Facts & Rumors

The purse-proud House Appropriations Committee could not make up its mind about at least one item in the State Department budget--$31 million for the Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs.

To the committee members, as to many Congressmen, OIC seemed a windy, posturing, inefficient and expensive peace time version of the Office of War Information--in short, just another unnecessary excrescence of Government press-agentry. They suspected it as a present, or potential, spreader of political propaganda beneficial to the Democrats. Some of the U.S. modern art shows which OIC had thoughtlessly sent abroad still caused House members to flush with mortification. Moreover, Congress felt that any information about the U.S. which the U.S. had to sell abroad could be handled better by private agencies.

Anticipating congressional pressure, Assistant Secretary of State William Benton, OIC's super-energetic salesman, had suggested the establishment of a public corporation--with only nominal State Department control--to take over all U.S. international shortwave broadcasting. But the big question was: Should the U.S. spend uncounted millions implementing a new global foreign policy, and at the same time deny OIC the chance to explain it to foreign countries?

Estimate. In 15 months, Benton's OIC had set up shop in 62 countries, hired 3,100 people, begun to broadcast in 25 languages over shortwave relay transmitters in Manila, Honolulu, Algiers, Munich and London. It had established 70 libraries, started a worldwide service to newspapers, sent mobile units traveling abroad with U.S. art exhibits* and documentary movies--and spent some $32 million. What were the results?

Reports from TIME correspondents showed that the results had been spotty. In Berlin, where the U.S. has to compete head-on with Russia's Tass News Agency, OIC's mimeographed press handouts and the "Voice of America" radio program have been far from effective. In Paris, where the Russians maintain a flossy cultural center serving movies, vodka and Martinis, OIC is the object of citywide indifference. Teeming China has not been much impressed, even though the State Department services some 500 Chinese newspapers. And the British dismiss OIC's handouts as "a lot of paper wasted on stuff that's usually too late."

But news reports from Russia applauded the news-packed "Voice" program--the only U.S. news service of any kind to pierce the iron curtain. (Last week, to pep up the broadcast even more, OIC appointed famed Swing Maestro Benny Goodman as musical consultant for programs beamed to Russia.)

Throughout the Balkans, the combined impact of radio, press handouts and libraries have made OIC a real threat to the Russian propaganda monopoly--and once caused Marshal Tito to close the U.S. libraries in Belgrade. Italy hungers for Americana, despite the confusion it feels after reading Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dos Passes and Faulkner in the libraries, and then seeing Hollywood's idea of Americana on the screen. India's press has changed much of its hostile tone under State Department persuasion, and in Cairo a Russian press bulletin warned against the spread of the U.S. cultural offensive because "it proposes before anything else to discredit the U.S.S.R. in the Near and Middle-East."

In sum, OIC's impact on the world was not yet enough to answer Congressional criticisms. Nevertheless, Bill Benton and State hoped that Congress would recall a forgotten warning by ex-Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes.

Said Byrnes: "There was a time we could afford--or thought we could afford --to be unconcerned about what other people thought of us. ... That time is past. We shall be making decisions, within the U.N. and independently, that will have repercussions affecting the lives of ordinary people all over the globe. Our attitude and our actions--and rumors thereof--will be matters of concern everywhere."

* For news of OIC's traveling shows, see ART.

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