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55 Chapter Three The Voice of America and Clark Field From Georgetown we scattered to the four winds. We were not told where our classmates were being sent, but through the grapevine we heard that two or three had been ordered, ominously, to jump (parachute ) school at Fort Benning, Georgia. Among the several of us returning to Mountain Home, three of my classmates and I had hardly unpacked when we were handed orders to the Voice of America headquarters in Manhattan. We were to report to Mr. James F. Thompson no later than “8 May” for 120 days of OJT (on-the-job training). As I noted in chapter 2, the ARCS training plan called for several successive psywar classes at Georgetown from which a few students would be selected for further training at the Voice of America. Because I was a “satisfactory” but hardly distinguished graduate of the Georgetown University program, the reason for my being selected for the VOA was puzzling, but still I was among the chosen few. “This is the Voice of America” was the sign-on given by broadcasters working for the Office of War Information shortly after the United States entered the Second World War,1 and after the war this greeting continued to be used as the Office of War Information was closed and the International Broadcasting System (IBS) radio programs were folded into the State Department. Voice of America programming was never heard in the United States, but its scripts were prepared here and by late 1949 its programming format was carefully controlled by the Office of International Information, which was parented by the State Department’s Office of Public Affairs. In the years since its launch in 55 56 C h a p t e r T h r e e 1942, the Voice has carried many different official titles. It has frequently been investigated and nearly extinguished by the U.S. Congress, which at one point favored passing it over to the United Nations. Yet it has kept its working name, the Voice of America, to this day. In early 1950, broadcasts by the VOA seemed to cause as much concern, debate, and paranoia among members of the U.S. Congress as they did in the Soviet Cominform and Politbureau. In the spring of 1950 President Truman, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the CIA were agreed that a hard-line anti-Communist, most particularly anti-Soviet, propaganda campaign would guide U.S. psychological warfare initiatives. Congress, however, was reluctant to fund the VOA. The anti-Communist sentiments of the legislative branch were tempered by its distrust of the growing power of the executive branch and by the fact that the VOA’s success was difficult to measure in terms relative to dollars invested. In addition, some congressional representatives felt that the use of information obtained from partisans or spies and broadcast abroad by the United States was unethical, and that the use of propaganda was detrimental to our national image. Ironically, by sparking the Korean War, Stalin swung the support of the American public and thereby the U.S. Congress to any effort to prevent the spread of Soviet power. U.S. psychological warfare operations including broadcasts by the VOA (many of which were aimed straight at the Soviet Union) were allowed funding, and Truman’s “Campaign of Truth” got under way. Despite Russian claims of innocence in the precipitation of the Korean War, not only did the Eighty-first Congress loosen purse strings after June 25, 1950, for Department of Defense budgets, which allowed the air force to field its first Air Resupply and Communication Service wings, it authorized funding that allowed the Voice of America to expand its broadcast activities at a rate not seen since the Second World War. On February 12, 1950, Edward W. Barrett was appointed by the Truman administration to the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and thereby became the head of the Office of International Information of which the VOA was a large and controversial part. Barrett, a career journalist whose service with the Office of War Information during the Second World War had acquainted him with the VOA, came to the State Department after working four years as the editorial director of Newsweek Magazine. Foy Kohler, a career Foreign Service officer fluent in Russian and having most recently served in the American Embassy in Moscow, was appointed chief of the VOA. Not only did Kohler...

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