[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 72 (Wednesday, June 5, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E952-E955]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               NEWTON MINOW'S ``THE WHISPER OF AMERICA''

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. HENRY J. HYDE

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 4, 2002

  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, recently the former Chairman of the Federal 
Communications Commission, Newton Minow delivered the Morris I. Liebman 
lecture at Loyola University in Chicago.
  Mr. Minow's address are entitled ``The Whisper of America,'' and is 
focused on the need for the United States to significantly increase the 
resources it devotes to international broadcasting.
  I believe Mr. Minow makes a very thoughtful case for expanding our 
efforts in this area. In order that it may be available to a wider 
audience, and to call it to the attention of my colleagues, I ask 
unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

[[Page E953]]

  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                         The Whisper of America

       In World War II, when the survival of freedom was still far 
     from certain, the United States created a new international 
     radio service, the Voice of America. On February 24, 1942, 
     William Harlan Hale opened the German-language program with 
     these words: ``Here speaks a voice from America. Every day at 
     this time we will bring you the news of the war. The news may 
     be good. The news may be bad. We will tell you the truth.''
       My old boss, William Benton, came up with the idea of the 
     Voice of America. He was then Assistant Secretary of State 
     and would later become Senator from Connecticut. He was 
     immensely proud of the Voice of America. One day he described 
     the new VOA to RCA Chairman David Sarnoff, the tough-minded 
     and passionate pioneer of American broadcasting. Sarnoff 
     noticed how little electronic power and transmitter scope the 
     VOA had via short-wave radio, then said, ``Benton, all you've 
     got here is the whisper of America.''
       Although The Voice of America, and later other 
     international radio services, have made valuable 
     contributions, our international broadcasting services suffer 
     from miserly funding. In many areas of the world, they have 
     seldom been more than a whisper. Today, when we most need to 
     communicate our story, especially in the Middle East, our 
     broadcasts are not even a whisper. People in every country 
     know our music, our movies, our clothes, and our sports. But 
     they do not know our freedom or our values or our democracy.
       I want to talk with you about how and why this happened, 
     and what we must do about it.
       First, some history:
       At first, the Voice of America was part of the Office of 
     War Information. When the war ended, the VOA was transferred 
     to the Department of State. With the beginning of the Cold 
     War, officials within the government began to debate the core 
     mission of the VOA: Was it to be a professional impartial 
     news service serving as an example of press freedom to the 
     world? Or was it an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, a 
     strategic weapon to be employed against those we fight? What 
     is the line between news and propaganda? Should our 
     broadcasts advocate America's values--or should they provide 
     neutral, objective journalism?
       That debate has never been resolved, only recast for each 
     succeeding generation. In August 1953, for example, our 
     government concluded that whatever the VOA was or would be, 
     it should not be part of the State Department. So we 
     established the United states Information Agency, and the VOA 
     became its single largest operation.
       A few years ago, Congress decided that all our 
     international broadcasts were to be governed by a bi-partisan 
     board appointed by the President, with the Secretary of State 
     as an ex-officio member.
       This includes other U.S. international broadcast services 
     which were born in the Cold War, the so-called ``Freedom 
     Radios.'' The first was Radio Free Europe, established in 
     1949 as a non-profit, non-governmental private corporation to 
     broadcast news and information to East Europeans behind the 
     Iron Curtain. The second was Radio Liberty, created in 1951 
     to broadcast similar programming to the citizens of Russia 
     and the Soviet republics. Both Radio Free Europe and Radio 
     Liberty were secretly funded by the Central Intelligence 
     Agency, a fact not known to the American public until 1967, 
     when the New York Times first reported the connection. The 
     immediate result of the story was a huge controversy, because 
