An “opinion leader” is that being to whom others look for interpretation of publicity or events. Through wisdom, proximity to data sources, personality or other factors including popularity itself, certain members of the group, company, community or nation are looked to by others for evaluation.

About the most involved employment of PR is its covert use in destroying the repute of individuals and groups.

In the teething days of public relations, George Creel, who conducted the massive Liberty Loan drives for the US Government, considered that it was enough to batter avalanches of publicity down on the heads of the “general public.” Given enough money, enough media of communication and no real opposition this proved successful enough.

More correctly this is technically called BLACK PROPAGANDA.

But as time unreeled, some unsung PR man recognized the fact that the “general” public was made up of smaller groups. Churches, social clubs, factories, and thousands of other large or small groupings of the population were what made up the “general” public.

Basically it is an intelligence technique.

Each of these groups had its own “opinion leader” and within each group there were smaller groups who each in turn had its own opinion leader.

It can be a serious error to cross Intelligence and PR.

“To whom do they listen?” “Whose opinion do they accept?” “Whom do they trust?” “On whom do they depend?” are the questions, which, answered, identify the opinion leader of the group, large or small.

These are two different fields. They have two distinctly different technologies.

Further, the opinion leader of a very large group, in turn, is interpreted by the opinion leaders of the smaller units which go to make up the larger group.

A PR man must also know something of intelligence technology. Otherwise one day he will be left gaping.

As an example, government spokesman X puts out Bulletin A on the radio and TV and into the press. He is NOT talking to masses of people. He is in reality talking to opinion leaders. On a crucial question there will not be a reaction to X until the listeners have heard what their opinion leaders have to say about Bulletin A.

Intelligence is intelligence. PR is PR.

If there have been other issuances like Bulletin A, the opinion leaders will have voiced their own opinions. Their groups will then know the attitude. In this case Bulletin A will receive an apparent “general public” reaction. In short, the opinion about Bulletin A’s will have been preformed by the opinion leaders. This makes it look like there is mass public opinion without opinion leaders.

When you gather information by intelligence procedures and at once employ it for PR, the result is likely to be poor.

One of the great dangers of PR practice comes from not really knowing the subject well enough or in twisting it or in losing bits of it.

It is not that it isn’t done. It’s that it isn’t very effective. Also it is an act of desperation.

Having discovered the principle that “opinion leaders” form public opinion, not the “general” public, many PR people forgot it, or didn’t give it enough importance or even in some cases chose to be willfully destructive of their employers.

PR IS OVERT.

It should be very obvious that if general public reaction to an event is dependent upon the reaction and interpretation of opinion leaders, then a PR action’s success depends upon favorably influencing the opinion leaders of that part of the population one is trying to reach and calculating what opinion leaders one can neglect or even offend.

INTELLIGENCE IS COVERT.

This would be almost mathematical in computation. Spokesman X issuing a

PR is at its best when it begins and ends overtly.

Bulletin A that offended 55% of the opinion leaders would get, roughly, a 55% opposing reaction from the whole public.

Intelligence is best when it begins and ends covertly.

Surveys for the identities of opinion leaders would then become a MAJOR activity of PR in any area and for any type of message or event.

PR with an open demand by known authors, a demonstration, a conference is normal PR.

Even a rough estimation, which is easily done, would serve better than no thought of it at all.

Intelligence trembles on the edge of PR when filched data explodes a storm in the public. It recoils when the authors are then known.

PR men go for Very Important People. PR wears this out beyond belief. But it is an alter-is. VIPs to PR are only opinion leaders. A government minister is tagged automatically by PR people as a VIP because his car has flags and he is a minister. Yet he may be a drunken nephew whose opinion is about as welcome to his colleagues as a hangover. So he may be a VIP but he is not an opinion leader. When he says “blue,” his colleagues think “black” and the opinion leaders in the public think “red.” The only PR use of this minister would be to get him to embrace and speak up for someone you wanted shot or some cause you wanted opposed!

Black Propaganda is, in its technical accuracy, a covert operation where unknown authors publicly effect a derogatory reaction and then remain unknown.

There is such a situation currently in a man called Goodrich or some such name, head of FDA in Washington. Thirty-two years in that agency, big record. Head of it = VIP. All he has to do is open his mouth and his staff writhes, Congress spits and opinion leaders say no-no-no. So he could only be used to oppose something you wanted popular.

