A bipartisan congressional effort is under way to legalize the use of propaganda domestically by the U.S. Government reports BuzzFeed staff writer Michael Hastings.
Hasting is the journalist who wrote the Rolling Stone article that eventually led to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal getting fired after his comments about President Barack Obama in June 2010.
According to Hastings, an “amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill.”
The amendment is sponsored by both Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and was requested by both the State Department and the Pentagon, according to Hastings.
The amendment would also neutralize the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987, which were put in place in order to protect U.S. citizens from their own government’s “misinformation” and propaganda campaigns, according to Hastings.
The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 was put into place because of the recent memories of World War I and World War II. President Woodrow Wilson put into place the Committee for Public Information (CPI) and President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the Office for War Information (OWI).
Thornberry defended his support of the bill in a statement from his website, on the grounds that it provides for the common defense and is a positive for national security.
“This is a strong, bipartisan bill that supports our troops and their missions,” he said. “At the same time, it also recognizes the realities of our financial situation and includes provisions that seek to make sure that taxpayers get every dollar of value possible for the money we spend for defense.”
Smith was not available for comment.
