Smith–Mundt Act

The original legislation authorizes the U.S. State Department to communicate to audiences outside of the borders of the United States through broadcasting, face-to-face contacts, exchanges (including educational, cultural, and technical), the publishing of books, magazines, and other media of communication and engagement. Funding for these activities comes from other legislation passed by the U.S. Congress called appropriations.

The legislation was introduced in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in January 1945 by Rep. Mundt, a member of the committee. It was modified a few months later at the request of the State Department. At this time, it did not include broadcasting. The bill was reintroduced with the State Department's requests and renamed the Bloom Bill, after the committee's chairman, Rep. Sol Bloom (D-NY). The purpose was to make permanent various exchange activities, and some information programs such as books and other printed material. President Truman's dissolution of the Office of War Information included moving substantial OWI programs over to the State Department, including a radio broadcast operation not-yet-commonly known as the Voice of America. The Bloom bill was altered and reintroduced in October 1945 to include the substantial information programs from OWI, notably the libraries, book publishing, movies and film strip production, and speakers tours. In December 1945, it was reintroduced again as HR 4982, but whereas the previous iterations amended pre-war legislation from 1939 authorizing exchanges in the American Republics, plus the Philippines, this time was a stand-alone and it also included the radio operation. The language "shall disseminate" abroad found in the early versions was a specific authority requested by the State Department to permit it to operate globally. Under previous authorities, the department was restricted to operating these programs within North, Central, and South America. It would provide legislative approval for a new peacetime instrument of foreign policy.

Congress harbored significant reservations about empowering the State Department. A key issue was oversight over State Department programs, including exchanges, which books were distributed abroad, art that was distributed as representing the United States, and the radio programming. When the Bloom Bill (HR 4982) went to the House Rules Committee in February 1946, committee Chairman Eugene Cox (D-GA) informed Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs William B. Benton that ten of the twelve committee members were against anything the State Department favored because of its "Communist infiltration and pro-Russian policy." That the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously reported the bill out was meaningless. Cox told Benton that the Foreign Affairs Committee was "a worthless committee consisting of worthless impotent Congressmen; it was a kind of ghetto of the House of Representatives."[3]

Cox publicly characterized the State Department as "chock full of Reds" and "the lousiest outfit in town". The information component of the Bloom Bill was seen as a revitalization of the Office of War Information, for which many in Congress held contempt as a New Deal "transgression". The cultural component was held in greater disdain, which caused Benton to change the name of his office from the Office of Cultural and Public Affairs a year after it was created to the Office of Public Affairs.[4]

Other comments were similarly tough. The ranking minority member of the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, Rep. John Taber (R-NY), called for a "house-cleaning" of "some folks" in the State Department to "keep only those people whose first loyalty is to the United States."[5] The FBI was also concerned over the ability of State to monitor and control participants in the exchange programs.[6]

In July 1946, the Bloom Bill passed the House, but due to a failure to steward the bill in the Senate, it was blocked from moving in the United States Senate by Senator Taft. Taft's reasoning, which he gave in a speech later, was concern about a growing government bureaucracy. After the department, when Congress reconvened, Taft supported the legislation.

On March 21, 1947, pre-Pearl Harbor isolationist and former teacher Representative Karl E. Mundt (R-SD) introduced H.R. 3342, which was an evolution from the bill he had originally introduced in January 1945, which itself was a version of a bill he introduced in March 1943, at the request of the State Department. The State Department's information and exchange activities were still ongoing, although without authorization from the Congress. The authority was derived from Congressional appropriations legislation. In other words, the activities continued because they received money from Congress, which carried implicit authority but actual authority was still lacking. Co-sponsoring the Mundt bill in the Senate was Senator H. Alexander Smith (R-NJ). The stated purpose of the reintroduced legislation was not to curtail the overall information activities of the United States, but to raise the quality and volume of the government's information programs. As the State Department admitted to lax oversight due to personnel and budget constraints, Congress voiced its frustration and slashed State's information budget. This time, Taber said if the "drones, the loafers, and the incompetents" were weeded out, he would allow a few million dollars for international broadcasting.[7]

Several significant leaders went to the House to testify in support of the bill, including Secretary of State George Marshall, Chief of Staff General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Secretary of Commerce W. Averell Harriman (formerly the Ambassador to Russia), and Ambassador to Russia Walter Bedell Smith. They agreed that it was "folly" to spend millions for foreign aid and relief without explaining America's aims.[8]

Congress, in recommending passage of the bill, declared that "truth can be a powerful weapon." Congress further declared six principles were required for the legislation to be successful in action: tell the truth; explain the motives of the United States; bolster morale and extend hope; give a true and convincing picture of American life, methods, and ideals; combat misrepresentation and distortion; and aggressively interpret and support American foreign policy. As a Cold War measure, it was intended to compete with propaganda from the Soviet Union and Communist organizations primarily in Europe. The principal purpose of the legislation was to engage in a global struggle for minds and wills, a phrase used by Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

It established the programming mandate that still serves as the foundation for U.S. overseas information and cultural programs at the Department of State.

Since 1972, the act prohibits domestic access to information intended for foreign audiences. Prior to this, the United States Department of State and then the United States Information Agency (USIA) beginning in 1952, were prohibited from disseminating information intended for foreign audiences, with the express intent that Congress, the American media, or academia would be the distributors of such information.[9]

The exchanges in the act, known as the Mundt Exchanges through about the early 1960s, went beyond those of the complementary Fulbright Program to include any country and any skill. Whereas the Fulbright Act, the name Benton gave the original 1946 amendment to the Surplus Property Act of 1944, required a bilateral agreement signed by the Secretary of State following certification of the availability of local funds by the U.S. Treasury, after the sale of U.S. surplus war equipment in the nation, and supported only the exchange of students and teachers, the Mundt Act used monies appropriated by the Congress for the program and did not require a signed bilateral agreement or other certification. Further, the Mundt exchanges supported educators and students, technicians (from industry experts to sewage treatment engineers), entertainers, and even bureaucrats to help nations develop local capacity and stability.[10]

Amendments to the Act in 1972 and 1985 reflected the Cold War's departure from the "struggle for minds and wills" (a phrase used by both President Truman and President Eisenhower) to a balance of power based on "traditional diplomacy" and counting missiles, bombers, and tanks. As a result, Senator J. William Fulbright argued America's international broadcasting should take its "rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics".[11] A decade later, Senator Edward Zorinsky (D-NE) successfully blocked taxpayer access to USIA materials, even through Freedom of Information Act requests, as he compared the USIA to an organ of Soviet propaganda.[12]

Section 501(a) of the Act (care of the Voice of America Web site) provides that

information produced by VOA for audiences outside the United States shall not be disseminated within the United States … but, on request, shall be available in the English language at VOA, at all reasonable times following its release as information abroad, for examination only by representatives of United States press associations, newspapers, magazines, radio systems, and stations, and by research students and scholars, and, on request, shall be made available for examination only to Members of Congress.

"This means that VOA is forbidden to broadcast within the United States." However, any American with a shortwave receiver or an Internet connection can listen to VOA. This is incidental, however. VOA cannot direct or intend its programs to be "for" Americans. George W. Bush-era State Department official James K. Glassman has called for directing VOA at American audiences.