The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

IN HIS use of psychological strategy President Eisenhower seeks to do something the Truman Administration tried to do and failed — to coordinate all departments and all voices of the government to further a single set of psychological objectives. In his campaign speech at San Francisco last fall, Eisenhower observed: “Everything we say, everything we do, and everything we fail to say or do, will have its impact in other lands.” Tools in the psychological approach include overt media such as the Voice of America broadcasts and the international information program, and also clandestine and subversive operations.

Initial efforts to implement the new policy were not altogether on the mark. For example, the deneutralization of Formosa was intended primarily as a propaganda move. It required a good deal of after-the-fact persuasion, however, to convince the Europeans that this was not in itself a decision to expand the Korean war. The Administration was not prepared, either, for Congressional demands for an immediate naval blockade of Communist China.

Secretary of State Dulles also aroused suspicion that he was using psychology on Congress and the American people. Press accounts cabled back to this country of his conferences over the European Army were full of toughness and bluster —and, since the reporters depended on briefings, the information must have come from Secretary Dulles. Reports received by embassies in Washington, however, showed that Dulles actually had used a much milder approach in talking with European leaders than the “ultimatums” credited to him indicated.

Primary interest in psychological strategy centers in the study now being made by the President’s Committee on International Information Activities, headed by William H. Jackson, a New York investment banker and former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The committee is surveying the whole range of foreign information and strategic activities, including those of the State Department, the Mutual Security Agency, the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, the armed forces, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some competent men are serving on the Presidential board. In addition to William Jackson, the committee includes C. D. Jackson, the former publisher of Fortune, who has been appointed special assistant to the President for cold-war planning; Robert Cutler, a former staff expert of the National Security Council and now assistant to the President for security affairs; and Gordon Gray, the first director of the Psychological Strategy Board set up by the Truman Administration.

Almost certainly one of the goals will be to separate the present foreign information program, including the Voice of America, from the State Department and place it in an independent agency. A major concern is to take the State Department out of clandestine operations and give the information program more flexibility.

Truth is the best propaganda

The best propaganda, of course, is the truth. The controversy is over better means of getting the truth across, for the devices which persuade Americans to buy furniture polish do not necessarily convince the Egyptians or Brazilians that we are their friends. From all over the world come tales of methods ill adapted to local customs.

One Latin American Ambassador contends, for example, that a good symphony orchestra or a New York play sent on tour to his country would do more to enhance appreciation of the United States than all the broadcasts or booklets we distribute. The question is a little like that of whether to send tractors to India for technical assistance or to work within the Indians’ milieu and send steel-tipped plows — a question resolved in favor of the plows.

Beyond the overt propaganda activities, of course, are the clandestine operations. These are lumped loosely as “black propaganda,” a term which technically applies to propaganda made to appear as if it had originated with someone else. Associated with black propaganda are actual subversive activities by agents provocateurs as well as a host of secret operations. Most of these have been performed by the operations side of the Central Intelligence Agency.

There is always the risk that unless such operations are expertly performed and supervised they will boomerang and embarrass or interfere with diplomacy. Indeed, there is a philosophical question whether they are compatible with democratic government, for they are basically totalitarian techniques employed to fight fire with fire. As respects the CIA, there also has been the question whether the secret operations would run away with the more fundamental task of collecting intelligence.

The blunders of CIA

Because of these questions there was more than usual interest in the appointment of Allen W. Dulles as the new Director of Central Intelligence. Apart from being a brother of the Secretary of State, Allen Dulles is known in his own right for distinguished undercover work with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. More recently he served as deputy director of the CIA. There has been some concern, however, that Dulles’s connection with “operations” might lead him to neglect the strictly intelligence aspects.

This concern has some basis because of the blunders committed by CIA in the clandestine field, which have embarrassed the United States in world eyes. One, of course, was the arming of a group of neo-Nazis in Germany who, presumably unbeknown to CIA, marked Social Democratic leaders for “suppression” in case of emergency. Another was the support of a band of Chinese Nationalist guerrillas raiding Communist China from just inside the Burmese border — an inept move which, though once officially denied by Secretary of State Acheson, terrified the Burmese and caused the resignation of the American Ambassador to Burma.

In Latin America the operations have been even more clumsy. Not long ago CIA decided to tap the telephone of José Figueres, the former president of Costa Rica. The agent designated to do the job unwittingly made contact with an associate of Figueres who informed the political leader, and Figueres arranged to have a photographer present when the tap was made. The agent was caught red-handed, and the American embassy had to spirit away an attache before he was declared persona non grata.

Unquestionably there was an improvement in the quality of intelligence, with Dulles’s help, during the regime of General Walter Bedell Smith — though here again the Latin American side was weak. There was no advance warning on the Bolivian coup that put in the totalitarian Paz Estenssoro government, because the CIA agent assigned to Bolivia was vacationing on the beach at Rio do Janeiro. In Peru, only interference by the embassy prevented a CIA man from sending out, without investigation, a false report that the political refugee, Haya de la Torre, had escaped.

All these incidents have a bearing on the work of the psychological study committee because the CIA has a dual function. It probably is true that to separate the subversive function from the covert intelligence function of CIA would duplicate undercover activities with added risk of exposure. But it is also true that CIA’s clandestine operations have had inadequate supervision. And the agency which in theory has coördinated psychological policy—the Psychological Strategy Board — has lacked authority to follow through on details.

