Chapter 3
Availability of Appropriations: Purpose
Principles of Federal Appropriations Law
Fourth Edition, 2017 Revision
Page 3-291 GAO-17-797SP
to retired military officers (RMOs) who served as media analysts did
not violate the prohibition. DOD sought to influence public opinion
of its war policies by providing the RMOs with talking points and
information and by organizing meetings and travel, but DOD did not
engage the RMOs, by contract or otherwise, to have them deliver to
the public, analysis created by DOD, or particular commentary. See
also B-304716, Sept. 30, 2005 (articles praising the President’s
Healthy Marriage Initiative, prepared by expert consultant hired by
the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for
Children and Families (ACF), did not violate the publicity or
propaganda prohibition, as ACF did not contract with the consultant
for the publication of favorable articles, but rather she performed
those activities on her own).
The publicity or propaganda provision applies to actions carried out
by or at the behest of a government entity, using appropriated
funds. Again, a violation of the provision based on covert
propaganda will stem from the agency’s failure to disclose its role to
the target audience of its communication. B-326944, Dec. 14, 2015.
As demonstrated in the opinions and decisions discussed above,
an agency’s transparency to the distributors of its messages—for
example, the person delivering positive commentary pursuant to a
contract with the agency, or the television station airing a
prepacked news story with knowledge of the source from which it
received the material, or the newspaper entreated to publish a
canned editorial, with awareness of its government author—are not
the communications at issue, as these distributors are not the
target audiences of the messages they will deliver. See, e.g.,
B-305368, Sept. 30, 2005; B-302710, May 19, 2004; B-223098,
B-223098.2, Oct. 10, 1986. Nor are the actions of non-government
actors taken on their own behalf, independent of solicitation by a
government entity or official, the communications to which the
covert propaganda restriction applies. See, e.g., B-320482, Oct. 19,
2010, B-304716, Sept. 30, 2005. These precepts persist regardless
of the medium through which the government message is being
disseminated.
In B-326944, Dec. 14, 2015, we considered whether the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) engaged in covert