Linda Risso. Intelligence & National Security. Volume 26, Issue 2/3. April-June 2011.
The launch of the Western Union in 1948 and the creation of the NATO Information Service in 1950 were important steps in the coordination of the Western response to Soviet and Soviet-inspired propaganda campaigns. By examining how the British Information Research Department worked closely with the International Organizations Division of the CIA in shaping the foundation and early activities of these intergovernmental agencies, this article offers new insight into the role of national information agencies within international organizations and contributes to explaining why, in the early Cold War, the West struggled to produce a coherent and fully coordinated propaganda response to communism.
The early Cold War witnessed the launch of several intelligence and information agencies in the West. These new bodies were shaped by the country in which they operated, including different sources of funding, operational practises and terms of reference. It is now clear that by the end of 1948 the Americans and the British had well organized and generously funded agencies, while other Western European countries were just starting to get organized. The signing of the Brussels Treaty in 1948 and the foundation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the following year offered the possibility of new levels of coordination in the fields of intelligence and information. Yet, despite the potential offered by the new organizations, Western European countries—including Britain—were reluctant to engage in close dialogue. The reasons for European scepticism were rooted in fear of compromising national security by divulging intelligence information and propaganda material and long-standing historical distrust of one’s neighbours. The US call for a solid and coordinated response to Communist propaganda campaigns clashed, therefore, with resistance from their European partners. This article examines the position of Britain, and particularly the Information Research Department (IRD), towards cooperation within international organizations in the early years of the Cold War. It explores the reasons behind the IRD’s attempt to resist American plans for new Western propaganda machinery while at the same time reassuring the United States that they were fully committed to responding to Soviet and Soviet-inspired propaganda.
Since its dissolution in 1975, and even more since its papers were first made available to researchers in 1995, the history of the IRD has been at the centre of the attention of numerous historians. The IRD was founded in 1948 as ‘a small section in the Foreign Office to collect information concerning communist policy, tactics and propaganda and to provide material for anti-communist publicity through our Missions and Information Services abroad’. It specialized in the production of detailed and reliable information about political, economic and social life in communist countries, as well as equally reliable material on life in the West, in order to foster support for the Western way of life. The reports were circulated through personal contacts and to journalists, opinion leaders and various organizations. Historians like Hugh Wilford and Andrew Defty have mainly focused on the activities of the IRD and on its relationship with their American counterparts. Less is known about the cooperation that the IRD established with similar Western European agencies and how it viewed the establishment of propaganda agencies within international organizations. With the exception of Andrew Defty, who has written about information exchange within the Brussels Treaty and dedicated part of a chapter to the setting up of the NATO Information Service, little is known about the activities of the IRD in international organizations like the Western Union and NATO. The IRD and Foreign Office sought independence from US designs, yet at the same time, Britain and the United States were the only Western countries with adequate propaganda capabilities. Indeed, US-UK collaboration increased through the work of IRD and the CIA’s International Organizations Division (IOD). Nonetheless, the British retained different ideas—linked to their own foreign policy objectives in Europe and beyond—as to the shape and function of intergovernmental propaganda efforts. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Western Europeans did not have dedicated information agencies and most resisted American pressures to build a Western-wide propaganda machinery. As a consequence, a coordinated anti-communist western propaganda response would remain a difficult compromise.
The IRD and Cooperation with the Brussels Treaty Powers
The foundation of the Cominform in September 1947 allowed the Soviet Union, its satellite states and national communist parties in Western Europe to carry out a coherent and energetic propaganda campaign against the West. This campaign benefited from the coordination of all information activities, generous funding and the possibility of exploiting the divisions between western powers, as well as widespread sentiments of pacifism and neutralism. For these reasons, according to Foreign Office officials, it was imperative to promote a coherent and unified response to anti-western Soviet propaganda. The establishment of permanent channels of consultation and the exchange of information about what each government was doing in the propaganda field were important first steps to achieving this goal.
Yet, while they saw cooperation with like-minded governments as a primary objective, British officials had little faith in the ability of their Western European counterparts to provide an effective response on their own. Because of the lack of appropriate information agencies and of adequate resources, continental European countries were thought to be lagging behind and needed guidance and advice. The Labour Party thought that Britain should lead its junior partners and believed that ‘it is for us, as Europeans and as a Social Democratic Government, and not the Americans, to give the lead in spiritual, moral and political sphere to all the democratic elements in Western Europe which are anti-communist’.
Meetings with the French and American foreign ministries offered the first opportunity to discuss closer cooperation in the field of anti-communist propaganda. However Ralph Murray, the first director of the IRD, warned colleagues about his overarching concern of compromising the IRD’s ongoing activities and making its existence known to the wider public.
