Blog Post

AEIdeas

In 1948, as the Cold War gained steam, the US Congress passed the Smith-Mundt Act, which, among other things, prohibited the domestic dissemination of materials and propaganda intended for foreign audiences to prevent the US government from targeting its own public. I came face-to-face with the first aspect of the Smith-Mundt Act as a young PhD student in the mid-1990s about to head off for my first visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A couple of weeks before I departed, I contacted Voice of America (VOA) to learn the bandwidth and schedule for VOA’s English-language news broadcast to the region so that I needn’t rely entirely on the Iranian press. VOA refused my request, explaining not so accurately that it was illegal for me to listen to its news. As it turned out, many Iranians knew and were a bit more helpful than VOA. I was not the only one who experienced the ridiculousness of such a situation, and, in 2013, the Smith-Mundt Act was revised to enable distribution of VOA materials inside US borders, a change which met with fierce and sometimes overblown criticism.

It’s one thing for the president or secretary of state to give a press conference; it’s another thing to try surreptitiously to create an informal or indirect network to sell a story.

It’s the second aspect of the Smith-Mundt Act that is most important, however. It was inserted into the law because, in the wake of World War II, many congressmen were wary of any element with the resources of a state being able to shape news, especially in the wake of the example of Nazi propaganda in the run-up to and during World War II. In effect, while politicians then and now engaged in spin, it was forbidden for the state itself to coordinate or direct media campaigns involving foreign policy toward the American audience. It’s one thing for the president or secretary of state to give a press conference; it’s another thing to try surreptitiously to create an informal or indirect network to sell a story. This is one of the reasons why, during the Bush administration, many politicians and legal analysts became upset with Pentagon contractors Lincoln Group’s and PR firm Rendon’s respective efforts to place stories in the Iraqi press, which might then filter back into the American media, and to influence a public referendum on Puerto Rico.

It’s this propaganda aspect of the Smith-Mundt Act that is most troubling with regard to the White House (and perhaps State Department) approach to selling the Iran deal. The issue is murky, but, as the Obama administration tried and continues to try to skirt a fine line, it’s at least worthy of congressional investigation. What the White House did — and National Security Council Ben Rhodes bragged about — was craft a propaganda campaign using an outside funding source rather than public money.

Is that simply spin or does it cross the line into a state-sanctioned media campaign to sway Americans?

That propaganda campaign was targeted to an American rather than foreign audience. Is that simply spin or does it cross the line into a state-sanctioned media campaign to sway Americans? Also, is there a difference if the government uses taxpayer money only if or if it limits itself to private money effectively put at government disposal?

The White House might have hoped that, with the limited attention span if not sympathy of most journalists, the story would move on and be forgotten. What the White House didn’t count on was the continued leaking of material showing increasingly disturbing details about the murky financial network controlled by the Ploughshares Foundation and its close coordination with Rhodes and the White House. For example, the Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo noted that Ploughshare head Joe Cirincione visited the White House more than 30 times in the run-up to the Iran deal as he distributed cash to various groups in an effort to sell it. (The coordination might actually be deeper as the White House logs don’t include meetings at Starbucks and restaurants around the White House in which so many officials from any number of recent administrations engage).

The recent hack of George Soros’ “Open Society Foundation” has further shown that Ploughshares sought $750,000 to continue paying outlets like National Public Radio, the Arms Control Association, and the Atlantic Council’s Iran program to validate the Iran deal and dismiss concerns critics might have. Most recently, Kredo called out a Stanford University law professor, paid by Ploughshares, who did not disclose his funding was part of the group’s possibly White House-directed campaign when he placed an op-ed in the Washington Post dismissing the notion that a $400 million payment delivered to release hostages was a ransom, although the State Department now admits it was linked.

The question at hand shouldn’t simply be whether the White House coordinated and sought to spin — Rhodes admitted as much — but rather whether the White House violated a nearly seven-decade-old law prohibiting propaganda directed at the American audience. The law isn’t limited to shows broadcast overseas. After all, the concern with those was always leakage back into the United States, so targeting Americans directly blatantly violates the spirit and perhaps the letter of the law. That Rhodes — and perhaps Secretary of State John Kerry and his team — sought to finance that operation through private, partisan foundations operating opaquely (unlike, for example, political action committees which must label their work) does not absolve the White House.

It behooves Congress once and for all to determine if any line was crossed in the use of private funds to coordinate a public message.

Many on both the left and right decry money polluting politics. This isn’t simply a matter of lobbyists making their case to congressmen, but rather politically-active philanthropists using their funds to wage a multifaceted, self-reinforcing campaign to deceive congressmen, independent journalists, and the broader public. If that’s not a violation of the spirit of Smith-Mundt, then nothing is. And if it is permissible to do once, then it will be again in future administration regardless of party.

Hence, it behooves Congress once and for all to determine if any line was crossed in the use of private funds to coordinate a public message and, if necessary, plug the loop hole.