The effect of Black Propaganda is largely wiped out by, “Oh, it was the Germans who set them up.”

So it’s very lazy PR to assume that a “VIP” is worth knowing or using. Sometimes VIPs are also opinion leaders.

So PR enters intelligence in this way: One finds who set up the Black Propaganda and explodes that into public view.

Celebrities are more often opinion leaders as they arrive at their role by popular acclaim. But even here one has to operate with good sense. Paul Robeson, the great American singer, was used by Communists in the 1930s to popularize their cause. It did not achieve this. Paul Robeson championing his own race probably would have advanced civil rights legislation greatly. The misuse brought anti-Communists to believe that all the Negroes would now become a Communist Fifth column and brought about strong opposition to Negroes and to Communists.

This use of PR is almost that of an auditor to the group. One is disclosing hidden sources of aberration.

The rule that should not be violated is to use an opinion leader only to further an opinion he could have visibly. The equation must add up with all factors of a kind, not a strange factor interjected into the sequence. Like music, you don’t introduce a wrong note in the scale if you want harmonious rendition. Robeson (black singer) — opinion leader of blacks — communism. Too odd a sequence. Robeson (black singer) — opinion leader of blacks — black relief. Obvious sequence.

To use intelligence to find where they hid the body and then flip over into wide publicity is not very powerful in actual practice. There better be a body there and one better tell the police, not the public.

The equation:

If there are no effective police, then one has the problem of police action. Exploding it to the public, ideally, is an effort to make the public a vigilante committee. Modern publics seldom rise this high. Educated publics seldom explode to the explosion.

Bertrand Russell (British philosopher) — academic opinion leader — communism: caused a strengthening of the Communist cause because he was a thought symbol and “anybody was free to think” and “they’re always forming odd ideas in the halls of learning.” His statement “Better red than dead” was a classic PR caper. It was widely quoted. Helped Russell, of whom few ever would have heard, and possibly helped communism, at least to be talked about, and obviously was picked up by the group in which Russell existed. To the rest of us this may have sounded like naked atomic war threat and war-mongering. But it was the proper use of a foreign opinion leader by a large group.

A PR man who thinks of taking Blitz & Company’s crimes to the public is really just dreaming hopefully — without foundation. It may or may not hurt Blitz. It might recoil. The ability of the public to stand around and look stupidly at a dripping-handed murderer without doing a thing about it is a symptom of our civilization. They ought to act. They don’t. You can form an opinion amongst them but governing bodies won’t consult it.

Now if the paragraph above jarred on you in any way or seemed to espouse a strange cause, etc., etc., you will have the reason why PR men cannot always see clearly and objectively. They themselves are too involved in causes and pros and cons to remain pan-determined (viewing or handling all sides).

Exposure is not an effective road to action. It can be to opinion. It is slow.

By permitting prejudice to get in the way of handling opinions, a PR man loses control of his subject. He becomes so violently partisan that many of his stable data become blurred or abused.

Then what is effective?

Thus the subject of opinion leaders can become abandoned. Disagreement with the views of some of them remove not only the opinion leaders but the whole subject of opinion leaders out of use.

While conducting themselves like status-mad prima donnas, seeking to exist mainly by PR techniques, most people in government power positions are remarkably badly served by their PR men and by their own prejudices or jealousies.

By definition Intelligence is covert. Under cover. If it is kept so all the way, it is effective.

Essentially, a person in power is not the same person seeking power.

When Intelligence surfaces, it becomes very ineffective.

Maintaining power is a different subject than attaining power.

Threat and mystery are a lot of the power of intelligence. Publicity blows it.

A politician by definition is someone who handles people. Even the word means “people.” Thus the subject of “public relations” does a natural closure with government.

Take the Red Orchestra, World War II, Stalingrad Campaign. In Berlin Schulze-Boysen and other highly placed Russian agents got the whole German plan of the battle that was to Stalingrad. Brilliant and covert intelligence. They passed it to the Russians. Brilliant and covert comm. The boss at Center in Moscow put the ring’s names and addresses in a code radio message. The Germans of course broke the code. The Germans rounded them up and messily executed them on meat-hooks. The Germans had no other battle plans but contemplated not attacking Stalingrad that way. This put the whole coup at risk. Then the Germans did use the plans the Russians knew and that was the beginning of the end of WW II.

