[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 96 (Friday, July 15, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Page S8378]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                TV MARTI

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I point out an amendment I will offer to 
the Foreign Operations appropriations bill. Let me show a picture of 
something called Fat Albert. Fat Albert is an aerostat balloon. It is 
on a tether far up in the sky. The purpose of Fat Albert is to 
broadcast television signals into the country of Cuba to tell the 
citizens of Cuba that life under Castro, life in communism in Cuba, is 
a pretty awful life and you ought to aspire toward a democracy and here 
are all the good things democracy has to offer.
  The fact is, the Cubans already know all that. That is why they get 
on rafts and risk their lives trying to leave. In any event, if they 
don't know that, they can tune into a Miami radio station 90 miles 
away. If they choose not to tune in to a Miami radio station, they can 
tune in to Radio Marti. That does work. It sends signals to the country 
of Cuba and people listen to it. But TV Mart does not work.
  TV Marti doesn't get into the Cuban marketplace. The Cuban people 
can't see it, because the Castro regime jams the signals. We have now 
spent $189 million on TV Marti. We send television signals the Cuban 
people can't see. We spend $189 million. Apparently, someone feels 
better because we have wasted this money.
  I had an amendment earlier this year to shut this down. Strangely 
enough, this Senate turned it down. I will give them the chance again 
on the Foreign Operations bill. I am going to take the money out of 
that bill, and we will vote on it again.
  Why do the Cubans not see these signals? Because Castro jams them. 
The President is asking for $21 million more to send television signals 
to Cuba. They used to use Fat Albert. Fat Albert got loose at one 
point, meandered over into the Everglades. They had to find some 
grapple hooks to rescue him. But that wasn't enough.
  Incidentally, for most of the time they have broadcast these signals, 
they broadcast them from 3:30 a.m. until 8:30 a.m. All were jammed. 
They decided to change that on May 20, 2002, and then they began to 
broadcast in prime time. An administration official from the State 
Department said this: We don't have any official evidence that the 
audience has increased due to the broadcast schedule change.
  Chris Coursen, former chairman of the President's board of advisors 
on broadcasting to Cuba, says until 6 years ago, TV Marti used to do 
exit interviews with Cubans coming to the United States on rafts and so 
on to determine whether Cubans, in fact, watched TV Marti. It was clear 
from those interviews no one was seeing TV Marti in Cuba because Castro 
was jamming it. We get people coming off a raft. We say: Have you 
watched Television Marti? No, we can't see it. It gets jammed. What do 
we do? We keep spending money anyway. And they stopped doing exit 
interviews with Cubans coming here, because they didn't want to 
document the fact that nobody could watch TV Marti.
  It is now not enough to do it by an aerostat balloon. We now have a 
specially equipped airplane flying once a week, a C-130, Commando Solo, 
which is a very special airplane designed for communications strategies 
in warfare. We have taken an Air National Guard Commando Solo, put it 
up 4 hours a week, and it still cannot overcome the jammers in Cuba. We 
went from spending money we don't have on things we don't need to send 
television signals to people who can't receive them, and then we went 
to airplanes.
  Now the President wants to buy an airplane just for this purpose, buy 
a new one. The President wants to spend $21 million more sending a 
television signal no one can see. It is unbelievable. I want to see 
somebody vote to continue this funding and then go home and thumb their 
suspenders and crow about how they oppose Government waste. I want to 
see one person do that. If ever there was a demonstrated waste in 
Government, this is it. Everybody in this Chamber knows it. We will see 
whether finally this Senate will decide to shut down money that is 
spent that unwisely.

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