Citizen-Spy

62 The Irrelevant Expert
4. re: Our story of SAC bases and the dope problem. Spears-Campbell pointed
to previous Radio Moscow story that U.S. airmen are addicts when two
were arrested in Berlin. Say that our story might give Soviet ammunition
to say that here we are admitting it and trying to blame the Russians.
5. re: Our story outline on India rice market manipulations. SD touchy on
India, and India would almost certainly resent it being told on television.
6. re: Our outline on sabotaging of goods for Middle-East and Asia. Our people
say it might make us look bad. Also say UN is touchy on individual contributions....
7. re: Our Soviet A-Bomb outline. State Department here specifically requested
that such a story be withheld until after Geneva. Broadcast at this time
could influence Soviets and lead to breakdown of the talks. 36
In response to these concerns, some episodes were altered, and others were
held back pending an upcoming summit with the Soviets (the summit in question
didn’t take place until May 1960, when it collapsed—due not to impolitic
TV programs, but an incident of real American espionage, the Francis Gary
Powers U2 spy-plane incident). 37 While the State Department (like the Department
of Defense) claimed nonintervention in the production of the program,
they made it quite clear that continued federal access would depend upon the
producers’ cooperation. The primary cause of federal concern was worries about
how audiences in neutral countries perceived the United States. Wary of being
seen as an aggressor, the State Department had begun its ideological struggle
for the hearts and minds of the citizens of nonaligned countries. 38
As part of their response to State Department concerns, Screen Gems set
many Behind Closed Doors episodes in foreign locales. This was a way to escape
some federal scrutiny, since it allowed the show to use agents who were not
specifically identifiable as American. The episode “Double Jeopardy,” for example,
was set in London to avoid showing American agents infiltrating the Soviet
embassy in Washington. Given the show’s “already-shaky situation with the
State Department,” producers worried that a domestic location might bring
unwanted federal approbation to the show’s sponsors. 39 The show also actively
embraced the Eisenhower era’s domino theory, albeit for reasons more related
to action-oriented plots than geopolitics. Episodes set in nonaligned or satellite
countries were thought to be less inflammatory to both the U.S. and Soviet
governments, but, more important, they could show more physical action than