Truman Administration Orchestrated Psychological Warfare in Korea

By Marcus Boone · August 9, 2026

Target populations had their thoughts and behaviors shaped by a secret alliance of the CIA and Defense Department, while specific tactics and failures stay locked in archival files.

The National Archives catalog entry for the records of the National Security Council does not blink when it lists "psychological warfare" as a standard item of business. It appears in a plain list of priorities, tucked between "defense affairs" and "foreign relations," as if the systemic manipulation of foreign populations were as routine as a diplomatic cable or a budget request.

According to the file's catalogue entry, these records—which include agendas, minutes, telegrams, and reports—were collected and maintained by the Policy Plans and Guidance Staff. The scope of the collection is broad, covering the early Cold War's obsession with influence and perception. Among the listed subjects are the Operations Coordinating Board, the Voluntary Freedom Corps, and the Federal Civil Defense Administration. But the center of gravity in these descriptions is the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB).

"Psychological Warfare"

The public record indicates that the PSB was born out of a specific necessity in April 1951. Under the Truman administration, the government needed a way to coordinate the growing volume of covert activities being carried out by the Office of Policy Coordination during the Korean War. The result was a high-level committee composed of the Under Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Director of Central Intelligence, or their designated representatives.

This was not a fringe operation; it was an integration of the three most powerful arms of the American security state. The goal was the planning and coordination of psychological operations—a polite term for the state-sponsored effort to shape the thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors of target populations. The catalog entries for the PSB’s "General Files from Class 000" describe this series as the main repository for the board's activities, containing reports and correspondence relating to the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency.

April 4, 1951

Gordon Gray, who would later serve as National Security Advisor under Eisenhower, was the first director of the PSB. The archival descriptions highlight a specific set of "Gordon Gray Chronological Files," which detail the staff organization and the meetings that occurred during his tenure. These files represent the administrative skeleton of the board, the calendars and memos that scheduled the deployment of influence.

Perhaps more telling are the "Personnel Files from Class 200." The catalogue entry notes that this series contains not only employment applications and reports but also "newspaper clippings concerning the personnel procedures of the Psychological Strategy Board." The inclusion of press clippings in personnel files suggests a preoccupation with how the board’s staffing and internal operations were being perceived by the public or tracked by the press.

When a government body dedicated to "psychological strategy" begins clipping newspapers about its own hiring practices, it suggests an acute awareness of the optics of secrecy. They were not just managing the minds of foreign adversaries; they were managing the image of the managers.

Soviet Jamming and the VOA

The NSC records explicitly link the PSB’s work to the technical battles of the era. The catalogue entry specifically mentions records relating to "Soviet jamming of the Voice of America (VOA)" and "psychological operations in Korea." In the early 1950s, the airwaves were a frontline. The VOA was the primary megaphone for American values, and the Soviet effort to jam those signals was met with a coordinated strategic response planned by the PSB.

While these catalog descriptions provide the map, they are not the territory. We have the list of what exists—the "Central Files" relating to national security topics, the "Working Files," and the "General Files"—but the actual pages of those reports remain separate from the index. We know that there are records of how the U.S. fought the signal war with the Soviets and how it applied psychological pressure during the Korean conflict, but the specific tactics, the target lists, and the internal failures are locked within the series the catalog merely describes.

Related records exist elsewhere, such as the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, which contains a memorandum from an Acting Director of the PSB named Morgan to Under Secretary of State Smith. Other files are held by the NSArchive, including references to the Northern District of Illinois and various threat assessments.

The National Archives catalog tells us that the PSB’s office files exist and that they cover "national security topics," but it does not tell us what those topics were beyond the broad categories of warfare and guidance. The gap between the catalog's list and the records' contents is where the history of American psychological operations actually lives.