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THE 9/11 COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS ON

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: DEFENDING IDEALS AND

DEFINING THE MESSAGE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

AUGUST 23, 2004

Serial No. 108–261

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DAN BURTON, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

TOM LANTOS, California

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

DIANE E. WATSON, California

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

LAWRENCE J. HALLORAN, Staff Director and Counsel

THOMAS COSTA, Professional Staff Member

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Clerk

ANDREW SU, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on August 23, 2004 ........................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Beers, Charlotte, former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy

and Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State; Keith Reinhard, president, Business for Diplomatic Action, and chairman, DDB Worldwide;

Gary Knell, president and CEO, Sesame Workshop; Dr. Rhonda S.

Zaharna, associate professor of public communication, American University; and Hafez Al-Mirazi, Bureau Chief, Al Jazeera Washington

Office .............................................................................................................. 118

Harrison, Patricia de Stacy, Acting Under Secretary of State for Public

Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Department of State; Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman, Broadcasting Board of Governors; Charles ‘‘Tre’’ Evers

III, Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Commissioner; and Jess

T. Ford, Director of International Affairs and Trade, Government Accountability Office ......................................................................................... 53

Kean, Thomas H., Chair, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States (the 9/11 Commission); and Jamie S. Gorelick, Commissioner, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United

States (the 9/11 Commission) ...................................................................... 19

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Al-Mirazi, Hafez, Bureau Chief, Al Jazeera Washington Office, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 201

Beers, Charlotte, former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy

and Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State, prepared statement of ..... 122

Evers, Charles ‘‘Tre,’’ III, Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy,

Commissioner, prepared statement of ......................................................... 78

Ford, Jess T., Director of International Affairs and Trade, Government

Accountability Office, prepared statement of ............................................. 85

Harrison, Patricia de Stacy, Acting Under Secretary of State for Public

Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Department of State, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 56

Kean, Thomas H., Chair, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States (the 9/11 Commission); and Jamie S. Gorelick, Commissioner, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United

States (the 9/11 Commission), prepared statement of ............................... 26

Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Ohio, prepared statement of .................................................................... 7

Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 14

Reinhard, Keith, president, Business for Diplomatic Action, and chairman, DDB Worldwide, prepared statement of ........................................... 129

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut:

Information concerning Muslim Public Affairs Council ......................... 45

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3

Tomlinson, Kenneth, chairman, Broadcasting Board of Governors, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 70

Zaharna, Dr. Rhonda S., associate professor of public communication,

American University, prepared statement of ............................................. 192

(1)

THE 9/11 COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS

ON PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: DEFENDING

IDEALS AND DEFINING THE MESSAGE

MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING

THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays, Turner, LaTourette, Platts,

Kucinich, Maloney, and Tierney.

Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and counsel;

Thomas Costa, professional staff member; Sarah D’Orsie, deputy

clerk; Andrew Su, minority professional staff member; and Earley

Green, minority chief clerk.

Mr. SHAYS. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations

hearing entitled, ‘‘The 911 Commission Recommendations on Public

Diplomacy: Defending Ideals and Defining the Message,’’ is called

to order.

In the war against trans-national terrorism, we are losing ground

on a crucial front: The battle of ideas. Words, not just weapons,

fuel revolutions; and the language of political liberty and economic

opportunity can inspire the victory of life over death, faith over fatalism and progress over stagnation throughout the Muslim world.

The next generation of potential terrorists can be stopped with

books rather than bombs, if we help empower and mobilize the

moderate majority with the vocabulary of hope.

Public diplomacy, the cultural exchanges, educational programs

and broadcasts used to convey U.S. interests and ideals to foreign

audiences, helped win the cold war. But according to the State Department’s advisory group on public diplomacy for the Arab and

Muslim world, ‘‘the United States today lacks the capabilities in

public diplomacy to meet the national security threat emanating

from political instability, economic deprivation and extremism.’’

In the rhetorical arms race for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world, some ask how the most technologically advanced Nation

on earth is being outgunned by a movement largely based in caves.

In our previous hearings on public diplomacy, witnesses described a lack of strategic coherence in U.S. efforts to communicate

2

with global audiences. Successful cold war structures have been

stripped bare and scattered throughout a State Department bureaucracy with other priorities. Since September 11, 2001, the

State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors have

increased the reach and frequency of communications on U.S. policies. New, more aggressive approaches, seek to counter anti-American stereo types and caricatures dominating the news cycles.

But the 9/11 Commission found those efforts still inadequate to

meet the threat. They called for ‘‘short term action on a long range

strategy’’ to compete as vigorously on the ideological battlefield as

we do on the military and intelligence fronts. The Commission recommended a clearer message in support of the rule of law, human

rights, expanded opportunity and political reform, and they said we

needed to expand regional satellite broadcasting and rebuild scholarship, exchange and library programs targeted to young people.

