ON THE WAY TO 1984

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000100890002-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 15, 1998
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 15, 1967
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

CPYRGHT
FOIAb3b
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-001
ON THE WAY TO 1984 FOIAb3b
By HENRY STEELE COMMAGER,
professor of history, Amherst College.
G EORGE ORWELL'S Oceania had
a vast and efficient information
agency; its name was the Minis-
try of Truth and its purpose was to make
every citizen of Oceania think the right
thoughts. "The past is whatever the re-
cords agree upon," was its motto and
it wrote, or rewrote, the records. Now
the information agencies of our own
State and Defense Departments, the
USIA, and the CIA, seem bent on creat-
ing an American Ministry of Truth and
imposing upon the American people a
record of the past which they themselves
write.
It is the CIA whose activities have
been most insidious and are most notori-
ous, but the IA as no mono 0 on
brainwas in Consider, 1or example,
the film Why Vietnam. It is "one of our
most popular films"; it is distributed free
to high schools and colleges throughout
the country, and to other groups who
ask for it-as hundreds doubtless do. Its
credentials are beyond reproach; it was
produced by the Defense Department
and sponsored by the State Department,
and President Johnson, Secretary Rusk,
and Secretary McNamara all pitch in to
give it authenticity.
The USIA is not permitted to carry
on propaganda within the United States,
and the reason it is nottis that the Ameri-
can people do not choose to give govern-
ment authority to indoctrinate them.
Government, they believe, already has
PYR HT
every method of communication with
the people that it can properly use. The
services-these can command at-
tention for whatever they have to say,
at any time. There is therefore no neces-
sity, and no excuse, for government pro-
paganda, no need for government to
resort to subterfuge in its dealings with
the people.
What we have always held objection-
able is not overt publicity by govern-
ment, but covert indoctrination. Why
Vietnam is, in fact, both. It is overt
enough, but while it is clear to the
sophisticated that it is a government
production and therefore an official
argument, the film is presented not as
an argument, but as history. Needless
to say it is not history. It is not even
journalism. It is propaganda, naked and
unashamed. As the "fact sheet" which
accompanies it states, it makes "four
basic points," and makes them with the
immense authority of the President: that
the United States is in Vietnam "to ful-
fill a solemn pledge," that "appeasement
is an invitation to aggression," that "the
United States will not surrender or re-
treat," and that we-but alas not the
other side-are always "ready to negoti-
ate a settlement."
Government, which represents all the
people and presumably all points of
view, should have higher standards than
private enterprise in the presentation of
news or history. But Why Vietnam is
well below the standards of objectivity,
accuracy, and impartiality which we are
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149RO0010089'(A 2 1962
accustomed to in newspapers and on
one-dimensional terms it presents the
otncial view of the war in Vietnam with
never a suggestion that there is or could
be any other view. When communists
sponsor such propaganda, we call it
"brainwashing."
Let us look briefly at this film, for it
is doubtless a kind of dry run of what
we will get increasingly in the future. It
begins-we might have anticipated this
-with a view of Hitler and Chamberlain
at Munich, thus establishing at the very
outset that "appeasem