Psychological Strategy Board Profiled Targets to Bend Diplomatic Conversations

By Theo Marchetti · August 9, 2026

Target names remain hidden, but U.S. officials used psychological profiles to bend conversations at the UN and counter biological warfare propaganda during a Korean epidemic.

The file's catalogue entry records a clinical approach to human influence. In a series titled "Memorandums from the Psychological Strategy Board and Interoffice Memorandums," the National Archives describes documents that profile individuals for the express purpose of "gaining insight into how best to approach them." These are not casual notes or diplomatic impressions; they are documented strategies for the "most effective methods to convey information to certain individuals or in certain meetings."

"How Best to Approach Them"

The Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) was not a clandestine cell in the traditional sense, but a high-level coordination committee formed on April 4, 1951, under the Truman administration. According to the public record, its membership read like a directory of the American security state: the Under Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Director of Central Intelligence, or their designated representatives. Its first director, Gordon Gray, would later transition into the role of National Security Advisor for President Eisenhower.

The board emerged as a response to the expansion of covert activities by the Office of Policy Coordination during the Korean War. The catalog entry for ID 2124920 suggests that the PSB's work was an exercise in precision. When the board profiled a target, the goal was the optimization of the encounter. The records outline strategies, plans, and procedures—the operational blueprints for how the U.S. government intended to bend a conversation or a meeting to its advantage.

While the catalogue description confirms the existence of these profiles, it does not list the names of the individuals who were studied. We know the method—the systematic search for a psychological lever—but the specific targets remain hidden within the pages of the series. This gap leaves a question of scope: was the PSB profiling heads of state, mid-level bureaucrats, or perhaps dissidents within the UN?

US Mission to the United Nations

Beyond the profiling of individuals, the series contains interoffice memorandums that document correspondence between personnel within the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. This suggests that the PSB's psychological strategies were not limited to distant capitals or remote battlefields, but were integrated into the daily operations of the United States' primary diplomatic outpost.

The overlap between diplomatic correspondence and psychological operations is further evidenced by related files held in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) archives, including memorandums from the Acting Director of the PSB, Morgan, to the Under Secretary of State, Smith. The proximity of the PSB's strategy memos to the U.S. Mission's internal correspondence indicates a tight loop between the planning of psychological operations and their execution on the floor of the UN.

Class 500 and Class 700

Archival catalogues often reveal the absurdity of government record-keeping by placing the monumental next to the mundane. In the same search that produces the PSB's strategies for individual influence, one finds the "Transportation Files from Class 500 of the Decimal Files." This series is dedicated entirely to "memoranda and reports relating to the maintenance of the Psychological Strategy Board's station wagon."

There is a stark dissonance in seeing the maintenance logs of a 1950s utility vehicle filed alongside the board's "Central Files," which the catalogue notes relate to "national security topics." The PSB was an organization that managed both the geopolitical narrative of the Cold War and the oil changes of its fleet.

This duality extends to the "Medicine, Hygiene and Sanitation Files from Class 700." These records move away from the banal and toward the visceral, containing correspondence, reports, and newspaper clippings concerning an epidemic in Korea. More specifically, the catalogue entry records that these files relate to a "Communist biological warfare propaganda campaign."

Here, the PSB's mission comes into sharp focus. The board was not merely reacting to propaganda; it was cataloging it, analyzing it, and likely formulating the counter-narratives that would be delivered using the "most effective methods" mentioned in the profiling memos. The epidemic in Korea was not just a medical crisis in these files; it was a tactical opportunity for psychological warfare.

Indexing and Suspense Forms

Connecting these disparate threads—the station wagon, the Korean epidemic, and the profiling of foreign officials—are the "Indexing and Suspense Forms Files." According to the National Archives, these forms identify documents and cross-reference them by correspondent, date, and subject content.

These forms are the map of the PSB's mental landscape. They show how a report on a biological warfare campaign in Korea might be linked to a specific profile of a UN diplomat or a strategy memo sent to the Under Secretary of State.

Related files exist in other archives, such as the NSArchive at George Washington University and various FRUS volumes, but the catalogue for ID 2124920 provides the most direct look at the board's internal sorting process. The record tells us that the PSB viewed the world as a series of inputs to be managed: vehicles to be maintained, epidemics to be countered, and people to be approached. The only thing the catalogue entry leaves out are the names of the people who were carefully studied so the U.S. government would know exactly how to speak to them.