     the radios had for years solicited donations from the public 
     through an advertising campaign known as the Crusade for 
     Freedom. Such secrecy, critics argued, undermined the very 
     message of democratic openness the stations were intended to 
     convey in their broadcasts to the closed, totalitarian 
     regimes of the East.
       In 1971, Congress terminated CIA funding for the stations 
     and provided for their continued existence by open 
     appropriations. The stations survived and contributed to 
     American strategy in the Cold War. That strategy was simple: 
     to persuade and convince the leaders and people of the 
     communist bloc that freedom was better than dictatorship, 
     that free enterprise was better than central planning, and 
     that no country could survive if it did not respect human 
     rights and the rule of law. Broadcasting into regimes where 
     travel was severely restricted, where all incoming mail was 
     censored, and all internal media were tools of state 
     propaganda, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty communicated 
     two messages that conventional weapons never could--doubt 
     about the present and hope for the future.
       They did so against repeated efforts by Soviet and East 
     European secret police to sabotage their broadcast 
     facilities, to create friction between the stations and their 
     lost governments, and even to murder the stations' personnel. 
     In 1962, I personally witnessed an effort by Soviet delegates 
     to an international communication conference in Geneva to 
     eliminate our broadcasts to Eastern Europe. Because I was 
     then Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the 
     Soviets assumed I was in charge of these broadcasts. I 
     explained that although this was not my department, I thought 
     we should double the broadcasts.
       Listening to the radios' evening broadcasts became a 
     standard ritual throughout Russia and Eastern Europe. Moscow, 
     no matter how hard it tried, could not successfully jam the 
     transmissions. As a result, communism had to face a public 
     that every year knew more about its lies. In his 1970 Nobel 
     Prize speech, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn said of Radio Liberty, 
     ``If we learn anything about events in our own country, it's 
     from there.'' When the Berlin Wall fell, and soon after the 
     Soviet Union crumbled, Lech Walesa was asked about the 
     significance of Radio Free Europe to the Polish democracy 
     movement. He replied, ``Where would the Earth be without the 
     sun?''
       Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty continue to broadcast, 
     from headquarters in downtown Prague, at the invitation of 
     Valclav Havel. The studios are not guarded by tanks in the 
     street to protect against terrorists.
       With very little money, Congress authorized several new 
     services: Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Iraq, Radio Free Iran, 
     Radio and TVA Marti, Radio Democracy Africa, and World net, a 
     television service that broadcasts a daily block of American 
     news. After 9/11, Congress approved funding for a new Radio 
     Free Afghanistan. What most people don't know is that this 
     service is not new--Congress authorized funds for Radio Free 
     Afghanistan first in 1985, when the country was under Soviet 
     domination. Even the service was minimal--one half-hour a day 
     of news in the Dari and Pashto languages. When the Soviets 
     withdrew, we mistakenly thought the service was no longer 
     needed. We dismantled it as the country plunged into chaos. 
     We are finally beginning to correct mistakes with a smart new 
     service in the Middle East called ``The New Station for the 
     New Generation.''
       Indeed, as the Cold War wound down, we forgot its most 
     potent lesson: that totalitarianism was defeated not with 
     missiles, tanks and carriers, but with ideas--and that words 
     can be weapons. Even though the Voice of America had earned 
     the trust and respect of listeners for its accuracy and 
     fairness, our government starved our international 
     broadcasts. Many of the resources that had once been given to 
     public diplomacy--to explaining ourselves and our values to 
     the world--were eliminated. In the Middle East, particularly, 
     American broadcasting is not even a whisper. An Arab-language 
     radio service is operated by Voice of America, but its budget 
     is tiny and its audience tinier--only about 1 to 2 percent of 
     Arabs ever listen to it. Among those under the age of 30--60 
     percent of the population in the region--virtually no one 
     listens.
       As we fell mute in the Cold War's aftermath, other voices 
     grew in influence.