The Commission’s call for reinvigorated public diplomacy adds

urgency to the debate already underway over the appropriate mix

of U.S. communication tools. Some say mass audience programming based on popular music and other modern advertising techniques lacks necessary depth. Others say the old, more academic

methods targeting societal elites will not reach the larger body politic. The Commission calls for expansion of both approaches.

So we meet this afternoon to examine those recommendations

more fully, determine which can be done by the executive branch

alone and which require legislative implementation, and to assess

the strengths and weaknesses of public diplomacy as a tool against

future terrorist attacks.

We are aided in that discussion today by Governor Thomas Kean,

chairman of National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the

United States, Commission member Jamie Gorelick, and two other

panels of extremely qualified and experienced witnesses. We thank

them all for participating and we look forward to their testimony.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. At this time, the Chair would recognize the ranking

member, Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to Governor Kean and also to Ms. Gorelick.

Today’s hearing is the third hearing this subcommittee has held

on public diplomacy in the Middle East. We’ve heard from numerous State Department officials, media experts, academics, and representatives from various advisory commissions. We’ve heard repeatedly that the hatred of the Muslim world toward the United

States is growing.

However, the truth is that no matter how many hearings we hold

on this topic, our public diplomacy in the Middle East is a failure

and will continue to fail without changes in our foreign policy.

The problem is not that there are cultural differences or different

value systems. It is not a failure of the quantity or quality of our

message. Our public diplomacy fails because it is derived from

failed foreign policy. We must change our foreign policy if we’re

going to have credibility in talking about changing hearts and

minds.

In its final report, the 9/11 Commission made the following recommendation, ‘‘when Muslim governments, even those who are

friends, do not respect these principles, the United States must

stand for a better future. One of the lessons of the long cold war

was that short term gains in cooperating with the most repressive

and brutal governments were too often outweighed by long-term

setbacks by America’s stature and interests.’’

The Commission is correct in that our foreign policy strategy continues to reflect cold war mentalities. During the cold war, the

United States supported brutal dictatorial governments throughout

the world because they were strategic allies. Democratic and Republican administrations both supported with military aid regimes

in Iraq and Iran where those regimes were torturing citizens and

suppressing democratic aspirations.

Our policy of arming Mujahedin before and during Soviet invasion in Afghanistan led to the Taliban having the ability to flourish

that afterwards. The people of the Muslim world remember that

the United States chose to support these brutal regimes against

them. Recent polls such as those conducted by Zogby international

show that Arab respondents do understand and do respect American values. But they do not see American policy reflecting those

values. They saw the horrible picture of pictures at Abu Ghraib

prison. They read about the treatment of detained prisons at Guantanamo Bay, so why are we surprised that there’s harsh feelings

toward the United States?

Perhaps we have a credibility problem in the Muslim world because people there believe that we have treated them poorly. If we

say there’s a gathering threat of weapons of mass destruction and

we launch an unprovoked attack on another country to capture

those weapons and it turns out that no vast stockpiles were found,

our actions look highly questionable at best and our credibility as

a Nation is undermined.

Who’s going to believe America the next time a U.S. Secretary

of State makes a presentation at the United Nations calling for the

world community to participate in a plan for war? No amount of

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American pop music Fulbright scholars or athlete exchange programs is going to conceal the false pretences of a war. Today we’ll

hear again how much more money and attention should be spent

to influence public opinion in the Arab world and to carry a message of hope to Muslims.

Mr. Chairman, I think that our national policymakers have to

match words and deeds or pretty soon the United States will lose

all credibility, not just in the Middle East but throughout the entire world.

Let’s figure out what the message is before we discuss how best

to beam it across satellites to the Middle East. Let’s have the makers of our foreign policy come testify and be held accountable for

their decisions.

I want the thank the witnesses here today and I want the thank

Governor Kean and Ms. Gorelick for the honest assessment they’ve

made of our Nation’s vulnerabilities in the 9/11 Commission Report, and I hope that your testimony today and continued advocacy

will help to spearhead serious deliberation and reform by this and

future generations and Congresses.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman. Governor Kean and Commissioner Gorelick, the subcommittee has less members, so I’m going

to have each of them make statements. Then we will get to you

real quick. Thank you. At this time, the Chair would recognize the

vice chairman, Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your efforts

at having what is the first hearing on examining the need for a

clear and coordinated public diplomacy strategy. The 9/11 Commission Report contains numerous recommendations to change both

within the government structure and government policy, and one

key aspect of the report deals with public diplomacy or the ability

of the United States to project its public image and accurately portray our Nation to people around the world.

