The Freedom Academy
An old idea resurfacing
In early January 2017, my presentation at a King’s College London conference prominently featured the Freedom Academy. A couple of weeks later, that presentation became an article at War on the Rocks: “The Past, Present, and Future of the War for Public Opinion.” This “Political West Point,” as LIFE magazine called the Freedom Academy in 1961, naturally also featured in a chapter based on the article and the presentation, “The Politics of Information Warfare in the US”, that I contributed to an edited volume that came out of the conference: Hybrid Conflicts and Information Warfare: New Labels, Old Politics. A few years later, I used the chapter as the basis of my (successful) PhD proposal at King’s College London (which I’m now working on).
A quick note on the conference. It took place 11-12 January 2017. Four “western” presenter were paired with four Russian presenters. From the conference description:
This conference, organised by the King’s Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC, London) in association with the International Centre for Counter Terrorism (ICCT, The Hague), the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO, Moscow) and the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Düsseldorf), brings together for the first time scholars from Russia and the West to discuss the role and nature of hybridity, information warfare and strategic communications in contemporary world politics.
The conference organizers had some interesting challenges as the Russians were all travelling from Russia and the UK FCO was hesitant to allow visas to at least some of the participants. You can listen to the conference on SoundCloud.
That’s all to say that I was chuffed when I saw
launched her substack entitled . It’s not a coincidence her substack uses the Freedom Academy name as the FA was, she wrote, an inspiration for the project. Though I know at least my WOTR article and possibly my chapter made it to her through a mutual friend, if not through other channels, but I don’t know if these had any impact on her thinking. I do encourage you to subscribe – I did – to . Also, I recommend reading ’s short write-up about the Freedom Academy. For a bit more on the FA, read on.There is, of course, more to the story of the FA than her brief summary. Here is additional context and substance from my chapter, “The Politics of Information Warfare in the US”:
In 1953, with the ink still wet on Reorganization Plans Nos. 7 and 8 [#8 established the United States Information Agency], Grant's group reorganized as the Orlando Committee to raise awareness of the dire difference in attention and capabilities between Russia and the United States. The new committee soon produced the Freedom Academy and Freedom Commission concepts. The academy, initially to be a privately financed operation, was to be overseen by a bipartisan oversight commission. The Freedom Academy was to be a research and education institute. Its students were to include civil society and government employees involved in the cold war to rectify the imbalance of “well-meaning amateurs competing with fully committed professionals.” Eisenhower's Psychological Operations Coordinating Board reviewed the proposal late in 1954, but the board separated policy from its information component and, thus, failed to recognize the need for the academy. Subsequent outreach to the private sector also went nowhere, likely because of the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. Meanwhile, criticism of USIA increased. Congress, unclear about USIA’s mission, its impact, and allegations that USIA was competing with US media companies operating overseas, cut the agency’s funding. Eisenhower’s second USIA director, Arthur Larson, was actively opposed by congressional Democrats, from the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee responsible for USIA, to Senators Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX), who in 1957 would propose USIA be moved into the State Department, and J. William Fulbright (D-AR). They declared USIA ineffective and charged the director with wasting money… In the late 1950s, the Freedom Academy proposal was resurrected. Congressman Alfred Sydney Herlong, Jr., (D-FL) introduced in early 1959, a bill to establish the Freedom Academy and Freedom Commission. A foundational pillar was the establishment of an “operational science” of countering political warfare that closely integrated the range of government and private capabilities. A single organization—the Freedom Academy—was to “consider all aspects of this infinitely complex and sophisticated problems.” Ultimately, the bill remained focused on a research and training center that would analyze, document, and provide training on the tactics, techniques, and procedures of Russian nonmilitary conflict.
The government remained defiicient in responding to Russian political warfare, which it acknowledge in an early 1959 appropriations hearing. Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon testified that the State Department erred by compartimentliaing the analysis, planning, and execution of programs to counter Soviet psyhcological, political, and economic warfare. Herlong’s bill picked up eager bipartisian support in both chambers… [Senator Karl E.] Mundt [R-SD], along with [Senators Clifford] Case [R-NJ] and [Paul] Douglas [D-IL], introduced the Senate version of the Freedom bill in the Special Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of Internal Security Act and Other Internal Secuity Laws under the Senate Judiciary Committee. Others, like Lev Dobriansky, Georgetown University professor and chairman of the Ukraininan Congress COmmittee of America, threw their full support behind the meaure. Dobriansky wrote a letter of support for the Senate bill decalaring that the bill “points to the most essential course open to us in combating successfully the conspirational and subversive inroads made by Moscow in the free world.” He continued by explaining the enduring nature of the Russian threat:
“The passage of this bill would make possible concentrated studies of Russian cold war operations in terms of indispensable historical perspectives which would deepen our insights into the basic nature of the enemy. Careful analyses along these and primarily substantive lines would reveal that what we classify today as Moscow's cold war techniques and methods are essentially traditional totalitarian Russian diplomacy. Contrary to rather superficial opinion, they are not the created products of so-called Communist ideology and operation. It can be readily demonstrated, for example, that methods now employed by Moscow in the Middle East, particularly in Iran, were in essence used by the white Tsars of the old Russian Empire. Except for accidental refinements, many of the techniques manipulated by the rulers of the present Russian Empire can be traced as far back as the 16th century.”