                               AL JAZEERA

       In the past few months, Westerners began to learn about Al 
     Jazeera as a source of anti-American tirades by Muslim 
     extremists and as the favored news outlet of both Osama bin 
     Laden and the Taliban. The service had its beginnings in 
     1995, when the BBC withdrew from a joint venture with Saudi-
     owned Orbit Communications that had provided news on a Middle 
     East channel. The BBC and the Saudi government clashed over 
     editorial judgments, and the business relationship fell 
     apart. Into the breach stepped a big fan of CNN, Qatar's 
     Emir, Sheikh Hamed bin Khalifa Al Thani. He admired CNN's 
     satellite technology and decided to bankroll a Middle East 
     satellite network with a small budget. He hired most of the 
     BBC's anchors, editors and technicians, and Al Jazeera was 
     born. Jazeera means ``the peninsula'' in Arabic, and the name 
     is fitting. Just as Qatar is a peninsula, the station's 
     programming protrudes conspicuously into the world of state-
     controlled broadcasting in the Middle East. Several 
     commentators, including many Arabs, have sharply criticized 
     the service for being unprofessional and biased. CNN and Al 
     Jazeera had a dispute this year and terminated their 
     cooperative relationship.
       Well before September 11, Al Jazeera had managed to anger 
     most of the governments in its own region. Libya withdrew its 
     ambassador from Qatar when Al Jazeera broadcast an interview 
     with a critic of the Libyan government. Tunisia's ambassador 
     complained to the Qatari foreign ministry about a program 
     accusing Tunisia of violating human rights. Kuwait complained 
     after a program criticized Kuwait's relations with Iraq. In 
     Saudi Arabia, officials called for a ``political fatwa'' 
     prohibiting Saudis from appearing on any Al Jazeera 
     programming. In March 2001, Yasser Arafat closed Al Jazeera's 
     West Bank news bureau, complaining of an offensive depiction 
     of Arafat in a documentary. Algeria shut off electricity to 
     prevent its citizens from watching Al Jazeera's programs. 
     Other countries deny Al Jazeera's reporters entry visas.
       And of course, our own country has plenty to complain about 
     Al Jazeera.
       Al Jazeera came to our notice first because a 1998 
     interview with Osama bin Laden called upon Muslims to 
     ``target all Americans.'' Al Jazeera broadcast the tape many 
     times. As the only network with an office in Afghanistan, Al 
     Jazeera was the only one the Taliban allowed to broadcast 
     from the country. On October 7, 2001, the network's Kabul 
     office received a videotape message from Osama bin Laden, 
     which it transmitted around the world. Hiding in caves, Osama 
     could still speak to the world in a voice louder than ours 
     because we allowed our story to be told by our enemies.
       Forty years ago, I accompanied President Kennedy on a tour 
     of our space program facilities. He asked me why it was so 
     important to launch a communications satellite. I

[[Page E954]]

     said, ``Mr. President, unlike other rocket launches, this one 
     will not send a man into space, but it will send ideas. And 
     ideas last longer than people do.'' I never dreamed that the 
     ideas millions of people receive every day would come from Al 
     Jazerra.


