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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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