Thinking Positive at USIA

Last July, Frank Shakespeare, the new director of the U.S. Information Agency, asked USIA officers stationed in Eastern Europe what sort of government they thought the people of those Communist lands would choose, had they a free choice. The overwhelming consensus of the diplomats was Dubcek-style socialism. The blond, boyish-looking Shakespeare, 44, only five months on the job, was shocked. "You mean you don't think they'd choose a U.S.-style democracy?" he asked.

Shakespeare, a former television executive who has little tolerance for negative thinking, was distressed by the apparent defeatism of his seasoned staffers and he is trying to do something about it. He has set out to remold USIA as a hard-sell exponent of U.S. policies in the 104 lands where it operates. In the process, Shakespeare has involved the agency in more controversy than it has seen in years, and has given it its most partisan tone since cold-war days.

Both Sides. Shakespeare is attempting to correct what he says has been for too long a liberal tilt to the agency's efforts. "I am determined," he says, "that our USIA overseas libraries will be ideologically balanced on the liberal and conservative sides. I will say something that may sound dangerous--the majority of books written tend to be written by people on the liberal side because they are more articulate. People like Schlesinger and Galbraith. But our libraries must express--clearly and openly--both sides." Finding writers on the other side, however, is not always easy. Recently Shakespeare fretted: "Why can't we get a good conservative like Richard Kerr to do some writing for us?" Assistants searched diligently, but could find no Richard Kerr; Shakespeare had meant Conservative Author Russell Kirk, the neo-Burkean scholiast.

Shakespeare has spent much time visiting USIA branches, where staffers have been impressed by his enthusiasm and energy. But in some areas, his tunnel-vision partisanship has caused friction, especially since many of the 10,000 members of USIA are liberal Democrats left over from former Administrations. The widely respected information officer in one Communist country was replaced for being too much the scholarly diplomat and not enough the activist type. The editor of an intellectual journal was warned to abandon his "terrific liberal bias." Grumbled one veteran from the Democratic years: "Shakespeare wants gung-ho Kiwanis boosters in Communist countries. What we need are officers who can sit down and patiently negotiate cultural-exchange agreements."

But Shakespeare's assistant, R. Kenneth Towery, does not agree. The agency's mission, according to Towery, is to compete against the Communists. "I want to beat 'em down," he says, "and I don't care whether it takes the liberal or conservative viewpoint to do it. I'm a pragmatist." He adds: "Frankly, there are people in this agency who are soft on Communism. But we will not have any trouble as long as they do what is expected of them."

Browbeating. A look at the boss's background suggests what is expected. For a decade, Shakespeare--a graduate of Holy Cross and a World War II Navy veteran--was a senior vice president and second in command at CBS. Then he lost out in a company power struggle. In 1968, he ran Richard Nixon's successful television campaign and gained a cynical, ruthless reputation that made him the villain of Joe McGinniss' book, The Selling of the President 1968. In one incident, McGinniss reports that Shakespeare, when told of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, exulted: "What a break! This Czech thing is just perfect. It puts the soft-liners in a hell of a box!"

By no means is all of the criticism aimed at Shakespeare deserved. There has been a drop in USIA morale steeper than that accompanying most bureaucratic changes of command. But that is due mainly to the impending cut of 375 staff positions for reasons of economy, not ideology. Two weeks ago, USIA rushed out a propaganda film called The Silent Majority. Those who had not seen it automatically assumed from the title that it was a partisan rebuttal to the antiwar march on Washington, and there were cries of foul. In fact, the film gives generally fair treatment to both sides.

Similar complaints have been raised about Shakespeare's efforts to purify the books distributed to USIA libraries. Authors John Updike, John Kenneth Galbraith and Philip Roth, among others, have been blacklisted for not presenting the most admirable views of American character. But blacklisting was not Shakespeare's idea; it was started 15 years ago, and has been continued fitfully since. Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night was first banned during the Johnson years.

Shakespeare told TIME that he was surprised at the extent of the blacklist, and promised its revision. Armies of the Night, he added, "won the Pulitzer Prize, and it should not be restricted." Nevertheless, the shelves will continue to ban some fiction, especially the overly sexy kind. "We are not a circulation library," says Deputy Director Henry Loomis. "We are in the business of supplying books which portray America in a fair and balanced way. Anyone who objects to this is probably in the wrong line of work."

Just what is the USIA's line of work? It is frankly an American propaganda agency, and accentuating the positive is its legitimate goal. The question is how much of the positive can be poured on without undermining the agency's own credibility. The Voice of America has always been most effective when it offered straight news, including U.S. criticism of the U.S. As Edward R. Murrow, most distinguished of USIA directors, once said: "You must tell the bad with the good. We cannot be effective in telling the American story abroad if we tell it only in superlatives."

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