by Fed Up Texas Chick, The Tenpenny Report:

Even during World War II, leaders knew the importance of information to winning hearts and minds. The role of information was fundamental to wartime success, and very different than the traditional means like military, diplomacy and economic measures like sanctions.

Leaders knew the US would need a peacetime information service after the end of the war. At the time, most people understood that information suppression indeed contributed to the outbreak of wars. Even in World War I, the US media complained about nationalist news agencies like Reuters out of Great Britain controlling news content and deciding what would be disseminated across borders. This got even worse during WWII.