Talking Smith-Mundt

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I spent yesterday afternoon on the phone listening in on – even threw in a couple of questions at - a press conference in advance of a conference next week in Washington about a topic which few Americans even know exist. They should.

The name of the game under discussion is an arcane law enacted in 1948 and revised most recently in the wake of the Vietnam War.  The law’s called Smith-Mundt (after its Congressional fathers). It has been used over the decades to keep almost all US government information materials produced by the State Department - or the once upon a time USIA from 1953-1999 - designed for foreigners out of the hands and away from the eyes and ears of Americans in America. 

Smith-Mundt was the law of the land when I worked for the US Information Agency from 1970-1998.  Much of the time and especially when I worked on educational and cultural affairs it was irrelevant.  Every so often it meant that we couldn’t provide USIA published or produced materials – like books, pamphlets, films or videos – to the people who had paid for them without obtaining special Congressional dispensation.  But that was it.

When the rubber really met the road was in the late 1990s with the advent of the Internet.  Satellite television and radio broadcasting should also have been affected in the same way Voice of America short wave broadcasts were during the Cold War – I just don’t know.

The way USIA’s lawyers dealt with the Internet question was to allow the then Information Bureau now called IIP – whose products and services were produced to support our field operations overseas – to establish websites but not give out the addresses to Americans in America to comply with Smith-Mundt.  That remains the situation today.

A Fiction in need of Revisiting

Given the advent of powerful search engines such as Google, this barrier is, and has been for some time, fiction. It needs to be revisited.  In November 2008, for instance, IIP’s data shows that although 60 percent of the visitors to State’s International Information Programs (IIP) site were foreigners, the other 40 percent were Americans.

The issue of protecting Americans’ eyes and ears from what its government says to people overseas regardless of the law’s original intent – and that’s another story which has at least some roots in commercial American media (read AP) that didn’t want competition from a government funded press service – has never been one with which I agreed.  Besides, this original objection should be considered irrelevant since the US media largely abdicated the foreign reporting function after 1991 and the best foreign news we get here now is from the BBC. 

Meanwhile, I think we need as much transparency as possible in these United States so that US citizens can make informed decisions about what their government is saying abroad.  Let’s face it:  the Bush administration all too effectively cranked up the propaganda machine in the US to full volume particularly through a variety of dubious practices at the Pentagon and a cowed White House and State Department press corps.  The lying to justify the Iraq invasion was not only taken at face value but magnified through complicit major US media including a bevy of “pro-mil” bloggers as well.  So why should people be worried now about a possible “propaganda” blowback effect if Smith-Mundt does go by the boards?  That’s just nonsense.   

 What’s sauce for the civilian goose should also be sauce for the military gander

I also think that what’s sauce for the goose on the civilian side of the US government should be sauce for the gander for the US military.  In fact, I thought to some extent it was.  Silly me.

 I think, however, I heard yesterday from a CENTCOM panelist that as far as the US military is concerned, Smith-Mundt restrictions do not apply to them.  What I think I also heard was a vaguely worded reference to indicate that the US military seems to think it will further militarize foreign affairs information activities at the continuing expense of the impoverished and understaffed State Department – which has already lost out wholesale in talking to audiences at home and abroad due to neglect, complicity, ineptness and incomprehension of State’s leadership under the W administration – especially during the past four years.

State has never gotten it - so why should it change now?

Meanwhile, State has just never “gotten” the importance of the information game – either at home or abroad.  It’s not and never will be part of its “core diplomatic functions” so will always receive the short end of the stick.  Secrecy and hierarchy are the rules of State’s road – and they’re so ingrained in the bureaucracy and its operation – that they just plain aren’t going to disappear.   

If Smith-Mundt does, however, go by the boards, then what – if anything should replace it?  Or should it simply be updated and revised to reflect current realities?

I personally think we need a reinvigorated government funded and based civilian foreign affairs information effort that is devoted to explaining US policies in depth to foreigners who need background to put them in context – and this includes a substantial translation effort, projection and personal interaction overseas.  But American taxpayers should also be privy to what’s going on. Yet somehow, the difference between how the US government addresses foreigners and Americans here at home needs to be maintained.  I’m not sure, however, that the State Department on its own would figure this out without – at a minimum - a budget line-item from Congress to force its hand.

These are elements of the conversation that needs to take place not only in the Executive Branch but also in the corridors of Congress. “Revisiting the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948,” a day long conference to raise these issues and others is scheduled for January 13 in Washington.  The good news is that the conference is already oversubscribed and organizer, Matt Armstrong tells me that there are over 40 people on the wait list but that  media and Congress bypass it.  I urge those who haven’t done so already to take advantage of this opportunity.