), 22 March 2004.
The term ‘A Line in the Sand’ was widely used at
the time and charged with American and specifically Texan resonance,
as Col. William Travis drew a line in the sand to rally the
defenders of the Alamo. Jesus Christ also drew a line in the
sand to defend the ‘woman taken in adultery’. President
Bush used the term in discussing the budget on 22 October 1990
but it was not heard in his Gulf War rhetoric until his ‘Address
to the Nation on the Suspension of Allied Offensive Combat Operations
in the Persian Gulf’ on 27 February 1991 (Public Papers
of the Presidents George Bush 1991 – hereafter PPP GB
- Vol. 1, p. 187). He used the term on sixteen further
occasions as president and it became a standard element in his
election campaign speeches.
21. Interview: Rugh.
22. Interview: Rugh. President Bush first told the incubator
story in a news conference on 9 October (PPP GB 1990,
Vol. 2, pp. 1381-82) with suitable qualification: ‘I am
very much concerned, not just about the physical dismantling
but of the brutality that has now been written on by Amnesty
International confirming some of the tales told us by the Amir
[of Kuwait] of brutality. It's just unbelievable, some of the
things at least he reflected. I mean, people on a dialysis machine
cut off, the machine sent to Baghdad; babies in incubators heaved
out of the incubators and the incubators themselves sent to
Baghdad. Now, I don't know how many of these tales can be authenticated,
but I do know that when the Amir was here he was speaking from
the heart. And after that came Amnesty International, who were
debriefing many of the people at the border. And it's sickening.’
Subsequent uses were on 15, 16, 23 (twice) and 28 October and,
1 and 22 November. On this last instance speechwriters vividly
rendered the scene as: ‘Babies pulled from incubators
and scattered like firewood across the floor.’ For background
to the Kuwaiti campaign see Macarthur, Second Front,
pp. 37-77, Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War, pp. 67-71
and Jarol B. Manheim, ‘Strategic public diplomacy: Managing
Kuwait’s image during the Gulf Conflict,’ in Bennett
and Paletz (ed’s), Taken By Storm, pp. 131-48.
Fitz-Pegado left USIA in 1982. During the Clinton years Fitz-Pegado
she served as Assistant Secretary and Director General of the
U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service at the Department of Commerce,
promoting U.S. exports.
23. GBL WHORM subject file, ND 16, ID 196245, Gelb to President,
4 December 1990 with attachments,
24. PPP GB 1991, vol. 1, 13.
25. GBL WHORM subject file, PR 013.08, ID 204274 SS, Scowcroft
to President, 14 January 1991.
26. PPP GB 1991, vol. 1, pp. 44.
27. GBL WHORM subject file, ND 016, ID 223959, Foreign Media
Reaction Early Report, ‘Gulf Crisis’, 16 January
1991. And ID 208129, Foreign Media Reaction Early Report, ‘War
in Gulf’ 25 January 1991. On the positive image of Bush
specifically see SP 230.91, ID 210405, Gelb to President, 4
February 1991.
28. For a survey of Iraqi activity see Leventhal, Iraqi
Propaganda and Disinformation During the Gulf War and Taylor,
War and the Media, p. 90. Some sources claim that movie
stars invoked by Iraqi propagandists included the animated character
Bart Simpson. This story began as a joke on Johnny Carson’s
Tonight Show on 22 August 1990 which was confused with
fact. Carson drew attention to the error on 1 February 1992
see ‘Hefners Expect Playmate for Son.’ The Toronto
Star, 10 February 1991, (p. D2) also http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/radio/baghdad.htm
accessed 11 November 2005.
29. USIA fact sheet: Iraqi disinformation: Allegations and Facts,
4 February 1991 archived online at http://intellit.muskingum.edu/othercountries_folder/iraq_dis.htm
and GBL WHORM subject file, ND 016, 214060, Foreign Media Reaction
special report, 13 February 1991.
