Foreign Service—Building a Foundation, 1948–1970

This chapter focuses on the US Information Agency’s first-generation Foreign Service officers. Improbably, it was a State Department career diplomat, George Allen, who shaped a vision of “soft sell” and “enlightened propaganda.” Soon practitioners were building a modus operandi based on what works best “out in the field.” Sections in the chapter look at training, spouses as unpaid diplomats, and career legislation. Public diplomacy’s early career officers were ambitious, blunt in their self-critiques, intensely competitive, and given to unsparing internal discourse. They operationalized abstractions in their legislation, the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, and a bevy of advisory panel reports. They tackled hard issues: short- and long-term goals, elites and mass audiences, communicating with people in and out of power, and non-attribution of content. They took umbrage at State diplomats who asked them to “get out of this Mickey Mouse peripheral thing” and “get into the real Foreign Service.” What good is diplomacy, they replied, if it is not supported by public opinion?