The signing of the Brussels Treaty in September 1948 opened the way to practical collaboration within Western Europe in the fields of intelligence and information. The Treaty created the Western Union and favoured political consultation among members so to foster economic, social and cultural cooperation (Article III). This was a time when Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin supported the idea of Europe as a British-led third force linked to the Commonwealth and was therefore in favour of closer cooperation with France and the Benelux countries. The Foreign Office set up a Working Party to study cultural and information cooperation with Brussels Treaty Powers. Murray thought that the IRD should ‘make active use of the treaty’ and he saw the Western Union as a possible means to foster the exchange of information and to facilitate the distribution of IRD propaganda material. The Working Party was, however, critical of Murray’s position for two reasons: first, due to conflicting policies of the Brussels Treaty Powers in their respective colonial outposts, particularly in the Middle East, effective cooperation seemed unworkable; second, an official policy of coordinating the propaganda effort of Western Union members could interfere with the efficiency of Britain’s own activities while offering very little in return. It was therefore decided to oppose the creation of a joint propaganda committee within the Western Union and to propose instead periodic discussions between information officials. The Working Party also recommended against informing the Brussels Powers about the existence of the IRD. Bevin was warned that collaboration with the French, for example, ‘would mean that the nature of our machinery and its work should have to be made known to the departments of the French Government and we suspect that those departments include communists’. Six months later, an internal IRD memo written in preparation for the first meeting of the Brussels Treaty Council warned again that:
There is considerable risk that in the name of ‘coordination’ we should find our information and broadcasting being used by the other four Powers with no compensating advantage to ourselves and probable loss of efficiency due to the inevitable friction which would occur.
In addition, the Foreign Office saw ‘the danger that if we attempt ambitious measures of coordination we may spend all our time coordinating and very little actually doing any propaganda’. Despite the IRD’s cautious approach, the United States pressed for closer cooperation among the Brussels Powers and demanded that Britain assume a leading role. Since the end of the war, the United States and the UK had established close cooperation in the intelligence and information fields and the State Department was eager for the British to establish closer links with their European counterparts. In light of the pressure coming from Washington, Gladwyn Jebb, who at the time acted as UK representative on Brussels Treaty Permanent Commission, advised Bevin that on this matter, ‘we should “show willing” especially in the face of an American impression that we are “dragging our feet”‘. On the one hand the IRD feared that close cooperation would interfere with its freedom of action, while on the other, it hoped to exploit its contacts with the Western Europeans in order to find new channels to spread its information work and collect more material on international communism. For these reasons, although the IRD was interested in exploring ways to foster cooperation, it approached the creation of a multilateral response to communist propaganda within the Brussels Treaty Organisation with extreme caution. Bevin was advised to work towards creating a loose consultation forum for ‘the collection and collation of information and research into the true state of affairs in the USSR and her satellites’. The IRD envisaged a series of agreements for consultation at the official level between those engaged in such research, ‘each Power would thus have the benefit of what contribution could be made to the essential stuff of counter propaganda, while retaining full liberty of action to issue the material by whatever means it considers proper’.
The coordination of information activities among the Brussels Pact Powers was first discussed in the Consultative Council of the Brussels Treaty on 25 October 1948. It became immediately clear that the other Brussels Powers were keen on receiving information material dealing with the economic and social situation in the Soviet bloc but, to the IRD’s surprise, they showed little interest in knowing how such reports were put together. The Belgian Prime Minister, Paul-Henri Spaak, mentioned candidly that:
[if the information material] could be made available to him by the British Government it would save him the trouble and expenses of setting up a parallel Belgian organisation to do the same work as that which was being done in Great Britain.
The French were as determined as the British to make sure that each government retained full control over anti-communist propaganda and that nothing more than exchange of information would take place. Thus, it was decided that the British government would make some of its propaganda material available to the Brussels Powers via its Embassies, while other member countries agreed to contribute any item of information they were able to produce in the future. Most importantly for the IRD, the Council agreed that ‘no attempt should be made to coordinate the propaganda of the five powers on an identical pattern’ and that propaganda should ‘be carried out by each country according to its own national needs and circumstances’.
Soon after the Consultative Council meeting, Ralph Murray visited the Brussels Powers capitals to make all the necessary arrangements for the distribution of IRD material and to explore further channels for the circulation of their reports. The meeting with Dr Antonius Lovink, the General Secretary of the Dutch Foreign Ministry, was particularly helpful as it was agreed that the British material would be sent from its Embassy to Dutch trade unions, which would then pass them on to colleagues in the French, Italian and West German trade unions. The way was clear for the IRD to circulate its reports to the Brussels Powers through the British Embassies and the first report was sent on 8 December 1948. In the first six months of 1949 alone, the IRD supplied 28 papers on a variety of subjects to the Brussels Powers.
The exchange of propaganda material within the Western Union was conducted on a purely intergovernmental basis, established on an ad hoc level through the Embassies and personal contacts. Cooperation was strictly defined as the circulation of information material and, significantly, did not entail consultation on propaganda policies or on any other form of propaganda activity. Most importantly, given persistent conflicting interests over colonies, particularly in the Middle East, the propaganda material exchanged within the Western Union focused exclusively on how to respond to communist propaganda attacks in Europe and cooperation did not extend beyond the geographical region covered by the Brussels Treaty.
In order not to compromise the secrecy surrounding the origin of the reports, the IRD developed a two-tier approach toward the Western Union Powers. It divided the propaganda material that was to be distributed into two categories: Category A included reports based on classified information on Soviet policies and was sent directly to high-level Brussels Treaty civil servants and politicians; Category B material was based on less confidential information and was suitable for wider dissemination through Embassies. Significantly, Brussels Treaty governments were not fully informed about the distribution of Category B material and they remained largely unaware of the extent of the IRD’s activities in their countries and in other Brussels Treaty powers.
