A Diminished USIA Dims Our Beacon Abroad

Today, a part of the U.S. government that “ain’t broke” gets “fixed.” The United States Information Agency, long a beacon to the outside world of what is best in America, goes out of business.

More accurately, it gets shoe-horned into the State Department, but it’s a poor fit, and the relative independence that made USIA a respected voice abroad of the United States comes to an end.

USIA was created in 1953 to explain the United States, and more particularly American foreign policy, around the world. It was deliberately given a semi-independent status in order to deal with an evident difficulty: how to say something as a government that wouldn’t just sound like self-serving propaganda.

Over the years, USIA has managed, by and large, to square that circle. By keeping a relative distance from the State Department’s diplomats, though housed in State’s embassies abroad, it put across a view of the United States that was closer to what foreigners who visited here recognized as the real thing. It thus got a hearing for U.S. policy and actions that many a diplomat, tied to the prevailing party line, could not achieve.

Even during the Vietnam War, when much of the world had the greatest trouble accepting what the U.S. was doing, USIA officers found an audience for America and its underlying values because they did not sugarcoat what was happening. That often caused dyspepsia in the Johnson and Nixon White Houses, but the U.S. reputation and its long-range interests were clearly served.

The agency has had some especially appealing features, founded in an educational mission. It administers the Fulbright program, which has brought thousands of relatively impecunious students and scholars to and from our shores--without first checking to see whether they support U.S. policy. USIA shepherds thousands of foreign journalists around Washington each year, gaining them access to senior officials--and the right to ask any question they want--that they couldn’t get otherwise. It also conducts the Leader Grant program, which has assiduously sought out tomorrow’s potential leaders in other countries to spend a month in the U.S., experiencing all of America on demand. Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and many of today’s powerful got their first glimpse of the United States in this way.

USIA’s demise as a separate entity is about politics rather than policy. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, long ago set his sights on three quasi-independent foreign affairs agencies: USIA, the Agency for International Development and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Citing cost-cutting, but perhaps also with a political agenda, he wanted them dismembered and the remnants crammed into the State Department.

In 1997, the incoming secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, saw a chance to achieve one of her key goals: to get the United States finally to pay about $1 billion in arrears to the United Nations. She cut a deal with Helms: He would get the three independent agencies on a platter, and she would get U.N. funding. However, she apparently overlooked that there is a House of Representatives, which balked and tied U.N. funding to a ban on any monies that could foster abortions. So Helms got his part of the deal, and Albright is still waiting for hers.

Does it matter if USIA becomes just another section of the State Department? Key programs will continue, and information policy will, in theory, be integrated with the rest of U.S. government efforts abroad. The latter underscores the problem. Credibility does not come from repeating a message often enough or getting everyone to say the same thing, but from a hard-won reputation for accuracy and dispassion. As part of the State Department apparatus, former USIA officers will be tied to the policy goals of the moment rather than to presenting a vision of the United States that is broader than any administration.

Also, as any American ambassador can attest, USIA officers serving abroad can often go places, see people and learn things that no diplomat, by definition an agent of policy, can hope to match. Today’s dissident may be tomorrow’s leader, but the diplomat has to keep hands off, and risk-taking in choosing people for Leader Grants will surely decline. Strangely, many foreigners will tell the truth to the USIA about developments in their country when they would only dissemble to the U.S. Embassy.

This is, at heart, a cultural matter: the ability and willingness of the U.S. government to put the nation’s best foot forward, if not always the policy of the moment; to tolerate in its pronouncements a diversity of viewpoints--within reason--that reflect our society; and to understand that what we are, warts and all, has both intrinsic value and broad appeal to others. Along with USIA, these qualities now disappear into the State Department.