The real problem with the Modernized Smith-Mundt Act: its "zero effect on the CIA or the Pentagon"

"Let's dispel some myths about the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act. First, it has zero effect on the CIA or on the Pentagon; Smith-Mundt only covers information programs produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The CIA and the Pentagon remain subject to entirely different laws and restrictions on certain kinds of domestic activities."


--Ex-Pentagon official Rosa Brooks, "The Case for American Propaganda: Complain all you want. But Uncle Sam produces better journalism than most of you yahoos," Foreign Policy, July 17, 2013; Brooks image from


Pray tell, Ms. Brooks (you, as a former Pentagon official) what are the "laws and restrictions on certain kinds of domestic activities" that the Department of Defense and the CIA (if you are au courant about Langley in-house intricacies) are subject to?

To me, as a layman with no legal training, these obscurities are by no means obvious, especially if one considers items such as "Rumsfeld's Roadmap to Propaganda: Secret Pentagon 'roadmap' calls for 'boundaries' between 'information operations' abroad and at home but provides no actual limits as long as US doesn't 'target' Americans," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 177.

Your kindly providing elucidation on laws/regulations governing domestic information dissemination by military/secret agencies involved in foreign affairs would do much to answer a taxpayer's non-specialist question on the matter at hand:

Isn't the real trouble with the Smith-Mundt "Modernization Act" that it does not deal with the 21st-century challenge of "being straight" with the American people about the propaganda/manipulation/deception originating from "homeland" organizations such as the CIA and the Pentagon (not to speak of the NSA) that use the latest "communications" techniques to "watch over" foreigners -- and, some say, our very own citizens, in the name of national "security"?

Must we Americans depend on a naive high-school drop-out seeking asylum in an authoritarian state (having earned more at the NSA than some American ambassadors) to reveal to us what the NSA is up to, and on the USA Today exposures of Pentagon domestic propaganda for "reliable" information?

So why can't you, as a former high-ranking official (and respected journalist), provide us with information on these issues -- granted, of course, that it doesn't endanger Americans working, as honestly as they can, for their country.

In a way, the updated  (and, granted, obscure to most Americans, and probably most of the world) Smith-Mundt Act -- by focusing on minor league U.S.-foreign policy players (Foggy Bottom and the BBG) in the Washington-bureaucracy-who-gets-the-$dough-turf-wars -- avoids the question of how the "real" powers in this inside-the-beltway game -- the military and the spies, God bless 'em both -- influence, manipulate, propagandize the American people for reasons that some suspect (erroneously?) have more to do with increasing their agencies' budgets than with foreign threats.

Without, need, I say, our democratic principles -- citizens decide, not the powers that be/seek to be.

Need I mention the Secret "Service" as another arguably bankrupt country's money grabbler?

But I am speculating, due to lack of easily available information on such matters.

FYI, below are my prior minor thoughts on the above issue, which appeared in the Huffington Post in May 2012:

As part of  [an American] anti-propaganda tradition, the Smith-Mundt Act, the 1948 legislation (amended several times) which prohibits the domestic dissemination of some USG-produced propaganda ("information") directed to foreign audiences, is still relevant today. To be sure, the Act could use fine-tuning to deal with the internet age and a globalized world. Americans today can easily find Voice of America news on the Internet. So, some say, forget about  a  60+-year Cold War relic!

Critics of the Act have noted that it was never meant to apply to the Department of Defense, which has its own rules prohibiting domestic psyops.

But this lack of coordinated control over propaganda activities by military and civilian agencies actually underscores a need, without censorship, to reinforce Smith-Mundt's most important point -- that a democratic government should not propagandize its own people, as was the case with totalitarian states like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and as is true of today's mainland China.