After the outbreak of Civil conflict in Lebanon beginning in 1975 U.S. policymakers insisted on U.S. neutrality and support for an end to hostilities. Their support for Lebanese stability, was based on a desire to preserve a weak state largely controlled by conservative factions. In this context right-wing Lebanese partisans perceived a cultural and religious affinity between the themselves and the United States that they could use to appeal for greater support for their factions in the Lebanese civil war. Especially after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, these right-wing Lebanese advocates sought to curry favor with U.S. leaders using narratives about Western civilization, Christianity, and anti-Soviet politics. When overt support was not forthcoming, these leaders pursued public diplomacy through relationships with American journalists like Geraldo Rivera of ABC’s show 20/20. Drawing on U.S. national archives, news reports from the era, and interviews with members of the Phalange lobbying office in Washington, D.C., the Lebanese Information and Research Center (LIRC), this paper demonstrates that skepticism towards U.S. neutrality in the region came both from those who wished to prevent greater U.S. involvement in the region and from those who sought to encourage U.S. intervention in their favor.