Modern art as CIA weapon

A few weeks ago I came across this article in The Independent (UK) about the CIA's use of modern art as a "weapon" during the Cold War. In brief, the CIA's covert public diplomacy activities (ie propaganda) toward the Soviet block focused on putting out an image of the US as a free, creative society where artists, dissidents and counter-culture thinkers were free and encouraged to express themselves and participate in the social sphere - everything that the USSR was not. Unfortunately, American public life at the time featured a number of loud voices that contradicted this idea, notably Joe McCarthy, and the majority of Americans were quite conservative. So, the CIA decided to promote modern art as a way of marginalizing Mccarthysim. Thought the article doesn't explicitly make the connection, I think in many ways this "long leash" policy was a precursor to present day public diplomacy in its recognition that in order to be compelling to international audiences, a country's image needed to be diverse and even contradictory, presenting a mosaic of viewpoints and forms of expression. Indeed, people and institutions in a position of authority gain more legitimacy from a robust opposition than they do from suppressing it, as my group discussed in our presentation on censorship and public diplomacy in China this week.
The dilemma of how to deal with voices in the domestic public sphere that are unpalatable to international audiences is very much in play today. If anything, this is more of an issue now than it was in the 1940s and 50s because technology and global information flows make it easier for ever before for international audiences to get information about the US, even if this information is inaccurate or incomplete. For example, earlier this fall when the pastor in Florida wanted to hold "National Burn a Koran Day," the US Government was deeply concerned that this lone voice would have disproportionate resonance in the Muslim world. This is why it is so important for US public diplomacy efforts to publicize the successes of American Muslim communities and the tolerant, cosmopolitan segments of our society, which hold much broader appeal to key global audiences than the Tea Party and nativist movements do.