                      THE GLOBAL MEDIA MARKETPLACE

       Whatever one thinks of Al Jazeera, it teaches an important 
     lesson: The global marketplace of news and information is no 
     longer dominated by the United States. Our own government, 
     because it has no outlet of its own in the area, is looking 
     into buying commercial time on Al Jazeera to get America's 
     anti-terrorism message out. And because of privatization and 
     deregulation in the international satellite business, a huge 
     number of Americans now have direct access to Al Jazeera 
     through the EchoStar satellite service.
       The point is simply this: Whether the message is one of 
     hate or peace, in the globalized communications environment 
     it is impossible either to silence those who send the 
     message, or stop those who want to receive it. Satellites 
     have no respect for national borders. Satellites surmount 
     walls. Like Joshua's Trumpet, satellite blow walls down.
       That was the last lesson of the Cold War. In Beijing, the 
     Chinese government would not begin its brutal sweep through 
     Tianamen Square until it thought the world's video cameras 
     were out of range. In Manila, Warsaw and Bucharest, 
     dissenters first captured the television station--the 
     Electronic Bastille of modern revolutions. In Prague, a 
     classic urban rebellion became a revolution through 
     television. The Romanian revolution was not won until 
     television showed pictures of the Ceaucescus' corpses and 
     scenes of rebels controlling the square in Bucharest. In the 
     final days of the Soviet Union, the August 1991 coup against 
     President Mikhail Gorbachev failed when video of the 
     supposedly ill president was broadcast by satellite around 
     the world. Those satellites, Gorbachev later said, 
     ``prevented the triumph of dictatorship.'' Now, we have the 
     newer technologies of the internet and e-mail--technologies 
     the Voice of America and the Freedom Radios use with 
     enthusiasm without adequate support.
       What we have failed to realize is that the last lesson of 
     the Cold War is also the first lesson of the new global 
     information age. We live now in a world where we are the long 
     superpower, and the target of envy and resentment not just in 
     the Middle East but elsewhere. Terror is now the weapon of 
     choice.
       But if you believe we are only in a war against terrorism, 
     you are only half-right. Nation-states can sponsor terrorism 
     and provide cover to terrorists, but the war against 
     terrorism is asymmetric. This is my friend Don Rumsfeld's 
     favorite word--asymmetric. This means that war is not waged 
     by a state against another state per se, but against an 
     ideology. Think of the campaign of the past few moths. The 
     enemy has been a band of religious zealots and the Al-Qaida 
     terrorists they harbor, not the people of Afghanistan. 
     President Bush has been emphatic and effective on this point, 
     as have Prime Minister Tony Blair and other world leaders.
       Asymmetry also refers to the strategies and tactics used by 
     those who cannot compete in a conventional war. In an 
     asymmetric war, it is not enough to have Air Forces to 
     command the skies, Navies to roam the seas, or Armies to 
     control mountain passes. Although the Cold War led to 
     staggering advances in military technology to win the 
     battles, there is not a corresponding change in our 
     government's use of communications technology to win the 
     peace.
       Asymmetry, in other words, is not limited to what happens 
     on the battlefield. While U.S. Special Operations forces in 
     Afghanistan use laptops and satellites and sophisticated 
     wireless telecommunications to guide pilots flying bombing 
     missions from aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea, we still 
     use obsolete, clumsy and primitive methods, such as short-
     wave radio, to communicate to the people.
       Here is another incongruity: American marketing talent is 
     successfully selling Madonna's music, Pepsi Cola and Coca 
     Cola, Michael Jordan's shoes and McDonald's hamburgers around 
     the world. Our film television and computer software 
     industries dominate their markets worldwide. Yet, the United 
     Stats government has tried to get its message of freedom and 
     democracy out to the 1 billion Muslims in the world and can't 
     seem to do it. How is it that America, a nation founded on 
     ideas--not religion or race or ethnicity or clan--cannot 
     explain itself to the world?
       In the months since September 11, Americans have been 
     surprised to learn of the deep and bitter resentment that 
     much of the Muslim world feels toward us. Our situation is 
     not just a public relations problem. Anyone who has traveled 
     the world knows that much anti-American sentiment springs 
     from disagreements with some of our economic and foreign 
     policies. Our support of authoritarian regimes in the Muslim 
