Will Bureaucratic Machinations Taketh Away The New Lease On Life President Clinton Hath Given The Free Radios?

(Washington, D.C.): On 15 June 1993, President Clinton reversed a decision taken at the outset of his Administration that would have eliminated two of the nation’s most important and cost-effective assets for promoting democracy and free enterprise — Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

Ironically, the initial Clinton decision was actually the product of hold-overs from the Bush Administration. These individuals were bureaucrats from the State Department, Office of Management and Budget, National Security Council and U.S. Information Agency who were intensely jealous of the editorial independence and resources enjoyed by these Munich-based "surrogate" broadcasting services. The members of this informal cabal had been thwarted over the previous four years in repeated efforts to achieve this outcome. They saw their opportunity in the new team’s disarray and its urgent need for spending cuts to try to kill RFE/RL, once and for all. Due to their efforts, the first version of the Clinton FY1994 budget directed shutting down the Free Radios in 1995.

The Triumph of Common Sense

Fortunately, this decision was overturned by a combination of strong congressional resistance, effective representation by Eugene Pell, the President of RFE/RL, Inc., and aggressive campaigning by the past and present chairmen of the Board for International Broadcasting.⁽¹⁾

This may have been the finest moment for the BIB, an organization that has for some forty years provided a crucial "fire wall" designed to preserve the independence and integrity of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, despite the financial support they receive from the U.S. government.

Far from dismantling RFE/RL, the revised Clinton "public diplomacy" program calls for "a proud rebirth of America’s broadcasting programs to reflect this post-Cold War era." To do so, the new plan envisions preserving Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in Munich and adding an important and severely needed new surrogate radio service — an Asian Democracy Radio.

What is more, it calls for the Voice of America — the official radio mouthpiece for the U.S. government — to be removed from its present, direct subordination to USIA. Instead, it would be overseen by a new "Board of Governors for Broadcasting," together with RFE/RL, Asian Democracy Radio and other services heretofore managed by USIA (Radio and TV Marti and Worldnet TV and Film Service).

A ‘Fire Wall’ for All U.S. Broadcasting Services?

According to a fact sheet that accompanied the President’s 15 June decision, this Board of Governors would have a responsibility akin to that so successfully performed in the past by the Board for International Broadcasting (which it would replace). The new Board would be charged with:

• "safeguarding the journalistic independence of [U.S.] international broadcasts";

 

• "reviewing broadcast operations to ensure program quality, effectiveness and professional integrity"; and

 

• "undertaking studies of broadcast operations to ensure that they are run in the most efficient and economical manner."

The Board would also have the additional responsibility of "evaluating the mix of traditional and surrogate programming and make recommendations on changes."

Other Important Improvements

In addition, under the new Clinton strategy, Radio Liberty’s service to Russia would be allowed to maintain its 24-hour-a-day broadcasts. Ukraine would receive 16 hours per day and RL would become the sole U.S. government-sponsored radio service to the turbulent former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

These positive developments would be accompanied by another important reversal of a singularly benighted Bush Administration policy: Surrogate broadcasting will finally be initiated to the former Yugoslavia — an area tragically denied RFE broadcasts in the Serbo-Croatian language as the crisis there intensified. The deplorable reason: fear that allowing RFE to meet the obvious need for such broadcasting might validate the Free Radios’ missions more generally.

Still, Congress Should Think Twice About Some Aspects of the New Clinton Approach

While Mr. Clinton’s 15 June announcement about international broadcasting marks an enormous improvement over his earlier position and that of his predecessor, there are some aspects that warrant careful review by the Congress as it translates the President’s initiative into legislation. These include:

• The status of the Board of Governors: Draft statutory language being circulated by some of the same bureaucrats who shaped the Bush and initial Clinton policy on the Radios reportedly aims to do through procedural arrangements what they have thus far failed to accomplish through budgetary and other means. The game appears to be to vest not with the Board but with USIA exclusive authority for overseeing the expenditures of the broadcast services under the Board’s purview. This would preclude the Board of Governors from performing its vital "fire wall" function and subject RFE/RL to the same sort of governmental involvement that has long afflicted VOA.