In 1948, the IRD approached the coordination of Western European information with great caution. This attitude was motivated both by fear that excessive coordination may hamper the IRD’s ongoing activities as well as general distrust of its counterparts. Coordination with the Brussels Pact Powers remained, therefore, on a different level to that established with the United States. The IRD’s analysis of the Western European countries’ capability of managing an effective information campaign was correct; in 1949 no other country had machinery as well-oiled and reliable as that of the British. The fact that IRD provided 28 papers to the other Brussels Powers during the first six months, while receiving only two interesting reports from the French and nothing from other Brussels Treaty partners, seemed to confirm the British analysis. Precisely because of the lack of effective counterparts, the IRD was unable to act as a leading force in Western Europe as Bevin had foreseen. Disappointment and contempt toward European partners grew stronger in the IRD.
The IRD, IOD and the Foundation of the NATO Information Service
The Brussels Treaty’s experience confirmed the British belief that close cooperation with continental Europeans was destined to absorb large amount of the IRD’s time and resources and risked compromising its efficiency. At the same time, precisely because the IRD was disappointed with the poor work carried out by its European counterparts, it recognized the urgency to do more in stimulating its partners and offering support. Yet, despite these problems, cooperation with the Brussels Treaty Powers did open new channels for the circulation of IRD reports, something the Foreign Office was eager to find. For these reasons, the IRD welcomed the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty and was eager that NATO offered more than purely military defence. In a letter of March 1949 to Ernest Bevin, Christopher Mayhew (Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office) maintained that:
Having closed the front door against Communist aggression, we must now see about the back door … This is a task where we British, with our solid public opinion and exceptional political experience, seem to have special responsibility. We should, I think, take a strong lead in encouraging western democracies in combating Communist propaganda in their own countries … there is a definite need to continue giving moral encouragement and material assistance to weaker governments in the anti-Communist field.
IRD officials were equally determined to ensure that the launch of a new organization should enhance and not undermine Britain’s leading role among the forces of anti-communism in Europe. Upon the ratification of the NATO Treaty, Gladwyn Jebb submitted a proposal for the creation of an agency within NATO to promote anti-communist propaganda in which the nation-state retained the initiative and freedom of action. Jebb’s cautious draft warned that the new body should in no way hinder Britain’s ongoing anti-communist offensive. Britain should not be forced into an ‘undesirable co-ordination of propaganda policy with the other signatories’ and instead grasp the opportunity for ‘stimulating the laggards and imparting the benefit of our experience and techniques’. Once again, maintaining Britain’s freedom of action was paramount for the Foreign Office. According to Christopher Warner (Assistant Under-Secretary of State):
We should keep our hands free to go on doing our own anti-communist publicity all over the world … We and the Americans have, I think, the only effective anti-communist publicity machines and it would be a great pity and dangerous to do anything which would prevent us from continuing to use it inside North Atlantic Treaty countries or to allow our hands to be tied by any kind of contact only to work by agreement or under the detailed direction of a ten-power body.
It should not be forgotten that at the time the IRD was discussing cooperation with NATO members, Britain was fighting communist insurrection in Malaya and the first signs of the Mau Mau rebellion were visible in Kenya. At the same time, the IRD ran propaganda campaigns in response to attacks from the numerous communist front organizations active in Europe, in particular the World Peace Congress and World Federation of Democratic Youth. Freedom of action was therefore crucial for the Foreign Office as Western Europe was only one of the many theatres Britain was engaged in.
These efforts led the IRD into tighter cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency, particularly its newly established IOD. Similar to the IRD, the IOD was a central collection point for information on the activities of national communist parties and front organizations and provided covert assistance to an increasingly tight network of voluntary organizations. Thus, the IOD’s mission was to fight communism, and particularly the front organizations, on an international level. This fight received a further boost in 1953 with the launch of the United States Information Agency (USIA), which expanded and reinforced the relationship with numerous left-wing and liberal organizations, initiating new policies like cultural exchange programmes, travelling libraries and exhibitions and the covert funding of numerous left-wing journals and intellectuals. Thus, cooperation between the IRD and like-minded American agencies, like the USIA and the IOD, grew stronger while coordination with the other Western European countries struggled to take off.
Like the IRD, the CIA was eager to make sure that NATO produced a coordinated and effective response to Soviet propaganda. Contrary to the views held in London, in the eyes of American officials effective coordination of all western propaganda activities was a much more urgent priority than the fear that such coordination may disrupt the small information campaigns already put in place by national governments. In early 1950, the State Department recognized the need to:
promote cooperation with the information services of other governments to the end that, while they speak with many voices, they promote a clearer understanding of their identity of interest in the struggle to preserve freedom and coordinate their efforts to penetrate the Iron Curtain with generally agreed propaganda themes.
In the US view, the maximum degree of cooperation among the NATO members in both the fields of intelligence and information had to be achieved as soon as possible. It considered the creation of an information agency within NATO as the best means to foster a strong and coordinated anti-communist campaign in the West. On the other hand, the Foreign Office was eager to make sure that national governments retained the initiative in the fields of intelligence and propaganda. They were therefore in favour of an intergovernmental forum for the exchange of information but they resisted the US attempts to create a powerful NATO agency that could function as a counter-Cominform. The IRD requested to the Foreign Office that the terms of reference should not
hinder us in developing our offensive against Communism in our own way or as to open the door to committing us to undesirable coordination of propaganda policy with other signatories.
