Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2002

WASHINGTON – When the Voice of America made its budget decisions, Americans and American interests, in safety and security, got the worst of both worlds. VOA yanked a badly-needed U.S. presence in Brazil, apparently to pay for the kind of presence in the Middle East that can do more harm than good.

Given that these broadcasts represent the way America is portrayed to the rest of the world, NewsMax.com would like to hear from VOA its explanation of what appears to be double damage. Presumably, the American people whose tax dollars are supporting VOA would be curious to know whether they are throwing good money after bad.

Thus far, VOA has not responded to NewsMax’s request for comment.

It is "time for the Congress and the Administration to re-examine the so-called reforms of the United States’ international broadcasting operations that were instituted in the administration of President Clinton,” declares Free Congress President Paul M. Weyrich in a commentary e-mailed in response to NewsMax’s request for his view of the situation.

Recall that the Clinton administration marched into the White House in 1993 after trashing the Reagan-Bush years for what it claimed was excessive attention to foreign affairs at the expense of domestic matters (read: government handouts).

Squandering the 'Peace Dividend'

The Cold War was over. It was time for a "peace dividend.”

More than one observer at the time compared this to the British mood at the end of World War II, when the electorate across the pond dumped Winston Churchill after he had led his people to victory in Britain’s "finest hour,” and replaced him with an ideological socialist who promised every kind of government handout imaginable. The mood in Britain then, as in the U.S. after the Cold War nearly half a century later, was to "look inward.”

In the U.S. of the new Clinton era, that meant downsizing VOA – as well as defense and intelligence agencies. After all, it was argued, if the communist beast had been vanquished, why shouldn’t we scale back on efforts to beam America’s voice to the far corners of the earth?

That resulted in abolishing the United States Information Agency (USIA), and moving Voice of America into the State Department, with a Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to oversee its operations.

Today, the BBG is comprised mostly of Clinton holdovers. That Clinton policies hold sway at the BBG in the current Bush administration is due in large part to the fact that the Senate, led by plurality leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has dragged its feet in confirmation proceedings.

As NewsMax explained in a previous report, this holdover board is cutting back on VOA transmissions to Brazil, silencing the U.S. voice at the very time a Castroite is leading in the polls in the race for president of South America's most dominant country. As explained previously, this has serious consequences for U.S. security. The leading candidate, Luis Anacio da Silva, wants Brazil to acquire nuclear weapons and ally itself with communist China.

At the same time VOA is cutting back on broadcasts to Latin America, it has been spending money on broadcasts to the Middle East. Of course, it would serve U.S. interests to focus on that part of the world, assuming that the broadcasts in question do in fact fairly represent America’s efforts against terrorism. Do they?

Pandering to Terrorists

In a column titled "Equal Time for Hitler,” New York Times columnist William Safire reported that soon after 9/11, VOA broadcast an interview with the leader of a group in Egypt that had killed 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians.

VOA listeners were not informed of the group's history. VOA instead defined the organization merely as "Egypt’s largest Islamist group.” Omitting relevant facts in the interview might be compared to defining Adolf Hitler merely as a lowly corporal in World War I.

While a VOA official conceded that the complete background of the interviewee should have been revealed to the listeners, Weyrich says the news director added that interviews with terrorists would continue, supposedly all in the name of "balance.” Less than a month after 9/11, VOA pursued that "balance” by featuring an interview with Mullah Mohammed Omar, a Taliban leader.

'Voice of the Taliban'

In fact, the New York Times last Oct. 8 ran an article saying that anti-Taliban émigrés viewed VOA broadcasts to Afghanistan as "the Voice of the Taliban.”

All of this has a familiar ring. For decades, U.S. radio broadcasts overseas have had a history of damaging U.S. interests. Back in the 1950s, many freedom fighters behind the Iron Curtain complained that broadcasts from Radio Free Europe were actually spewing pro-communist propaganda.

The late Fulton Lewis Jr., a popular radio commentator of that era, caused an uproar when he told millions of listeners in the U.S. how American interests were being thwarted by its own overseas broadcasts.

The current VOA broadcasts apparently are having a negative effect in the Middle East not only on substance, but also in style and format.

As pieced together from several sources, including Victims of Communist Memorial Foundation leader Robert Schadler, who spoke on the record for NewsMax, the decision was made to "reconstitute” the broadcast operations to the Middle East, "not labeling it Voice of America, but calling it Radio Sawa, which I think in Arabic means ‘together.’”

Your Tax Dollars at 'Work'

The new format would mix Arabic popular music and American popular music, "with a little bit of news at the top of the hour.”

Schadler, who several years ago held key positions in U.S. overseas broadcast operations and keeps tabs on what is going on there these days, says the rationale for this move was to use music to attract a much larger audience among the growing under-25 population of Arabs.

"That may or may not be true,” he said, "but to denigrate and diminish substantive broadcasting for pop American music, whether 20-year-old Arabs like it or not, is a policy judgment that I believe is dramatically mistaken.”

This tends to reinforce negative views that Arabs already have on the more degenerate aspects of American culture.

NewsMax.com will discuss that in a future report.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Bush Administration

Clinton Scandals

Latin America

Middle East

War on Terrorism

Editor's note:
"CATASTROPHE" Reveals Bill Clinton`s Role in 9/11 - Click Here to find out more