 

• The status of RFE/RL as grantees: A similar motivation appears to be behind another idea being floated for the draft legislation’s language: elimination of the corporation -RFE/RL, Inc. — that has employed the Free Radios’ personnel. RFE/RL’s staff would, according to this scheme, transition to a new status as federalized employees of the U.S. government. If adopted, such a step would, at a minimum, affect foreign audiences’ perceptions of the independence of the Free Radios. In practice, moreover, that independence probably would be compromised.

 

• Prematurely closing down services of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: As part of a cost-cutting effort carried over from the original plan to liquidate the Free Radios altogether, the new Clinton approach envisions eliminating a number of programs offered by RFE/RL. At the time of the 15 June course-correction, officials let it be known that, while RFE’s services for Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia would (properly) be retained, counter-part broadcasts to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states would be ended. At this writing, the decision as to which services will be terminated will apparently be left up to the new Board of Governors.

 

The rationale behind such actions, apart from the perceived need to realize budget savings in this account, is that in former communist countries where a genuinely free press has been established, there is no longer any need for U.S.-financed surrogate broadcasting. While indisputable in the abstract, this proposition is highly debatable in the context of the former Soviet bloc today. As the Czech ambassador to the United States, Michael Zantovsky, recently observed: "Democracy is not a state, it’s a process. And the process has to be permanently watched and cared for. [The surrogate radios] in part fulfill that role …. We would like to see them continue [to do so]."⁽²⁾

 

It is especially imprudent to terminate Radio Liberty’s service to the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. To be sure, these nations are making great strides toward creating Western-style democratic and free market institutions, including a free press. They are, however, experiencing significant and increasing coercion from Russia⁽³⁾ that makes retention of this service desirable and a false economy of the $3 million that would be freed up by terminating such broadcasts.

 

• Canceling Existing Contractual Arrangements for Broadcast Antennas in Israel: Another penny-wise and pound-foolish action in the revised Clinton approach involves a new broadcast facility in the Israeli Negev desert that would vastly improve transmission of Radio Liberty’s signals to the former Soviet Central Asian republics. Funding for this facility was previously appropriated by the Congress and a contract negotiated with the Israeli government. Prime Minister Rabin has personally expressed his readiness to go forward with the project.

 

On the grounds that jammers — ironically once employed by the USSR in Azerbaijan and other Central Asian republics to interfere with Radio Liberty broadcasts — can now be rented from the successor governments to transmit those broadcasts, the Clinton Administration has decided to scrap the Israeli antenna complex. While the local antennas also permit broadcasting via the preferred medium-wave frequencies (vice the short-wave transmissions required to reach target populations from Israel), substantial and growing political turmoil in the region means that future access to them cannot be assured — even as the need for such services is likely to grow.

 

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy welcomes the Clinton Administration’s reconsideration of its earlier, ill-advised decision to close down one of the United States’ most successful tools for promoting values and institutions America holds dear — surrogate broadcasting. The Center only hopes that, as this revised approach is implemented, the commitment to the independence, integrity and quality of the surrogate radio services that ostensibly underpins that approach is faithfully implemented with an appropriate statutory mandate, bureaucratic arrangements and financial resources.

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1. Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr. and former Rep. Dan Mica, respectively. For his extraordinary public service in this area (among many others), the Center for Security Policy will confer upon Steve Forbes its prestigious annual "Keeper of the Flame" award on 28 October 1993.

2. From an appearance broadcast nationally in April 1993 on a program of public television’s The World This Week devoted to the question: "Is There Still A Need for America’s Free Radios?"

3. See the Center for Security Policy’s recent Decision Brief entitled Harbinger of Things to Come? Russian Energy Sector Imposes Boycott on Estonia After Getting U.S. Aid, (No. 93-D 54, 28 June 1993).