The NATO propaganda programme was discussed at the Foreign Ministers Conference in London in 1950. The American delegation suggested that the UK and the United States ‘lend a helping hand’ to the Western Europeans but the British resisted any call for closer cooperation. At a bilateral meeting between Christopher Warner and Edward Barrett (the newly appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs), it was agreed that the NATO information staff should not issue its own publicity and should only coordinate information and stimulate the propaganda effort of NATO member governments. It was also recommended that all information action should be entrusted to British and American experts, working directly under the Chairman of the Council of Deputies. Finally, Warner made sure that NATO would not duplicate what was already carried out within the Brussels Treaty Organisation through its newly-established process of informally circulating reports on the propaganda policies of national governments and monitoring communist activities in their countries. Yet to American exasperation, the Western European governments, when asked for their opinion, sided with the British in recommending that each country remain free to tailor propaganda activities on a national level. In addition to the desire to avoid excessive centralization within NATO, Britain and the other Western European members were growing increasingly concerned about the excesses of domestic anti-communism in the United States, especially McCarthyism and its tendency to curtail civil liberties and tarnish political opponents.
British opposition to a centralized agency within NATO can be better understood by linking it to ongoing IRD operations in Western European countries. Since its inception, the IRD had provided foreign governments with anti-communist information material in the hope of pushing them to adopt a more assertive anti-communist stand. The IRD reports were also distributed directly to writers, journalists and academics, and it was often the case that national governments were not aware of such actions. This was still the case in 1952, when according to an IRD survey only select individuals in a few countries were aware of British information activities in their own countries. Most governments did not even know about the existence of a specific agency within the Foreign Office dealing with anti-communist propaganda. The Norwegian and Icelandic governments, for example, were unaware of large-scale operations run by the IRD in their territories. The IRD was therefore concerned that closer cooperation at the intergovernmental level, on the lines suggested by the Americans, would force the British delegation to reveal the existence of the IRD and the extent of its action in Western Europe.
It should also not be forgotten that in the early 1950s, the IRD and the IOD worked closely together in their common fight against international communism. This was a time when some senior officials in the IRD started to grow increasingly concerned at what they saw as an excessive form of anti-communism from many of their colleagues in the IOD. The IRD believed, in fact, that covert action required utmost discretion and feared that fervent political feelings were detrimental to the success of such operations. Nevertheless the coordination of information policy continued as close contact with the IOD offered the IRD the double advantage of opening new outlets for propaganda material and exerting a moderating influence on the Americans. In this sense, a new consultation forum within NATO could allow more room for discussion by bringing in the points of view of other Western Europeans, who were notably wary of excessively overt and aggressive propaganda methods. For these reasons, the Foreign Office cautiously supported the creation of some form of loose information machinery within NATO.
In line with what was agreed by the UK and the United States in London, the NATO Council of Deputies approved the creation of the Information Service (NATIS) at the beginning of August 1950. The new agency was to ‘promote and coordinate public information in furtherance of the objectives of the Treaty while leaving the responsibility of national programmes to each country’. The Canadian Theodore F.M. Newton was appointed chairman and the staff initially consisted of senior information personnel from member governments. NATIS operated through the existing national security agencies and, at least initially, was not supposed to produce its own information material. According to its terms of reference, the Information Service would have no operative budget and its activities should ‘be restricted to certain facilitating operations performed in co-operation with established agencies and outlets’.
The new NATO information machinery was a compromise between American demands for vigorous and fully coordinated western propaganda activity and European fears for excessive centralization and information sharing. Like many compromises, it disappointed everybody. The lack of enthusiasm meant that the contributions that were supposed to be volunteered by member governments were neither regular nor substantial. Only a few months after the creation of NATIS, Theodore Newton, complained that he had ‘no money to buy newspapers or to make telephone calls and that there was no provision for the payment of travelling expenses of himself and his assistants’.
As soon as NATIS was set up the IRD made contact with its new Director. In December 1950, John Peck (IRD) offered Newton the support of the Foreign Office. He expressed hope that the two agencies could work closely together in a common anti-communist campaign but recommended that such collaboration should remain secret and that other national delegations and experts should not be informed of the existence of the IRD and the work it carried out. Peck explained the need to avoid saturating the market and the overarching concern of avoiding NATO from being identified as an IRD propaganda channel. Finally, Peck suggested that, given the established British expertise, NATIS should not initiate the costly and lengthy collection of information about communist propaganda and rely instead on material that the British delegation could provide. This proposition appealed to Newton precisely because NATIS did not have the resources to carry out such an operation by itself. Peck also provided Newton with examples of the IRD’s output, including a copy of the fortnightly ‘Trends in Communist propaganda’. According to Peck’s report:
Mr Newton is very anxious to cooperate with us to the full, to avoid getting in the way of anything we may do on our own, and in effect, to put his resources at our disposal, and I think he may be very valuable to us.
The cooperation between NATIS and IRD was reinforced by the appointment of William Newton (no relation to Theodore Newton) as the NATIS Deputy Director and Head of the Research Section of the Information Service in 1951. William Newton had previously worked for the BBC, where he gained extensive experience in political and foreign language broadcasting and the production of information programmes. At the beginning, William Newton and Theodore Newton were the only NATIS members to know of the IRD’s existence and the true origin of the reports circulated by the British Delegation.