The academy was to be the equivalent to the National War College, but focused on nonmilitary conflict. Students would fall into three general categories: US government officials whose agencies were involved in the effort to resist communism abroad; leaders from US civil society, including management, labor, education, social, and fraternal and professional groups; and leaders and potential leaders in and out of government from foreign countries. The Freedom Academy was to be strictly a research and educational institution and would not engage in any operational activities. An editorial in the Saturday Evening Post explained the need for the academy in simple terms: “We don’t have amateur military officers. Nor do amateurs manage our huge industries. Yet we have thousands of amateurs who are trying their untrained best to resist attacks the highly trained professional Communists.”
The Freedom Academy never came to be, even though a Gallup poll showed a remarkable 70 percent of the public knew of the bill and supported it. The New Republic magazine denounced the proposal as vehicle to “propound dogma” while the Washington Post feared the academy would be subverted by the far right. The State Department strongly objected to the initiative primarily because it viewed the Freedom Academy as infringing on its primacy in foreign affairs. It also argued that its Foreign Service Institute (FSI) could do the job, though it never did and a limited proposal to expand FSI was quickly dropped after the Freedom Academy bill died. Ambassador Charles Bohlen, then in the State Department’s Policy and Planning Office, added the argument that private universities already performed the proposed mission of the academy.
The reader may recognize the concerns raised by the New Republic and the Washington Post as they are echoed today. You may not recognize that while the State Department argued FSI could do the job, the department outright lied when making the claim and did not adjust FSI to accomplish any part of the FA proposal. Further, Bohlen’s argument was a distraction as much as it was inaccurate, as Grant had demonstrated in building up the proposal and as countless witnesses affirmed in testimony in years of public hearings.
The real death of the Freedom Academy came when Fulbright successfully argued the bill did not belong in the Judiciary Committee, then working what today would be considered the “homeland security” lane, but in the Foreign Relations Committee, of which he was the chairman. Once there, he promptly killed it. He had already begun his campaign to isolate USIA, an agency he believed should have lasted a few years at most, and certainly not ten. He would change USIA’s authorization to one year and amend the Smith-Mundt Act to further isolate USIA when he failed to close down the agency.
Nine bills to establish a Freedom Commission and Academy were introduced in the House. They were H.R. 352, introduced by Mr Herlong on January 9, 1963; H.R. 1617, by Mr Gubser on January 10, 1963; H.R. 5368, by Mr Boggs on April 2, 1963; H.R. 8320, by Mr Taft on August 30, 1963; H.R. 8757, by Mr Schweiker on October 8, 1963; H.R. 10036, by Mr Ashbrook on February 20, 1964; H.R. 10037, by Mr Clausen on February 20, 1964; H.R. 10077, by Mr Schade berg on February 24, 1964; H.R. 11718, by Mr Talcott on June 24, 1964.
In what I describe as their “surrender letter” following Fulbright’s squashing the bill, the Orlando Committee submitted a hope that remains unfulfilled today: “Someday this nation will recognize that global non-military conflict must be pursued with the same intensity and preparation as global military conflicts.”
Ultimately, the lack of support from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations (Kennedy supported the idea when he was a Senator but had interests elsewhere when President) for the Freedom Academy shouldn’t surprise anyone. The nature of the cold war changed in the early 1960s, with some historians calling it “won” or “lost” at this time. For example, D.F. Fleming declared the cold war “lost” by the West in 1960, John Lewis Gaddis argued the West “won” in 1962, while Marc Trachtenberg wrote “Things had settled down” in 1963. The shift from the cold war to the Cold War and the “settling down” was likely behind Fulbright’s declaration that Russia wasn’t an inherent threat. (He also said that Radio Free Europe had “done more to keep alive the cold war and prevent agreement with Russia and improved relations than good.”)
In the end, the Freedom Academy was established, sort of. Private funds, including some corporate donations, were used to purchase a 900-acre campus in Culpeper, Virginia, centered around a 1930s mansion (LBJ’s mistress, Alica Glass, is buried there as the location had a special meaning for the two of them). A private group, the American Security Council, owned the property and ran the institution as a conference retreat. Ultimately, they lost their way and went downhill. The property was broken up for sale and the library found its way to the Institute of World Politics.
I recycle many quotes from and around the Freedom Academy discussions, including some found in this quiz – “It’s been said…” – from earlier this week. So, let me close with another quote from the FA period. This one is from George Gallup in 1962: “If a country is lost to communism through propaganda and subversion it is lost to our side as irretrievably as if we had lost it in actual warfare.” You can replace “communism” with autocracy and it remains accurate and true.
Thanks for reading this far.
Thank you for this! I had not seen your WOTR article but am going to add it to my Yale syllabus! I’ve subscribed to your SS and look forward to reading more!