Chapter 8 examines how, after 1945, a growing number of American PR firms took on foreign governments as clients. As the international PR business expanded through the 1950s, pretty much any country outside of the communist orbit was up for grabs. While there were numerous examples, the most notable was a government desperate to remain outside of the communist orbit: South Vietnam. Its leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, sought PR to strengthen his own image as well as that of his new nation. From the mid-1950s, Harold Oram’s firm provided PR counsel to South Vietnam in the United States as part of a wider “Vietnam Lobby.” For the most part, the PR firms in question believed they worked in the interests of the United States as much as the countries they represented. Yet it became increasingly clear that their own business interests were their priority. The fact that American PR firms worked for foreign governments at all caused controversy when news of the practice came to public attention in the 1960s. Through media reports and subsequent Congressional investigations, the role of PR firms in promoting foreign clients within the United States once again came under question.

Chapter 5 explores how war once again brought PR and the US government closer together, before examining how PR firms engaged in the debates over the shape of the postwar world. Both the John Price Jones Corporation and Harold L. Oram Inc. supported the American Association for the United Nations, reflecting the popular “one world” viewpoint of the time. Yet Oram also provided PR support to the Committee for the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was part of a more aggressive US policy of containment and seemed at odds with the desire to support the universal UN. Yet as the Cold War intensified, international events forced many fading Wilsonians to reluctantly move away from a “one world” to a “Cold War” position. Even the more internationalist-leaning PR counselors such as Jones and Oram found themselves adopting an increasingly anticommunist position that aligned with the government and only intensified in the 1950s.