For an American reader, I.I.P.’s body of work offers a fascinating look not only at what our government wants to tell the world but also at what it wants to believe about itself. The obvious conflicts of interest that accompanied Donald Trump into office are in one sense the least of I.I.P.’s problems; the larger question is what a propaganda unit is supposed to do when the pronouncements of its head of state are so often at odds with the national vision it tries to sell to the world.

Every government bureaucracy on the face of the Earth experiences turf wars, morale issues, infighting and red tape. Then there's the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs. Best known as the bureau that blew $630,000 on Facebook "likes," IIP finds itself at a crossroads, sources tell The Cable, as it prepares to announce a new coordinator next month.