30. Interview: Rugh. For reports see GBL WHORM subject file,
ND 016, ID 21169, Foreign Media Reaction Early Report, 5 February
1991 and ID 213206, 13 February 1991, and on the Amirya story,
ID 213641, 14 February 1991 and ID 214062, 15 February 1991
a report that noted ‘there was some discussion of the
power of the media, especially TV, to reveal the full horror
of any war and also of the ability of both Iraq and the US to
manipulate viewers.’ While one airforce spokesmen conceded
soon after that the ‘baby milk’ plant was as claimed
by Iraq the US government maintains that is was part of the
Iraqi chemical weapons program.
31. Interview: Rugh. For documentation on systematic refutation
of this an other Iraqi disinformation claims see USIA fact sheet:
Iraqi disinformation: Allegations and Facts, 4 February 1991
archived online at http://intellit.muskingum.edu/othercountries_folder/iraq_dis.htm
. For discussion of civilian casualties and the issue of bomb
accuracy see Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War, pp.
157-164, 205-06.
32. Interview: Rugh and Mack. Leventhal, Iraqi Propaganda and
Disinformation during the Gulf War,
p. 55. Arnett, for his part, sought to skirt Iraqi censorship
by slipping details into his on-air conversations with his anchor
at headquarters, noting on one occasion that a particular site
of civilian damage lay close to a military installation. Arnett,
Live from the Battlefield, p. 355.
33. GBL WHORM subject file, ND 016, 211284, Foreign Media Reaction
Early Report, ‘Persian Gulf War’, 1 February 1991.
34. Interview: Rugh. For a sample VOA editorial on the outbreak
of war see GBL WHORM subject file, FO 005-03, ID 246529, VOA
editorial ‘How Democracies Wage War’, 24
January 1991.
35. Interview: Mack. For editorial reactions see GBL WHORM subject
file, ND 016, 211284, Foreign Media Reaction Early Report, ‘Persian
Gulf War,’ 1 February 1991; For detailed discussion of
the battle see Taylor, War and the Media, pp. 136-149.
36. Interview: Mack. For discussion of this story (speculating
on coalition origin) see Taylor, War and the Media,
p. 77.
37. For VOA editorial see GBL WHORM subject file, FO 005-03,
ID 246529, ‘Saddam’s environmental terrorism, 5
February 1991. On 27 January VOA had broadcast an editorial
(also in this file) showcasing US leadership in the environmental
field to anticipate the opening of the Global Climate Change
Convention on 4 February. For general discussion of environmental
theme see Taylor, War and the Media, pp. 80-83 and
Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War, pp. 208-227
38. PPP GB 1991, Vol. 1, p. 187.
39. GBL WHORM subject file, ND 016, 217082, Foreign Media Reaction
Early Report, ‘Cease-fire in the Gulf,’ 28 February
1991.
40. GBL White House Office of Media Affairs, misc files, USIA,
ID 06837, ‘Results from USIA sponsored telephone survey,’
7 February 1991.
41. GBL WHORM subject files, ND 016, 219244, Hensgen to Debra
Amend, Special Ass’t to Pres. for Communications, 19 February
1991.
42. GBL WHORM subject files, ND 016, 215985, Foreign Media Reaction
Special Report, ‘Analysis of World Media Opinion: “Yes”
to Gorbachev’s plan or “On with the War?”,
21 February 1991
43. GBL WHORM subject file, ND 016, 215993, Foreign Media Reaction
Early Report, ‘The Ground War,’ 25 February 1991.
44. For the President’s early circumspection on rebellions
in Iraq see press conferences 11 and 30 August 1990 (PPP GB
1990, Vol. 2, pp. 1127, 1179). For accusations that Bush had
encouraged rebellion see press conferences 4, 7, and 16 April
(PPP GB 1991, Vol. 1, pp 327, 344, 378-85). On the Voice of
Free Iraq see Taylor, War and the Media, p. 151-52,
239. Bush declined to comment on the station at the 7 April
press conference. For discussion see Peter W. Galbraith, ‘The
Ghosts of 1991,’ Washington Post, 12 April 2003,
p. A19.
