Agencies: Thinking Positive at USIA

Last July, Frank Shakespeare, the new director of the U.S. Information Agency, asked USIA officers stationed in Eastern Europe what sort of government they thought the people of those Communist lands would choose, had they a free choice. The overwhelming consensus of the diplomats was Dubček-style socialism. The blond, boyish-looking Shakespeare, 44, only five months on the job, was shocked. "You mean you don't think they'd choose a U.S.-style democracy?" he asked.

Shakespeare, a former television executive who has little tolerance for negative thinking, was distressed by the apparent defeatism of his seasoned staffers...

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