ABSTRACT
The files of the United States Information Agency reflect a near obsession with statistics. They range from coverage of information program objectives to column inches of placed material. It was only natural that opinion polls would gain prominence in the process. According to George Allen, its director from 1957 to 1961, ‘USIA had long based a good deal of its operations on opinion-testing’. Its method was to hire ‘local polling organizations (and) to add a question to some poll they were taking anyway’. In this manner, it was hoped, the public would not be aware ‘that they were being asked questions at the request of a foreign government’. With regard to the relevance of these data to policy-making, Allen further noted that Secretary of State Dulles was ‘basically’ opposed to polling, allegedly because the results on the popularity of US policies and leaders abroad ‘disturbed’ him.1
