A Campaign of Truth
This chapter demonstrates how U.S. information officers devised plans to showcase the friendliness and sportsmanship of the U.S. Olympic team and encouraged private businesses to make the hosting cities a showground for U.S. enterprise and culture. In tandem with these efforts, U.S. propaganda depicted communist sport in a highly negative manner. Furthermore, in order to create and implement a propaganda strategy for the winter and summer Olympic festivals of 1952, the U.S. information program also facilitated cooperation with both the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States (AAU). This intervention challenged a long-held tradition, as the U.S. government began to work in concert with the private sphere in sport-related propaganda to new and uncharted levels under the mounting demands of the Cold War.