Yet the alteration of the subject of PR and its misuse, neglect or abuse by government PR men could be in itself a considerable study.

So TWO exposures threatened the success of this intelligence coup. One was the stupid radio message. The other was the realization the Russians had the battle plans.

The vast majority of population unrest stems from the misuse, neglect or abuse of PR technology by governments, even those governments that consider themselves experts.

Exposure is the basic threat of intelligence.

A politician commonly is boosted to power by opinion leaders. This could be called the “will of the people.” Once he has attained power, the garden-variety politician of this age finds himself committed to special interests that have little to do with the “will of the people.” Few are the politicians who have the integrity to continue to look to the people — the opinion leaders — who put them there. Thus, now apparently serving other masters, they appear to have been false in their earlier pretensions. Not remaining true to their opinion leaders, politicians as a general subject acquires a cynical reputation with the “people.”

PR is the willful broadcast of information.

A Labor leader in England, put into power by opinion leaders, then spends his time in office talking about bankers, banking, deficits and all that mumbo jumbo of modern government, speaks hostilely about unions, seeks to restrain shop stewards and union bosses, puts on a tax to penalize any company that hires someone and then has the dullness to wonder why he took a beating at the polls eventually and lost. He turned on his opinion leaders. Where were his vaunted PR experts?

The two don’t mix well.

The US Government routinely achieves the impossible of turning the bulk of the population against it on most issues. Its politicians are regularly forced to maintain their positions by huge avalanches of public funds.

Hiring more and more police and spies for more and more government police agencies, the government is becoming less and less popular. “Patriotism” and “idealism” are now considered dirty words.

Possibly used since the morning pale of history, Black Propaganda was developed by the British and German services in World War I into a fine art.

Why? How did this get this bad?

The word “propaganda” means putting out slanted information to populations.

Well, one reason is that government PR is continually recoiling on the government. Either they don’t hire good PR men, or if they do, they don’t take their advice. Or their PR men don’t know their subject or aren’t permitted to practice it.

One propagandizes the enemy population or one’s own or neutrals.

The general unrest and unpopularity is largely traceable to a violent disregard of the subject of opinion leaders.

In popular interpretation it is a parade of lies or half-truths or exaggerations.

Attaining power is done usually by the consent of or with the help of the opinion leaders. Arrival in a position of power too often causes the person to shift the basis of his operation. He is now associating with different people in a power strata. It would require quite an effort of will to not be seduced. Having achieved power by opinion leaders, the person may forget them and seek to maintain power by other means or by force. This is essentially a violation of the Power Formula which indicates one should not disconnect. By disconnecting from the previous opinion leaders, the person begins his own demise.

PR and advertising technology and mass news media are employed as well as word of mouth and posters.

This is terribly easy to do in the case of government. It is so easy for a government to use FORCE that a disregard of previous opinion leaders can occur.

The trouble with it is that it can often be disproven, discrediting the utterers of it.

Money power is usually available to persons who rise to positions of leadership and can be, like force, a substitute.

It may serve the moment but after a war it leaves a very bad taste.

Thus a truly suborned leader would desert “opinion leader” as a basis of power and begin to use FORCE and MONEY to hold his position.

If one is engaging on a campaign of this nature, its success depends on sticking to the truth and being able to document it.

But when one assumes a position of power, regard for opinion leaders should broaden, not be dropped.

The entire black propaganda campaign conducted for 21 years against Scientology began to fold up in its 16th year because never at any time did its instigators (a) have any factual adverse data or (b) tell the truth.

The astute leader on his way up may tread heavily on the opinion leaders of the opposition. This has its benefits in reinforcing the favor of opinion leaders for him. But it also has its liabilities for, now in power, he may have serious enemies who are all the more perturbed now that they too have him as a leader.

The Scientology movement continued if only by heroic means and much sacrifice.

Few politicians — indeed few men who move into any kind of power — ever satisfactorily solve this problem. The very able ones do solve it and become far more powerful as a result since they do not violate the Power Formula.

But at last nobody of any note believed the propaganda.