Beyond the formulation of objectives, therefore, it will also be necessary to devise better means for coördinating and supervising the application of policies bearing on psychological strategy. Apart from any structural changes, this will require an official acting with the authority of the President to ensure cohesion in all departments of the government. The appointment of C. D. Jackson as coldwar planning assistant to President Eisenhower was designed to fill this gap.

Benson and the farmers

One of the hottest scats in Washington is that occupied by the Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson. Falling agricultural prices, particularly on beef cattle, have brought Benson under great pressure from members of Congress to step in with emergency help. This pressure conflicts with his fundamental belief that more governmental assistance does not point the way to agricultural stability.

Augmenting the pressure has been an internal problem of Benson’s own making. He started off on the wrong foot with his employees by referring to the “swollen bureaucracy “ in the Department of Agriculture and asserting that he would expect “a full day’s work for a day’s pay. ” Conscientious workers took offense. By contrast, other executives such as Federal Security Administrator Hobby obtained a totally different reaction by using tact in meeting with employees and asking them for their coöperation.

To understand Benson’s approach it is necessary to understand his background. A deeply religious man, he was before his appointment one of the twelve Apostles of the Mormon Church. He was reared on an Idaho farm in the frugal tradition of selfhelp. In his work as executive secretary of the National Council of Farmer Coöperatives from 1939 to 1943 he was known for his extremely conservative bent. Before the Republican convention last summer he supported Senator Taft.

Soft-spoken and genial, Benson is at the same time reserved and handles himself adeptly. He is careful to parry questions and to say no more than he intends to say. Unlike his predecessor, Charles F. Brannan, Benson enjoys the friendship of the most conservative and powerful of the farm organizations, the American Farm Bureau Federation. The National Grange is also coöperating with Benson; whereas the Farmers’ Union, which favors high price supports and was regarded as having an “in” with Brannan, has been more standoffish.

Benson’s first move — a reorganization to place the twenty-odd bureaus of the Department of Agriculture under four principal executives — was similar to plans proposed by Brannan but frustrated by Congress. Benson went further than Brannan, however, in separating the Agricultural Conservation Program, or ACP, from the Production and Marketing Administration.

ACP had been under heavy fire for paying out some $250 million a year for conservation practices—such as the liming of fields—which many progressive farmers would follow anyhow. It often conflicted with the voluntary technical assistance program of the Soil Conservation Service. Working through county committees, ACP had been criticized as the political arm of the Department of Agriculture. The separation, with an implied promise of reduction in the scope of the ACP, met a long-time objective of the Farm Bureau.

How much price support?

Friendship with the Farm Bureau, however, will not necessarily help Benson in his basic dilemma, which is how to bring “full parity of income” for fanners at the market place without more rigid price supports or controls. Benson views price supports as “disaster insurance,” and he is appalled by the economic waste in overproduction for governmental purchase.

The Farm Bureau has consistently advocated variable price supports, with the government supporting farm prices through purchase or loan at from 90 per cent down to 75 per cent of parity as supply increases. This formula, which was designed to shift production to more-needed crops, was embodied in the Hope-Aiken Law of 1948 and the Anderson Law of 1949.

But Congress has systematically blocked application of the variable scale. Brice supports on the six basic crops — wheat, corn, rice, cotton, peanuts, and tobacco — were frozen at 90 per cent of parity through 1954. (Parity is the theoretical equation of the prices received by farmers with the prices of commodities they must buy; and when the parity ratio is at 100, prices are in balance.) Congress also juggled the old and the modernized parity formulas so that the higher figure applies. Meanwhile Benson is faced not only with falling prices but also with declining exports and a huge incipient wheat surplus.

The controversial Brannan Plan used a totally different approach on nonstorable crops. It would have permitted most farm prices to find their own level, as a means of introducing market flexibility and encouraging consumption, and it would have provided “production payments” to farmers on a farm income standard. The basic defects in the plan were, first, that the standard was entirely too high; and, second, that it would have brought more governmental controls. Some of the initial critics of the Brannan Plan, however, are now looking more favorably on production payments as a means of supporting perishable crops.

With the help of a fourteen-man advisory board, Benson has promised to come up with a new answer before the present program expires. Meanwhile, he hopes that more orderly crop marketing will arrest the price decline.

Benson’s challenge will be to persuade legislators that the rigid pricesupport system compounds the problem. This will be difficult indeed, for currying favor with the farmers is a favorite Congressional pastime. There probably is no other subject on which members of Congress are so prone to demand “economy” and vote the other way.

Mood of the Capital

The overriding questions in Washington as in every capital are: Who will ultimately win in the struggle for control of the Kremlin? and, What effect will the shift in power have on the West? Affairs in the UN and in Germany and Asia will mark time again as they did in the months preceding Eisenhower’s inauguration.

Meanwhile Republicans and Democrats alike fell over themselves in their efforts to accommodate the new Administration. Even when Eisenhower and his associates worked at cross-purposes — on the extension of the President’s reorganization powers — Congress rescued the Administration from its own confusion. All this brought speculation about another “era of good feeling” similar to that in the Monroe Administration 135 years ago. Certainly the President went out of his way to promote harmony between the legislative and executive branches, and many legislators were flattered to be included in the regular White House conferences. Perhaps in Washington as in NATO, President Eisenhower’s greatest talent is as a diplomat and catalyst in obtaining agreement.