     world has not endeared us to the people who live there. And 
     there is no more poisonous imagery than that of Palestinians 
     and Israelis locked in mortal and what seems to be never-
     ending combat.
       Still, the United States has an important story to tell, 
     the story of human striving for freedom, democracy and 
     opportunity. Since the end of the Cold War, we have failed to 
     tell that story to a world waiting to hear it on the radio 
     and see it on television. We have failed to use the power of 
     ideas.
       Within days of the Taliban's flight from Kabul, television 
     was back on the air in the country. The Taliban had not only 
     banned television broadcasts, but confiscated and destroyed 
     thousands of TV sets. They hung the smashed husks of TV sets 
     on light poles, along with videocassettes and musical 
     instruments, as a warning to anyone who might try to break 
     the regime's reign of ignorance. And yet no sooner were the 
     Taliban driven from the city than hundreds of TV sets 
     appeared from nowhere. Even in the midst of a totalitarian, 
     theocratic regime, there had been a thriving underground 
     market for news and information. Television antennas were 
     quickly hung outside of windows and on rooftops. The antennas 
     are like periscopes, enabling those inside to see what is 
     happening outside.
       Where were we when those people needed us? Where were we 
     when Al Jazeera went on the air? It was as if we put on our 
     own self-created burka and disappeared from sight. The voices 
     of America, the voices of freedom, were not even a whisper.


                           THE NEW CHALLENGE

       I believe the United States must re-commit itself to public 
     diplomacy--to explaining and advocating our values to the 
     world. As Tom Friedman put it in his New York Times column 
     not long ago: ``It is no easy trick to lose a PR war to two 
     mass murderers--(Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein) but 
     we've been doing just that lately. It is not enough for the 
     White House to label them `evildoers.' We have to take the PR 
     war right to them, just like the real one.''
       There are two leaders of both parties who need our support 
     in this fight for aggressive, vigorous public diplomacy. 
     Illinois Republican Congressman Henry Hyde, chairman of the 
     House International Relations Committee, wants to strengthen 
     the Voice of America and the many Freedom Radio services that 
     broadcast from Cuba to Afghanistan. Democratic Senator Joseph 
     Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is 
     on the same page. He has developed legislation known as 
     ``Initiative 911'' to give special emphasis to more 
     programming for the entire Muslim world, from Nigeria to 
     Indonesia. In November, Congress finally set aside $30 
     million to launch a new Middle East radio network. The AM and 
     FM broadcasts (not short wave) will offer pop music--American 
     and Arabic--along with a mix of current events and talk 
     shows. The proposal to fund Radio Free Afghanistan is for 
     $27.5 million this year and next, and will allow about 12 
     hours a day of broadcasting into the country. The goal is to 
     make our ideas clear not just to leaders in the Muslin world, 
     but to those in the street, and particularly the young, many 
     of whom are uneducated and desperately poor, and among whom 
     hostility toward the United States is very high.
       These efforts are late and, in my view, too timid. They are 
     tactical, not strategic. They are smart, not visionary. The 
     cost of putting Radio Free Afghanistan on the air and 
     underwriting its annual budget, for example, is less than 
     even one Commanche helicopter. We have many hundreds of 
     helicopters which we need to destroy tyranny, but they are 
     insufficient to secure freedom. In an asymmetric war, we must 
     also fight on the idea front.
       Bob Schieffer put the issue well not long ago on CBS' 
     ``Face the Nation'': ``The real enemy is not Osama, it is the 
     ignorance that breeds the hatred that fuels his cause.'' This 
     is what we have to change. I realized what an enormous job 
     that was going to be the other day when I heard a young 
     Pakistani student tell an interviewer that everyone in his 
     school knew that Israel was behind the attacks on the Twin 
     Towers and everyone in his school knew all the Jews who 
     worked there and stayed home that day.
       What we have all come to realize now is that a large part 
     of the world not only misunderstands us but is teaching its 
     children to hate us. Steve Forbes, who once headed the 
     Broadcasting Board of Governors, put the issue even more 
     bluntly: ``Washington should cease its petty, penny-minded 
     approach to our international radios and give them the 
     resources and capable personnel to do the job that so badly 
     needs to be done right. . . . What are we waiting for?''


