This memo was written on May 26, 1953 by Burton R. Berry of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.  He writes to the State Department in Washington, D.C. in regards to a number of anti-Communist lectures that were held at a number of ROTC camps in northern Iraq.  Berry claims that of the 4,000 American students who participated in the summer ROTC program, many of them were Communist sympathizers.  In order to combat this, he reported that “Anti-Communist Brain Washing programs were to be instituted” that summer.  The lectures were meant to change the minds of Communist sympathizers.

This telegraph represents America’s need to gain anti-Communist allies around the world during The Cold War era.  Students can study primary sources such as this one in order to better understand the ways in which the United States promoted anti-Communism in the 1950s.  Based on the location that this telegraph was written (Baghdad), students can relate this piece of ephemera to methods propaganda that are used in Iraq as well as the rest of Southwest Asia today.