Edward Hunter (U.S. journalist)

Edward Hunter (1902–1978) was an American journalist, author and intelligence agent. He is credited with popularizing the use of the term "brainwashing" in English, and collected a large number of examples of Chinese Communist propaganda targeted at the (largely illiterate) population in the immediate post-revolution period.

Background
In March 1958, testifying before the United States House of Representatives' House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hunter described his career as a journalist, which he began at the Newark Ledger in New Jersey before moving on to the Chicago Tribune's Paris edition. Hunter worked in Japan and in China from the mid-1920s to mid-1930s, the time of the Japanese detachment of Manchukuo from China. He covered the Second Italo-Abyssinian War between Italy and Ethiopia, and took note of the psychological warfare methods used in all these instances, as well as during the preparations by Germany for World War II. According to Hunter's 1958 testimony, he served for two years during World War II as a "propaganda specialist" for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the institutional predecessor to the CIA.

Anti-Communism
Hunter was active in the Newspaper Guild, the journalists' trade union, which he felt was dominated by communist sympathizers. Hunter described the U.S. and NATO as losing the Cold War due to the Communists' advantage in propaganda and psychological manipulation. He felt that the West lost the Korean War due to an unwillingness to use its advantage in atomic weapons. He saw no difference between the various communist countries, and warned that Yugoslavia, and China, were as bent on communist world domination as was the Soviet Union.