Not only does the brilliant leader refuse to disconnect from the opinion leaders who put him there through “public approval,” he also connects with the previously opposing opinion leaders. If truly magnificent, he gains the good opinion of former hostile opinion leaders without decreasing the goodwill of the opinion leaders who put him there. This actually defines the difference between a second-rate politician and a real statesman. The genius required to arrive at such solutions cannot be underestimated, but the formula of achieving it is elementary PR.

The attackers pulled in on themselves a counter-attack based on penetrating, horrible, documented truth.

The leader of the “blues” (supported of course by the opinion leaders of the “blues”) rises to power in the teeth of “green” opposition. Now in power, he has sway over both the blues and the greens. The blue’s opinion is that this should signal a panorama of dead greens. But unless this rule is to be just one long bloodbath it is now necessary to cool off tempers all around, preserve blue support and win green support. That is an elementary equation.

It required intelligence-like tactics to discover who it was exactly.

Attilas and Huns and Genghis Khans solved this by simply murdering all imagined hostile elements. They may be known in history but politically they built nothing that endured. Even the pyramids of skulls vanished.

The “dead agent caper” was used to disprove the lies. This consisted of counter-documenting any area where the lies were circulated. The lie “they were...” is countered by a document showing “they were not." This causes the source of the lie and any other statements from that source to be discarded.

Men like Hitler went so far in reverse in handling this problem as to finally slaughter even their adherents.In the general field of human activities every different or specialized group can be considered a political unit. It elects with a wide variety of formalities or lack of them its leaders, and when different agencies than themselves elect them (inheritance, appointments from without), the group at least elects its opinion leaders if only by listening.

That real trouble and damage was caused Scientology is not to be discounted. The brilliance of the defense was fantastic. The depth and inroads the propagandists reached was alarming. BUT THEY DIDN’T MAKE IT.

And people strive to be opinion leaders and also back down or otherwise react when someone else is so “elected.”

Some Black Propaganda campaigns have won in other areas, not Scientology.

So being an opinion leader involves the responsibility of maintaining the position by remaining well-informed or personable or whatever else seems to be required.

The British got the US into World War I with Black Propaganda, despite a president elected on a peace platform.

One has to decide in some degree what he is an opinion leader for or against or at least about. And one has to set a zone or have one set for him in which he operates.

Many individuals have been destroyed by Black Propaganda. Wilhelm Reich was, by the lies and violence of the FDA.

A usual example is the family. Often someone in it is the opinion leader. It is not

So Black Propaganda is not a certain-result technology. It is costly. It makes fantastic trouble.

necessarily the one with the money or the force. Where one member or clique has the money or force and uses these and the opinion leader is someone else, strife and domestic upset may result.

Essentially it is NOT a PR campaign. It is a cross between PR and Intelligence.

All the children may look to an aunt for their styles, thoughts and approval. Where this runs counter to the money-force persons, somebody is going to have a broken home or a horrible old age.

The technique is

Such is human prejudice — or ignorance — that the money-force persons almost never dream of winning the support of the opinion leader aunt by sound but popular policy based on consultation.

A hidden source injects lies and derogatory data into public view.

The right answer of course is for the money-force power to operate in consultation with the opinion leader.

Since it is a hidden source, it requires an intelligence approach to successfully end it.

This is true all the way on up to government-sized groups.

In the meanwhile the “dead agent caper” is the best tool to counter it.

Money-force may bribe and break necks but it really never does become the leader in the absence of the approval of a majority of opinion leaders.

Legal action can restrain such a campaign but is chancy unless one knows the source or at least has counterdocuments. It is risky solely because “law” is unpredictable. However, legal action has a definite role in restraining, not in ending, such a campaign.

Prosperity and an easy rule depend utterly upon the cooperation of opinion leaders.

A good policy when faced with a Black Propaganda campaign is to defend as best you can (dead agent and legal restraints) while you find out (intelligence) WHO is doing it. Then, confrontation can occur. Finding and suing false whos can make things much more involved.

The US Government in the last few decades has seemed obsessed with the antagonizing or destruction of opinion leaders.

Black Propaganda counter-campaigns are inevitable. One engages upon them whether he would or not. These are engaged on while one narrows down the area to an exact WHO. For instance, one knows the whatsits are attacking one. Thus he can counter-attack the whatsits. But what are the whatsits exactly, and to whom are they connected, and exactly WHO (an individual always) is keeping it going? These last three have to be answered eventually. And that requires an intelligence type search.

