Trends in Communist Propaganda. A CIA Investigation from 1970

Abstract

Our study analyses a detailed report, issued on November 18th, 1970, by The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which was subordinated to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Cold War. The role of the FBIS was to collect, translate into English, and make extensive summaries of information in foreign media, especially those within the Communist Bloc, summaries which would later be made available to U.S. decision-makers. The FBIS was an important branch of the CIA, seeing that the United States sought to identify any vulnerability to the adversary, and that the communist media did not enjoy freedom of expression, but instead precisely reflected the official position of the regime. The late 1970s are all the more interesting as the Communist Bloc`s monolithic unity breaks down and distinct positions emerge (e.g., the Soviet Union versus China, or Romania versus the Soviet Union), while the United States find themselves in a difficult situation in Indochina, the Middle East, or Latin America.