It was the beginning of a very productive relationship. In the 1950s, the British and American delegations were the most prolific in producing reports on the activities of the front organizations and national communist parties in the NATO area. Both delegations submitted reports on the festivals and congresses organized by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and World Peace Council, as well as on the political and economic situation within the Soviet Union and Communist countries. In 1953, Francis Brown of the UK delegation to NATO asserted that ‘We remain the main purveyors of such factual information to NATO’. It is likely that the American reports were generated within the IOD. There is no doubt that the documents submitted by the UK delegation originated from the IRD. Drafts of the NATO reports are available in the IRD archive and often include a copy printed on NATO headed paper. The style, sources and information contained in these reports are also easily recognizable and are similar in content and style to the information material passed by the IRD to British and international journalists. The reports were accurate and detailed and based on information gathered by a long-established network of observers and informants that the IRD had cultivated since the end of the war.
Secrecy remained key and the IRD carefully instructed all people involved in the distribution procedure not to reveal the origin of the information reports that were circulated. The Foreign Office feared that the British delegation might be forced to inform their counterparts about the existence of the IRD and its covert activities in other NATO countries. According to Denis Brown, the IRD man in charge of liaising with NATIS in the early 1950s: ‘It is clear that we cannot authorise the British Representative … to describe, without more ado, all the activities of the IRD in NATO countries’. Thus, the IRD issued precise guidelines to the British delegation:
The UK representative is not to indicate the extent of H.M.G.’s [His Majesty’s Government] activities in this field in any given foreign country … He is not to volunteer the information that H.M.G. maintain a special agency to collect intelligence suitable for anti-communist propaganda.
At the beginning, the IRD sent its reports to NATIS via the British Embassy in Paris. The Embassy passed the unopened envelope on to the UK delegation in NATIS. This procedure often betrayed the origins of the material as it could happen that the red slip attached to the pack in IRD offices was not removed before reaching NATIS. In order not to compromise the IRD’s secrecy, in September 1952 a new procedure was introduced wherein the IRD material was sent directly to the UK delegation without passing through the Embassy. All material was enclosed in a plain (not ‘Foreign Office’) envelope addressed to the North Atlantic Treaty Information Service without a compliment note and without the red slip. According to Denis Brown:
The fact that the envelope is received from the UK Delegation will be of sufficient indication that the material is ours for those members of NATIS who know of the IRD’s existence (i.e. so far as I know Mr Theodore Newton and Mr William Newton).
Once it was sure that the secrecy of its existence and activities were protected and that material distributed to NATIS would not be traced back to London, the IRD became a strong supporter of cooperation with NATIS. They even suggested that the new agency may offer opportunities:
[in] talking about, for instance, the exchange of facilities on broadcasting; for influencing governments to release more factual information for use by NATIS for influencing those governments who are not doing much at present to do more information work themselves.
In fact closer collaboration in the broadcasting field received a further boost in 1951 with the appointment of Peter Pooley as Assistant Director of Information. Pooley was the founder and first editor of BBC’s Radio Newsreel and, in 1940, had worked for the BBC Empire Service. As Assistant Director of Information, Pooley overviewed the production of short films and documentaries and brought his expertise and valuable BBC contacts to the service of NATIS.
A further important step in the IRD-NATIS collaboration was the appointment in 1968 of John Price as Director General of the NATO Information Services. Price was himself an ex-IRD man and had worked as an information counsellor in Bonn. Price’s first act as Director General was to visit London to discuss current and future collaboration with the IRD. At Peck’s suggestion, Price was invited to the IRD’s offices, an extremely rare honour, to discuss with IRD officials ways to increase and improve the flow of reports and information material from IRD to NATIS. He also requested to have copies of all material, including weekly press cuttings, sent to him personally. The appointment of Price established an even tighter and more direct link between the IRD and NATIS.
The reports distributed by the United Kingdom delegation included of course the periodic surveys that all NATIS national delegations were asked to submit to the Director of Information and Committee on Information and Cultural Relations (CICR). This allowed the CICR a detailed picture of the measures put in place by member governments to respond to Communist propaganda attacks. More importantly, however, the United Kingdom delegation submitted detailed reports on the activities of front organizations and their festivals and congresses. Such reports were remarkably detailed and included the number of national delegations, the name of delegation leaders, event organizers, keynote speakers and the title of their presentations. After events had taken place, the delegation often submitted additional reports with summaries about how the press had reported on the event and any issue that may have arisen during the congress or festival. Festivals promoted by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and congresses organized by the World Peace Council and World Federation of Trade Unions were the subject of a particularly high number of reports sent by the British delegation and it is clear from the IRD archival material that these organizations were perceived by the Foreign Office as extremely dangerous.
The British delegation also submitted reports on the economic and political situation in the Soviet Union for circulation within the North Atlantic Council. These reports offered detailed information and data on Soviet government policies and their impact on the economic and political development of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc as a whole. They were to offer a precise picture of the economic and political situation behind the Iron Curtain so to help the Council and the NATO countries gain a more advanced insight into the development of the Soviet economic and military potential. Copies of the reports circulated within the North Atlantic Council found their way to specialized working groups and committees including the Committee on Soviet Economic Policy (AC/89 series) and the Working Group on Trends of Soviet Policy (AC/34). As Evanthis Hatzivassiliou has recently demonstrated, the reports allowed the NATO Council to monitor the USSR’s relations with the satellites and to project future developments in Soviet security strategy. Through the circulation of the reports, the British delegation had the possibility to influence the way in which the NATO Council and its national delegations perceived the USSR and its satellite states and therefore contribute to NATO’s defensive and strategic formulations.