Using the broad mass approach long since found faulty in PR activities, the US Government has lately sought to reach the “public” without that annoying step of reaching and getting the approval of opinion leaders.

Instead, an army of spies from every agency (according to the Committee of Senator Ervin), descend upon any and every popular leader, hound him, annoy him, discredit him. Even managers of businesses are so plagued by government they can hardly do their work. This is also true of England and other countries.

So there is where intelligence and PR cross.

The unrest in the United States and some other countries is traceable directly to this fantastic omission in their PR technical expertise. They not only do not seek the favor of opinion leaders, they actively harass and seek to destroy them.

When PR goes into Black Propaganda (hidden source using lies and defamation to destroy) it has crossed intelligence with publicity. They don’t mix well.

In return the opinion leaders feel endangered and have and state opinions accordingly. The power of the government drops back on money and force only. Governmental survival is thus greatly impaired.

The action is risky to engage upon as it may run into an ex-intelligence officer or trained intelligence personnel. It may also run into a dead agent caper or legal restraint.

The so-called “mass news media,” by which is meant newspapers, TV, radio and magazines, has the fault built into its title. It cannot and never will reach any masses directly. It reaches only through opinion leaders. It has to quote this one and that one which it fancies as an opinion leader. But it never finds out WHO the opinion leaders are.

Anyone engaging in Black Propaganda is either using a wrong way to right a wrong or confessing he can’t make it in open competition.

Newspaper editorials are a direct effort to force opinion. They quote the opinions of other papers just as though these were opinion leaders.

They believe they “mold public opinion” but PR men long since have given up this idea and even greet it with raucous laughter.

Outright Protest PR, based on facts, is a legitimate method of attempting to right wrongs.

Newspapers have ceased to wonder about their rapid demise. They are getting fewer fast. They thought it was radio. Then TV. It wasn’t.

It has to be kept overt. It has to be true.

Willy Hearst’s 1890 yellow journalism and scandal mongering began to dig the grave of the newspaper that many decades ago.

Protest PR can include demonstrations, hard news stories and any PR mechanism.

Hear this: while seeking to control public opinion, newspapers began to strike viciously at opinion leaders. Name him, sooner or later any really important opinion leader in the area would be hit with scandal. It happened so often that opinion leaders automatically began to say, “Don’t believe the newspapers.”

Minorities have learned that only Protest PR can get attention from politicians or lofty institutions or negligent or arrogant bosses.

The day of the newspaper is dead. The not-mourned London Daily Mail hit one too many opinion leaders one too many times. And nobody believed it anymore and nobody bought it. And it folded.

Where Protest PR is felt to be a necessity, neglect has already occurred on the issues.

So government or newspaper or church or hockey club, the same rule applies. The goodwill of the opinion leaders is necessary for survival. Not the good opinion of the masses! Since that cannot be reached.

The riots of Panama some years ago were very violent, verging on open war. This followed the negligence of the US in negotiating new treaties, a matter arranged for long ago and arrogantly skipped for several years by the US.

The Russian state talks down about individualism. The “cult of the individual” is a bad thing.

The slaves were freed in 1864 but were either misused or neglected for the next century and finally became a key racial problem full of demonstrations and riots and social unrest. Imperfect redress of wrongs following these then continued the riots. This is probably the biggest PR mess of the last century and a half, wobbling this way and that. It is still in the stage of Protest PR, possibly because it went so very, very long unhandled.

Their internal police is vital to them. They have forgotten that the Czar’s Okhrana*Okhrana or Ochrana: [Russian, literally, protection, guard] The Russian secret political police under the czarist regime. Webster's New International Dictionary Second Edition. destroyed the Czar by destroying every opinion leader amongst the people whom they could seize or slay.

The only real recourse these people had was Protest PR. Recently, black congressmen were refused audience by the President and had to stage a demonstration before it was granted. But Protest PR did obtain an audience.