45. Robert S Fortner, Analysis of Voice of America Broadcasts
to the Middle East during the Persian Gulf Crisis. Washington
DC: Center for International and Strategic Studies, 1991, pp.
15, 56; Mark Blitzer and Neil Pickett, Review of VOA Programming
During the Persian Gulf War, Indianapolis: Hudson Institute,
1991, pp. 2, 5, 39; Robert S. Greenberger, ‘Angry critics
say US Arabic language was not the Voice of America during the
Gulf War,’ Wall Street Journal, 13 June 1991,
p.A18; Heil, Voice of America, p. 325-6.
46. PPP GB 1991, Vol. 1, 619-22. Catto, responding, called Iraq
‘the first international crisis, unmistakably, of the
information age.’ For background documentation see GBL
WHORM subject file, FG 298 243743, Bush to Catto, 22 April 1991
etc.
47. This summary is informed by the author’s joint interview
with Clinton-era USIA director Joseph Duffey and his Deputy
Penn Kemble, 28 September 2004.
48. This paragraph is based on the author’s conversations
with serving senior public diplomats.
49. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html
. On negative European reaction to this see Peter Ford, ‘Europe
cringes at Bush “Crusade” against terrorists’
Christian Science Monitor, 19 September 1991, and for
State Department monitoring see also http://usinfo.state.gov/admin/005/wwwh1918.html
and http://usinfo.state.gov/admin/005/wwwh1920.html
50. Video of this statement maybe viewed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/world/050604-7v.htm
. Other gaffs included the White House’s initial decision
to name the Second Gulf War ‘Operation Iraqi Liberation’
missing the acronym OIL (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030324-4.html
). It subsequently became Operation Iraqi Freedom.
51. Peter Slevin, ‘Ad Executive Beers Resigns State Department
Post,’ Washington Post, 4 March 2003, A24; Anne
E. Kornblut,’US image-builder is resigning, though she
calls the job undone.’ Boston Globe, 4 March
2003, A7.
52. Tutwiler served from December ’03 to June ’04.
She gave notice in April 04 that she wished to take a post at
the New York Stock Exchange see Christopher Marquis, ‘Promoter
of US image quits for Wall St. Job,’ New York Times,
30 April 2004.
53. Connie Cass, ‘Secretive US “information”
office is back in business,’ Editor and Publisher,
10 March 2003 online at http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1834549;
and for Apparatus of Lies see http://www.whitehouse.gov/ogc/apparatus/printer.html
. The State Departments misinformation home page is http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jul/27-595713.html
54. Steve Tatham, ‘Losing the Battle for Arab Hearts and
Minds,’ TBS 14, Spring 2005.
55. For the official release on Clarke’s departure see
http://www.dod.gov/releases/2003/nr20030616-0102.html .
56. James Dao, ‘Pentagon readies efforts to sway sentiment
abroad,’ New York Times, 19 February 2002; Mark
Borkowski, ‘The real sultan of spin’ Independent,
31 January 2005;
57. For a press release on this story by the International Press
Institute (Vienna) see http://www.usawatch.org/archives/000634.html
58. For a convenient survey of both sides of the issues around
Sawa and Al Hurra see William A. Rugh (ed.), Engaging the
Arab and Islamic Worlds through Public Diplomacy: A Report and
Action Recommendations, Washington DC: Public Diplomacy
Council/George Washington University, 2004, chapters 4-6.
59. Ibid., see p 1-3 for context.
60. For text see http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2005/RiceTestimony050118.pdf
.
61. For a summary see Tom Regan, ‘US State Department
“charm offensive” hits bumps’ Christian
Science Monitor, 24 October 2005, online at http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1024/dailyUpdate.html
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