The NATO Committee on Information and Cultural Relations
After its launch, NATIS set up a series of Working Groups, like the ‘Ad Hoc Working Group on the Conflict of Ideas’, to find ways in which the Information Service could assist national governments in their ongoing anti-communist actions. Given the limited scope of NATIS’s terms of reference, the working groups could do little more than suggest closer cooperation and more effective exchange of information among the national delegations. These reports frustrated the US delegation, who demanded a more confident and effective NATO Information Service. In the eyes of the State Department and CIA, NATIS was too small, weak and understaffed. The lack of an operative budget and the obligation to work through national security agencies were the major problems. Yet, when the US delegation asked for a better funded and enlarged Information Service, it met again the resistance of European members. Frustration grew stronger on all sides.
In November 1951, Charles M. Spofford (Chairman of the Council of Deputies and US Permanent Representative) submitted a memorandum for the re-launch of the NATO Information Service. The British responded with a full counter-proposal in February 1952. The two documents show the continued discrepancy in views between the two countries. While both proposals appreciated the necessity of respecting national differences, they disagreed on virtually everything else. The United States, for example, proposed a committee made up of international staff; the UK foresaw instead a group composed of staff appointed by national governments. Several delegations—particularly the Belgians, Canadians and Danes—sided with the British and argued that the appointment of a non-governmental staff would undermine the control of NATIS propaganda activity by national governments. While all member governments recognized the need to respond to communist propaganda, they were equally determined to protect their independence. Most importantly, they were reluctant to share security information with other members. Reciprocal suspicion among national delegations remained an obstacle. In the early stages the Information Staff was itself regarded with suspicion and the Director of Information believed that national delegations were ‘afraid that NATO might be setting loose an international propaganda machine which would speak to people over the heads of the governments or behind their backs’.
In the summer 1953, NATIS was restructured and divided into three sections: Press relations (under the chairmanship of George Parsons Jr.), Editorial section (Oliver de Sayve), and the Media section (Peter Pooley). The reorganization and expansion of the budget boosted NATIS’s action, which for the first time could produce its own information material. At the same time, the existing working groups merged into the new CICR. NATIS and the CICR worked closely together. NATIS developed and coordinated multinational and national information programmes and its activities were responsible to the NATO Secretary General. The CICR reviewed NATIS’s output and practices and sent recommendations for improvements and cost-effectiveness to the North Atlantic Council. NATIS consisted of members of the International Staff, the CICR included representatives from each national delegation. At the CICR’s meetings, representatives of the national delegations presented reports on the activities of their national government in pro-NATO and anti-communist propaganda. The CICR then discussed ways to achieve tighter coordination among the member states so to ensure more coherent and consistent action. The foundation of the CICR marked a step toward closer cooperation while national information agencies remained free to operate according to national policies and priorities.
While NATIS was taking its first steps, a budgetary crisis risked jeopardizing its development. In March 1953 the Information Service was informed that its funds for special projects like the travelling exhibitions would be cut the following year. NATIS’s budgetary crisis was caused by the fact that, in March 1954, it was anticipated that the United States delegation would discontinue its voluntary contribution of half a million dollars per year. It should in fact be explained that between 1949 and 1952, the NATO Information Service had been generously assisted by voluntary contributions from counterpart funds available to the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) and the Office of Policy Coordination under the Marshall Plan. American contributions had been vital to the foundation and early development of the NATO propaganda machinery. With the winding up of the Marshall Plan, however, there was a drop in direct support for NATIS. For this reason, the CICR recommended a sharp increase in the Civil Budget’s contribution to NATIS. As a result, although the Information Budget for 1955 showed an increase over the 1954 budget, the overall amount of funds actually available to the Information Service fell dramatically. Special projects like the travelling exhibitions were the first to suffer, while more attention was given to publications and the HQs visiting programme, which consisted of groups of ‘opinion leaders’—journalists, parliamentarians, academics and trade union leaders—touring the main NATO public area and listening to lectures on the benefit of NATO. Such programmes were thought to offer good value for money and were thus maintained throughout the Cold War.
Despite this setback, American information agencies, particularly the USIA, remained convinced of the need for strong propaganda machinery in Europe and to spur on NATO governments. The United States looked for ways to indirectly support the activities of NATIS. One of the most successful ways was to help NATO produce, translate and distribute short movies, documentaries and newsreels, whose production costs were far higher than NATIS could afford. In 1954, Theodore Streibert, head of USIA, informed NATIS that his organization was willing to carry out a programme, involving considerable expenditure, for the preparation of a series of 14 films focusing on each of the NATO countries to be circulated among all the members to foster mutual understanding and support for NATO. Throughout the 1950s, the support of USIA was vital for NATIS, who could produce numerous short movies and newsreels and benefit from the distribution networks attached to USIA.