Almost amusingly, the US Government has taken over the exact operational pattern of the Okhrana. You can hardly get to your desk through the government forms and mobs of spies urging the staff to commit crimes so they can be arrested or holding out bribes to falsify the tax reports. All one has to do is mention the US Government in a pop program and he’ll have three army sergeants from G-2 pushing the band out of the way. That’s the way it was in pre-1917 Russia just before the opinion leaders decided NO in one final bloodbath.So as I said earlier in this series, PR is dangerous stuff if one doesn’t really know it and if one only applies half of it.

The silliest idea of modern times is conscription. Drafted soldiers might possibly be excused as a levee en masse but not as the habit of government in peace and war just to overcome their lack of ability to make the country worth fighting for and the armed services a stable attractive career. This is all the more foolish since hardly anyone in history ever had any trouble recruiting an army that could pay for one. Even Gibbon remarks on it as an amazingly easy thing to do in any civilization. And that is true today.

Omitting the opinion leader is bad enough. Seeking to destroy him is far, far worse.

So conscription is continued. Facing every young man with an arbitrary military future was a bad thing. Napoleon invented it and he lost.

Yes, one says, but how about the violent opposition? How about that fellow?

Protest PR was the answer used to contest it. Met by force and violence, it has not halted.

Well, he’s a problem. But he is an opinion leader.

Somebody will have to give the country a nobler cause more decently prosecuted, will have to better the services and conditions and will have to admit men without demanding their right names or perfect physique and make them immune to recall for civil offenses. Probably that army would fight well. Conscript services are too expensive, too inefficient and too ready to revolt for any sane government to use them. But here this unhandled wrong has to resort to Protest PR.

One has to decide how much of an opinion leader he is.

So Protest PR has its place. It is a fine art. It is the subject of fantastic skill and tech.

If you don’t handle a would-be opinion leader who is anti but who is NOT an opinion leader, people get cross.

It is not good. But it does work and it is used as a last resort when normal hearings and good sense fail.

The decision here stems from

When money and force lead and opinion leaders are unheeded, when special privilege enters management or government, Protest PR, the strike, the demonstration, is the tool employed.

a. Is he talking about actual abuses, or

If that doesn’t work, or if it is crushed, subversive actions, general intelligence actions, Black Propaganda and other evils occur.

b. Is he just lying?

PR used soon enough can avert much of these consequences.

In either case one has certain courses of action. If the abuses are actual, work to remedy them. If he is just lying, lay out the truth. If he really isn’t an opinion leader, ignore him.

But there are always two in any fight and the other side may not want to live and so set themselves up.

But one can only interfere with him or remove him if many, many are getting cross because you don’t. But that’s a risky business.

Intelligent early PR is the best remedy. But it is not always possible.

As a rule, only that dissident person should be removed who is speaking in your name and on your lines and using your power to do you down. And then he can only be removed off your lines as you are under no obligation to finance or empower your own opposition. That’s suicide. He is not an opinion leader but a traitor, for he owes his power to you.

Usually anti-opinion leaders are made by neglect.

PR-wise, one has to catch them early and handle.

Abuses by those in charge are never put right by force. They are only worsened.

Perhaps there is no excuse whatever to use force to enforce an opinion. Wars are notorious for failing to solve. You can always find a point years or decades before the war when a point existed that PR and cooperative rule could have solved.

PR imperfectly known or unknown as a subject leads to big trouble.

PR is powerless when it doesn’t know.

PR loses when it neglects.

Early enough, PR alone does it.

Later, PR with concessions is needed.

Then, PR is out and only force is thought to serve.

This would be a DETERIORATING SITUATION.

The longer PR takes to catch it up, the more imminent loss or force becomes.

From this, technically adept PR could be seen to have too limited a role in the affairs of nations or groups.

The way to attain a more dominant role with PR is first to know it well, next to be sure others, who should, understand it and then to use it effectively.

As it is a subject which is meant to reach masses, remember that it must reach them through opinion leaders.

Opinion leaders may or may not be VIPs. But they are, whoever they are. barber or king, VIPs to the PR.

Thus surveys for opinion leaders are necessary. And the opinions of opinion leaders must be known.

And for heaven’s sake restrain the boss from shooting opinion leaders no matter how just his wrath.

But also don’t tell him Dr. Kutzbrain is an opinion leader just because he talks to two nurses and his wife.

Peace is not necessarily a target of PR. Survival is. And survival requires some control of opinion.

When this becomes control of numbers of people, PR is only accomplished through opinion leaders.