DEFENSE OF USIA

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

As an occasional reader of the CRIMSON I found your September 29 editorial tribute to Summer Welles interesting. However I dropped my coffee cup over the fourth paragraph. Are you really suggesting that the "USIA propaganda techniques" are morally or technically comparable with "this era of McCarthy purges"? McCarthy was--in his own way--brilliantly successful for a time. Are you suggesting that USIA is also brilliantly successful and uses McCarthy's methods?

As you perhaps know, McCarthy and his assistants, Cohn and Schine, are generally considered to have considerably damaged our U.S. information program. In Vienna, they succeeded in removing books and records from our Amerika-Haus. In Munich they had several senior people removed from the Consulate General and the Amerika-Haus. Consequently, although I feel it perfectly fair to criticize USIA for weak sports, presumed or actual, I do not think you are justified in using McCarthy's favorite device, guilt by association.

Unless you propose to lose the cold war of ideas by default, some kind of national information program seems essential. While I applaud your undergraduate seal to lash out at evil, may I suggest that you might achieve more lasting good if you thought through your ideas a bit more. Cavilling criticism, uninformed although modish, is no substitute for hard and informed thinking in international affairs. The problems faced by USIA should, I feel, be your concern. They include building a large staff of officers trained in their own and their host country's culture, language, history, politics, and information media. Successful explanation of one culture in terms readily understandable to another is an art both rare and vital to an effective information program. This fact is not yet generally recognized and you could help.

Doubtless there are many ways in which the USIA might be improved. But surely such improvements will result from constructive suggestions, not editorial anacolutha. I have known some brave and competent men in the USIA who suffered from McCarthyism and I think your editorial does them less than justice. Glen D. Camp, Jr. '53, Former USIA Asst. Information Officer