At the same time, NATIS developed strong links with numerous voluntary organizations and state-private networks including the Bilderberg Group and Congress of Cultural Freedom, who were crucial in assisting NATIS in its early years. In order to assist the activities of the smaller organizations, NATIS could ask for support from the Special Fund, which allowed the Information Service to make small contributions to the activities run by outside networks and associations in support of NATO. Most of the loosely-affiliated groups established after 1949 to foster public understanding of NATO missions merged in July 1954 into the new Atlantic Treaty Association, which later developed its own Youth Atlantic Treaty Association.
In the 1950s, NATIS combined the need to respond to anti-NATO communist propaganda with boosting support for NATO among the Western public. Precisely because an effective counterpropaganda campaign required advanced understanding of the composition, action and function of the Soviet propaganda machinery, NATIS started to collect and collate information on national communist parties and front organizations. Through the creation of various specialized groups, like the ‘Working Group on Trends in Soviet Policy’ and ‘Working Group on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Occupied zone of Germany’, the CICR and NATIS collected a vast amount of information and gained a more advanced insight into the Soviet-inspired anti-NATO propaganda. These working groups included members of the international staff as well as experts appointed by national delegations. The collection of such information was useful both to monitor the activities of front organizations and help prevent communist subversive plans. Not surprisingly, the term ‘fifth-columns’ recurs in NATO archival documents of this period. In fact, it was feared that in the case of a Soviet military attack, western European communists would support the USSR army through acts of sabotage, espionage and propaganda. It is worth recalling here that in December 1952 the NATO Atlantic Council launched the NATO Special Committee (AC/46 series) to coordinate the intelligence services of its members. The Special Committed, which is still active today, includes the heads of the intelligence security services of NATO countries and advises the North Atlantic Council on security, espionage, terrorist threats and acts of sabotage that could threaten or destabilize the Alliance or any of its members.
The role of NATIS in coordinating the members’ response to the action of communist front organizations has already been discussed elsewhere. It may, however, be worth mentioning here that the CICR was particularly determined to force front organizations to hold their congresses and festivals in Eastern Europe. NATIS officials thought that if such events were allowed in the West, they could persuade non-communists of the democratic legitimacy of the organizations, which would in turn strengthen them. How to force front organizations to hold their events in Eastern Europe, where they would be ignored by the western media, was a matter of national sovereignty and each NATO government was responsible for the matter. Yet, NATIS suggested acting as a forum to facilitate coordination and maximize the success of operations. Because of the transnational nature of front organizations, it was argued, the West had to launch an equally coordinated and coherent response. Western governments could refuse permission for conferences and congresses, deny visas to the key speakers coming from the East and cause the delay of trains taking participants to the international congresses. While some countries developed coherent and bold anti-communist actions, others were more cautious and feared that any government interference would be seen by the public as a breach of free speech and therefore backfire. In this sense, the British position looked particularly vulnerable. The Foreign Office did closely monitor the activities of the Communist Party of Great Britain, of fellow travellers and the front organizations operating over Western Europe (and often in Eastern Europe too). The submission of reports often included the demand for a firm anti-communist stand from NATO and European counterparts. Yet, the British government rarely took direct action themselves against the front organizations and often refused to restrict the freedom of movement of British communist sympathizers, which often caused tension with the State Department and the CIA. The IRD was well aware of this potentially problematic issue and instructed the British delegation that, if challenged, they should point out that ‘the effect in the United Kingdom of withdrawing a passport on grounds not directly connected with national defence would outweigh the advantage to be gained by curtailing the travels of the Dean of Canterbury and his likes’.
At this stage, it is difficult to assess how effective NATIS really was. However, it is possible to note a correlation between the recommendations of the CICR and the actual measures adopted by national governments. While it is certainly possible that the governments would have employed similar techniques even if NATO had not recommended them, the CICR offered an important forum for the discussion of western anti-communist initiatives and allowed room for the coordination of all information policies. As far as the actual production of the propaganda material was involved, the CICR facilitated the exchange of ideas about the language to be used and the topics and themes to be chosen, so to maximize the effectiveness and coherence of the information material produced throughout NATO.
The changes in East-West relations that followed the death of Stalin and the end of the Korean War required an overhaul of NATO information policies. Such a review was made more urgent by the admission of West Germany into NATO. The Germans needed to be convinced about the need for a strong NATO and, at the same time, large sections of the Western European public had to be reassured that a rearmed and sovereign West Germany within NATO was not a threat. In the post-Stalin era, cultural influence became an even more important instrument to Soviet foreign policy and propaganda machinery. The Soviet Union boosted its activity in Europe and turned to the Third World, particularly to those countries with strong anti-colonial movements. The change in the Soviet approach led to an increase in western propaganda action. NATO officials believed that the new Soviet approach aimed ‘to encourage tendencies in the West which might undermine NATO, to cause a degeneration of western military effort, and to create a climate inhibiting the possible use of nuclear weapons by the West’. The appointment of Paul-Henri Spaak as Secretary General in 1957 gave a boost to NATIS. Spaak believed that precisely because it blurred the line between communists and non-communists, the new Soviet strategy risked drawing uncommitted states into closer relations with the USSR and creating a rift among NATO members. Spaak saw the Soviet ‘peace offensive’ as extremely dangerous and demanded a more confident propaganda response.
The new international situation made clear the need for a review of NATO’s strategic concept. This was the focus of the Report of the Committee of the Three on Non-Military Cooperation in NATO, which was published in December 1956. The report asked for more cooperation and consultation in political and economic matters and recommended closer coordination in the information field.