                              THE PROPOSAL

       What are we waiting for? I suggest three simple proposals. 
     First, define a clear strategic mission and vision for U.S. 
     international broadcasting. Second, provide the financial 
     resources to get the job done. Third, use the unique talent 
     that the United States has--all of it--to communicate that 
     vision to the world.
       First, and above all, U.S. international broadcasting 
     should be unapologetically proud to advocate freedom and 
     democracy in the world. There is no inconsistency in 
     reporting the news accurately while also advocating America's 
     values. The real issue is whether we will carry the debate on 
     the meaning of freedom to places on the globe, where open 
     debate is unknown and freedom has no seed. Does anyone 
     seriously believe that the twin goals of providing solid 
     journalism and undermining tyranny are incompatible? As a 
     people, Americans have always been committed to the 
     proposition that these goals go hand in hand. As the leader 
     of the free world, it is time for us to do what's right--to 
     speak of idealism, sacrifice and the nurturing of values 
     essential to human freedom--and to speak in a bold, clear 
     voice.
       Second, if we are to do that, we will need to put our money 
     where our mouths are not.

[[Page E955]]

     We now spend more than a billion dollars each day for the 
     Department of Defense. Results in the war on terrorism 
     demonstrate that this is money well invested in our national 
     security.
       Whatever Don Rumsfeld says he needs should be provided by 
     the Congress with pride in the extraordinary service his 
     imaginative leadership is giving our country. As President 
     Bush has proposed, we will need to increase the defense 
     budget. When we do, let's compare what we need to spend on 
     the Voice of America and the Freedom Radio services with what 
     we need to spend on defense. Our international broadcasting 
     efforts amount to less than two-tenths of one percent of 
     Defense expenditures. Al Jazeera was started with an initial 
     budget of less than $30 million a year. Now Al Jazeera 
     reaches some 40 million men, women and children every day, at 
     a cost of pennies per viewer every month.
       Congress should hold hearings now to decide what we should 
     spend to get our message of freedom, democracy and peace into 
     the non-democratic and authoritarian regions of the world. 
     One suggestion is to consider a relationship between what we 
     spend on defense with what we spend on communication. For 
     example, should we spend 10 percent of what we spend on 
     defense for communication? That would be $33 billion a year. 
     Too much. Should we spend 1 percent? That would be $3.3 
     billion, and that seems about right to me--one dollar to 
     launch ideas for every $10 we invest to launch bombs. This 
     would be about six times more than we invest now in 
     international communications. We must establish a ratio 
     sufficient to our need to inform and persuade others of the 
     values of freedom and democracy. More importantly, we should 
     seek a ratio sufficient to lessen our need for bombs.
       Third, throwing money alone at the problem will not do the 
     job. We need to use all of the communications talent we have 
     at our disposal. This job is not only for journalists. As 
     important as balanced news and public affairs programming are 
     to our public diplomacy mission, the fact is that we are now 
     in a global information marketplace. An American news source, 
     even a highly professional one like the VOA, is not 
     necessarily persuasive in a market of shouting, often 
     deceitful and hateful voices. Telling the truth in a 
     persuasive, convincing way is not propaganda. Churchill's and 
     Roosevelt's words--``never was so much owed by so many to so 
     few''--``The only thing we have to fear is fear itself''--
     were as powerful as a thousand guns.
       When Colin Powell chose advertising executive Charlotte 
     Beers as Under Secretary of State for public diplomacy and 
     public affairs, some journalists sneered. You cannot peddle 
     freedom as you would cars and shampoo, went the refrain. That 
     is undoubtedly so, and Beers has several times said as much 
     herself. But you can't peddle freedom if no one is listening, 
     and Charlotte Beers is a master at getting people to listen--
     and to communicate in terms people understand.
       So was another visionary in this business, Bill Benton. 
     Before he served as Assistant Secretary of State, Benton had 
     been a founding partner in one of the country's largest and 
     most successful advertising firms, Benton and Bowles. To win 
     the information war, we will need the Bentons and Beers of 
     this world every bit as much as we will need the journalists. 
     We have the smartest, most talented, and most creative people 
     in the world in our communications industries--in radio, 
     television, film, newspapers, magazines, advertising, 
     publishing, public relations, marketing. These men and women 
     want to help their country, and will volunteer eagerly to 
     help get our message across. One of the first people we 
     should enlist is a West Point graduate named Bill Roedy, who 
     is President of MTV Networks International. His enterprise 
     reaches one billion people in 18 languages in 164 countries. 
     Eight out of ten MTV viewers live outside the United States. 
     He can teach us a lot about how to tell our story.
       In 1945, a few years after the VOA first went on the air, 
     the newly founded United Nations had 51 members. Today it has 
     189. In the last decade alone, more than 20 countries have 
     been added to the globe, many of them former Soviet 
     republics, but not all. Some of these new countries, as with 
     the Balkan example, have been cut bloodily from the fabric of 
     ethnic and religious hatred. Some of these countries are 
     nominally democratic, but many--especially in Central Asia--
     are authoritarian regimes. Some are also deeply unstable, and 
     thus pose a threat not only to their neighbors, but to the 
     free world. Afghanistan, we discovered too late, is a concern 
     not only to its region, but to all of us.
       In virtually every case, those whose rule is based on an 
     ideology of hate have understood better than we have the 
     power of ideas and the power of communicating ideas. The 
     bloodshed in the Balkans began with hate radio blaring from 
     Zagreb and Belgrade, and hate radio is still common in the 
     region today. The murder of 2 million Hutus and Tutsis in 
     central Africa could not have happened but for the urging of 
     madmen with broadcast towers at their disposal. The same has 
     been true of ethnic violence in India and Pakistan.
       I saw this first hand in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. 
     President Kennedy asked me to organize eight American 
     commercial radio stations to carry the Voice of America to 
     Cuba because the VOA was shut out by Soviet jamming. We 
     succeeded, and President Kennedy's speeches were heard in 
     Spanish in Cuba at the height of the crisis. As we kept the 
     destroyers and missiles out of Cuba, we got the Voice of 
     America in because we had enough power to surmount the 
     jamming. On that occasion, our American broadcasts were more 
     than a whisper.
       Last spring--well before the events of September 11--
     Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde put the need eloquently. I 
     quote him: ``During the last several years it has been argued 
     that our broadcasting services have done their job so well 
     that they are no longer needed. This argument assumes that 
     the great battle of the 20th century, the long struggle for 
     the soul of the world, is over: that the forces of freedom 
     and democracy have won. But the argument is terribly 
     shortsighted. It ignores the people of China and Cuba, of 
     Vietnam and Burma, of Iraq and Iran and Sudan and North Korea 
     and now Russia. It ignores the fragility of freedom and the 
     difficulty of building and keeping democracy. And it ignores 
     the resilience of evil.''
       Fifty-eight years ago, Albert Einstein returned from a day 
     of sailing to find a group of reporters waiting for him at 
     the shore. The reporters told him that the United States had 
     dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, wiping out the city. 
     Einstein shook his head and said, ``Everything in the world 
     has changed except the way we think.''
       On September 11 everything changed except the way we think. 
     It is hard to change the way we think. But we know that ideas 
     last longer than people do, and that two important ideas of 
     the 20th century are now in direct competition: the ideas of 
     mass communication and mass destruction. The great question 
     of our time is whether we will be wise enough to use one to 
     avoid the other.

     

                          ____________________