Public diplomacy is a campaign of words and images and it can

be easily lost. To portray the United States as the great Nation

that it is, we must set the tone and message or more radical groups

will define our message. In the 9/11 Commission Report, it States

that to Muslim parents, terrorists like bin Laden have nothing to

offer their children but visions of violence and death. In this war

of diplomacy and public policy, we have to recognize that the Islamic extremists in which we are defending ourselves promote a

culture of celebrating and glorifying death both of innocent lives of

suicide bombers, and certainly that means our task is just greater

than just defining who we are.

I look forward today to hearing from the witnesses and hearing

their recommendations on public policy and reform. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. At this time, the Chair would recognize the gentlewoman from New York, Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. And welcome to Governor Kean and

Ms. Gorelick. I just left another hearing on financial institutions

where Vice Chairman Hamilton is testifying. I join my colleagues,

and really, the American public, in thanking you for your bipartisan, thoughtful work.

The 9/11 Commission Report is more popular than Harry Potter.

So I hope people not only read the Commission report, but will

work to implement all of its suggestions, and along with my colleague Chris Shays and others, we have formed a caucus that will

be working together to really support the implementation of the

recommendations.

I, for one, believe that the Commission should be extended with

legislation and it will be the first bill that I introduce when we go

back into session in a bipartisan way.

I know that you’re fund-raising, but I do not believe that your

important work should depend on bake sales. I would prefer Governor Kean and Ms. Gorelick, for you to be spending your time testifying and not having to fundraise with private money. Your work

is tremendously important. Nothing is more important than securing America and taking every step to prevent terrorist attacks.

So I hope that this will be as successful as the legislation that

Chris Shays and I authored creating the Commission and really

supporting the legislation to extend the operation of the Commission until you’ve got all of your work done.

Again, I thank you for an excellent job and I look forward to your

testimony today. Your Commission report really mirrors what the

13

advisory group on public diplomacy, the General Accounting Office,

the Heritage Foundation and the Council on foreign relations, they

all issued reports stating that a greater emphasis is needed by our

government on public diplomacy, that we cannot allow the terrorists to define who we are and what we stand for.

So I would request permission to place in my long opening statement but I look more forward to hearing your comments today and

thank you for your many contributions so far.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentlelady. I need to confess that we

don’t have four witnesses before us today. Starting out mispronouncing both your names here could set a bad precedent, Governor Kean and Gorelick, so we’ll call them that and nothing else.

Mr. LaTourette.

Mr. LATOURETTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was going to call

them that any way.

But I want to first begin by praising you and Ranking Member

Kucinich for holding this hearing. One of the most intriguing

things about the 9/11 report has been all the different assets and

different things that the United States has done and needs to do

since September 11, and I, like Mrs. Maloney, Governor Kean, I

was just down at the Financial Services Committee with your sidekick, Congressman Hamilton, and I wanted to praise not only the

both of you, but all of the Commission members for all of the good

work you have done in the last month not only in getting the tough

work done and doing your work in a bipartisan way, but also taking all of your valuable time to explain it to us and to the American

people, and I really think that you have been on television probably

more than the summer Olympics and you’ve done I think a really

good, workman-like job.

Mr. Chairman, I think it’s important that we talk about the public policy considerations in the Middle East. I just want to harken

back to Congressman Hamilton and what we learned in the Financial Services Committee meeting that you were at, Mr. Chairman,

and Mrs. Maloney was at as well.

One of the astounding things as I read the 9/11 report was the

fact that this whole enterprise on September 11th cost less than

$500,000; that it took less than $500,000 for 19 madmen to create

such terror and devastation in the United States of America, and

what we learned and what you learned and was shared with us

today is that even this paltry sum of half a million dollars wasn’t

financed, as many believe, by Osama bin Laden. It didn’t come

from his personal wealth or inherited wealth. It came from charities, Islamic charities, both witting and unwitting, I think the report indicates.

As we look at the ramifications of particularly Title III of the Patriot Act, as we try to ramp down and get handle on some of the

finance that goes into terrorism, we now have partnership agreements with 94 countries in an attempt to control the flow of money

to terrorists, and I think your report gives us further evidence and

ammunition as we pursue that.

But its relevance to this hearing is that when you’re dealing with

94 other separate and sovereign States, a number of them have Islamic majorities, and if we are going to be successful, we can go

about it the old way and just go out and catch the bad guys and

follow the paper trail and find their money, or we can attempt to

do it a different way, and that’s where public diplomacy comes in,

and I’m very hopeful and I’m looking forward to your testimony

today, again, all of the outstanding work you’ve done already.