Following the recommendations of the 1956 Report, NATIS was advised to review its output and replaced the strictly military-based themes widely used in the early 1950s with a new focus on the economic and social integration promoted by NATO. In movies, newsreels and publications, NATO was described more convincingly as an Atlantic Community and more emphasis was placed on economic and political cooperation. The new material targeted opinion leaders such as artists and intellectuals, upon many of whom the USSR exerted a strong influence, and increased the production and distribution of materials in all forms (press, radio, TV, films, etc.). The Information Programme for 1956 recognized for the first time that:
It is now necessary to emphasise that [NATO’s] military potential is based on a political alliance which is of the first importance, without being aggressive. The need for such a shift of emphasis is in part a measure of the success of NATO, but it is also necessary to consider the effects of Soviet ‘peace’ propaganda techniques, and the dangerous complacency and ignorance of some elements of western public opinion.
At the same time, the NATO Council asked for a more confident response to communist propaganda attacks. The CICR was asked to circulate information to help the western press publicize the discrepancies between the Soviet call for a relaxation of East-West tensions and the persistently hostile and aggressive tone of the Soviet domestic press. This proposal led to the programme on ‘Contradictions in Soviet Propaganda’ in which each NATO country would collect relevant materials and appoint an officer to circulate the bi-weekly publication ‘Contradictions in Soviet Propaganda’, prepared by the US information services. The Soviet ‘peace offensive’ reinforced the British and American counter-propaganda effort within NATIS. Archival evidence shows that the two countries’ delegations submitted an increasingly higher number of reports suitable for propaganda purposes and demanded more aggressive campaigns from NATIS and national governments.
Conclusion
The launch of the Western Union and the creation of the NATO Information Service were important steps in the coordination of a Western response to Soviet and Soviet-inspired propaganda campaigns. By providing a forum for discussion and exchange of information and intelligence, both organizations allowed the West to produce coordinated action and develop a common strategy to respond to communist action. Yet, despite their potential, these organizations failed to attract the necessary support. Although national bodies like the IRD saw the promise of new intergovernmental information agencies, mutual suspicion and reticence toward exchanging security and intelligence information prevented them from taking full advantage of the situation. Despite direct and indirect State Department and CIA pressure, little progress was made and the West remained largely unable to produce a common information and intelligence response to Soviet attacks.
The study of the IRD papers offers deeper understanding of how the Foreign Office strove to realize their aim of leading the propaganda effort in Western Europe, in full respect of national sovereignty and practices, without clashing directly with American demands for centralized and coherent western propaganda action. As one of the few well-organized and experienced agencies able to deal with propaganda in the early Cold War, the IRD looked to lead junior European partners through the Western Union and NATO. The partnership with the United States had demonstrated the advantages of cooperation in the intelligence and information fields. It would allow for specialization and division of labour. Cooperation would also open important new outlets for their propaganda material, which was something the IRD was always eager to develop. However, any joint action ran the risk of jeopardizing the secrecy surrounding the very existence of the IRD. While it was not a problem for the Foreign Office to reveal this to the Americans, doubts about the security and discretion of Western Europeans remained. The IRD also feared being taken advantage of and having its room for manoeuvre reduced by consultation with less experienced partners. The State Department, on the other hand, did not share such concerns and pressured the Foreign Office to engage in closer cooperation. In their view, achieving a coherent and effective propaganda campaign against international communism was far more urgent and important than protecting national prerogatives. Disagreements between Washington and the Foreign Office grew stronger and the IRD had to find a way to work with the Western Europeans without compromising other ongoing activities.
For these reasons, the IRD approached propaganda cooperation within the Western Union with utmost caution and resisted US attempts to build powerful centralized propaganda machinery within NATO. Only when it was clear that NATIS could not threaten the IRD’s operations and that it actually opened new ways to distribute information material, did the IRD fully climb onboard. From 1953 onward, the British delegation was one of the most prolific, along with the Americans, producing key reports that played an important role in shaping the CICR’s—and consequently NATIS’s—view of the communist threat. Through its delegation and the presence of British officials in key posts, the IRD was able to take advantage of the opportunities offered by NATIS without having its other ongoing activities and secrecy compromised.
The kind of association that the Foreign Office had in mind was not based on cooperation among equal partners; it was rather a matter of Anglo-Americans offering leadership and help to their junior counterparts. In the eyes of the Foreign Office and the CIA, cooperation was a one-way street in which the IRD and IOD supplied the Western Europeans with copies of their propaganda material; materials in which the countries were themselves the target of Anglo-American propaganda. Rather than multilateral cooperation, the Foreign Office initially envisaged a series of bilateral agreements to facilitate the exchange of intelligence and propaganda information, which would offer the double advantage of protecting IRD secrecy and allowing Britain to exploit the weakness of counterparts by offering support and intelligence information. Given the superior expertise of the IRD, the Foreign Office could decide what material should be collated and circulated and, therefore, could influence the point of view and policies of its partners. Both the balance of power and initiative were in Britain’s favour. To use the terminology of intelligence liaison cooperation studies, the cooperation agreements with the Western European governments saw Britain and the United States as primary partners if not dictatorial ones. The combined use of archival information available at the national and intergovernmental level suggests therefore a complex interplay between national security concerns, transatlantic relations and intelligence and information sharing in the early Cold War.