Perception Management - US Government

US Government

The US government already has checks in place to dissuade perception management conducted by the state towards domestic populations, such as the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which "forbids the domestic dissemination of U.S. Government authored or developed propaganda... deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy".

Beginning in the 1950s, news media and public information organizations and individuals carried out assignments to manage the public's perception of the CIA, according to the New York Times. Carl Bernstein wrote in 1977 that "The CIA in the 1950's, '60's, and even early 70's had concentrated its relationships with journalists in the most prominent sectors of the American press corps, including four or five of the largest newspaper in the country, the broadcast networks, and the two major weekly news magazines." David Atlee Phillips, a former CIA station chief in Mexico City, described the method of recruitment years later to Bernstein: "Somebody from the Agency says, 'I want you to sign a piece of paper before I tell you what it's about.' I didn't hesitate to sign, and a lot of newsmen didn't hesitate over the next twenty years." Perception management can be used as a propaganda strategy for controlling how people view political events. This practice was refined by US intelligence services as they tried to manipulate foreign populations, but it eventually made its way into domestic US politics as a tool to manipulate post-Vietnam-War-era public opinion. For example, in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration saw the "Vietnam Syndrome"-a reluctance to commit military forces abroad-as a strategic threat to its Cold War policies. This caused the administration to launch an extraordinary effort to change people's perception of foreign events, essentially by exaggerating threats from abroad and demonizing selected foreign leaders. The strategy proved to be very successful. By the mid-80s, CIA Director William Casey had taken the practice to the next level: an organized, covert "public diplomacy" apparatus designed to sell a "new product"-Central America-while stoking fear of communism, the Sandinistas, Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, and anyone else considered an adversary during the Ronald Reagan presidential administration. Sometimes it involved so-called "white propaganda", stories and op-eds secretly financed by the government. But they also went "black", pushing false story lines, such as how the Sandinistas were actually anti-Semitic drug dealers. That campaign included altered photos and blatant disinformation dispersed by public officials as high as the president himself. In 1984, the DEA became upset with the White House, alleging the White House blew the smuggling investigation against the Sandinistas to embarrass them before a contra aid vote. The White House felt it was better to sacrifice a probe to catch the leaders of the Medellin drug cartel and gain a propaganda edge.

The term "perception management" is not new to the lexicon of government language. For years the FBI has listed foreign perception management as one of eight "key issue threats" to national security, including it with terrorism, attacks on critical US infrastructure, and weapons proliferation among others. The FBI clearly recognizes perception management as a threat when it is directed at the US by foreign governments.