But our challenge needs to be not only to deal with this generation of terrorists in an effective way, but to make sure that the

next generation of terrorists at least as a competing message that

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is believed by the United States of America, and I thank you very

much for being here today and I yield back.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman. At this time, the Chair would

recognize Mr. Platts before going on to our witnesses.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to add my

words of thanks for your very important and very substantive

work. We’re a grateful Nation because of your efforts, and hopefully

we’ll be successful in moving forward and embracing your ideas.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman. Before swearing the witnesses in, I ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee be permitted to place an opening statement in the

record and that the record remain open 3 days for that purpose.

Without objection, so ordered.

I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted

to include their written statement in the record. Without objection,

so ordered.

As is the practice of this committee, the full committee and subcommittee, we swear in all our witnesses. I only chickened out once

in umpteen number of years with, Senator Byrd, but if you all

would stand, raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Note for the record our witnesses have responded in

the affirmative. Once of the nice things about our subcommittee

work is we can give the Members 10 minutes to question. We can

get into an issue a little more in-depth, and we will do that, and

Governor Kean, thank you and we would love to hear your statement.

STATEMENTS OF THOMAS H. KEAN, CHAIR, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED

STATES (THE 9/11 COMMISSION); AND JAMIE S. GORELICK,

COMMISSIONER, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST

ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES (THE 9/11 COMMISSION)

Mr. KEAN. Chairman Shays and Ranking Member Kucinich, and

distinguished Members, I want to thank, by the way, the chairman

and the ranking member and the other committee members for

their very thoughtful statements. I might say that the chairman

and other members of this committee were some of the first to spot

the seriousness of the problem that finally resulted in September

11, and I thank them for their foresight on this matter. There

weren’t many people out there with you at the time. Thank you.

We are honored to appear before you today. We want to thank

you and the leadership of the House of Representatives for the

prompt consideration you are giving to our recommendations. We’re

grateful to you and the leadership of the entire House. The findings

of this Commission were endorsed by all members, five Republicans

and five Democrats.

You see we share a unity of purpose on the Commission, and

we’d like to call upon Congress and the administration, even in this

very difficult season, to display the same spirit of bipartisanship as

we collectively seek to make all our country and our people safer

and more secure.

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Terrorism is the No. 1 threat to the national security of the

United States. Counterterrorism policy must be the No. 1 priority

for the President, and as any President and that’s any President

and this Congress, or perhaps any Congress and that’s going to go

for the foreseeable future.

We cannot succeed against terrorism by Islamic extremist groups

unless we use all elements of national power: That means military

power, it means diplomacy, it means intelligence, covert action, law

enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, homeland defense, and

yes, of course the subject of today, public diplomacy. If we favor

any of those tools while neglecting others, we leave ourselves vulnerable and weaken our national effort and by the way that’s just

not our view. That is the view of every single policymaker we interviewed. You cannot then succeed against terrorism with one tool

alone.

I give you an example. When Secretary Rumsfeld testified before

us he said he can’t get the job done with the military alone. For

every terrorist we kill or capture, he said, more can rise up to take

their place. He told us the cost benefit ratio is simply against us.

Cofer Black told us: You can’t get the job done with the CIA

alone.

What became clear to us as we heard these leaders answered so

many other is that the U.S. Government remains geared to cold

war threats who are—we’re still, in many cases, talking about

great power threats. Our government still today is not geared to

deal with the threat from transnational Islamic terrorism. The

threat to us today is not from great armies anymore. The threat

to us comes from the beliefs, those beliefs that propelled the 19

young men to take their lives simply to do the greatest possible

harm to us.

The military struggle is part of that struggle we face, but if you

think about it, far more important is the struggle for the war of

ideas. As much as we worried about bin Laden and al Qaeda, and

we do worry about that, we should worry far more about the attitudes of tens of millions of young Arabs and hundreds of millions

of young Muslims.

Those who sympathize with bin Laden represent, in the long

term, a far greater threat to us. They represent the well spring to

refresh the doctrine of hate and destruction, no matter how many

al Qaeda members we capture or kill. For those reasons, Mr. Chairman, we welcome the opportunity to this afternoon to address this

question of public diplomacy.

The United States is heavily engaged in the Muslim world and

will be for many, many years to come. The American engagement

is resented. Polls in 2002 found that among America’s friends, I’ll

take Egypt for example, Egypt is the recipient of more USAID for

the past 20 years than any Muslim country by far. Only 15 percent

of the people in Egypt have a favorable opinion of the United

States of America. In Saudi Arabia, another friend, that number

goes down to 12 percent and two-thirds of those surveyed in 2003

in countries from Indonesia to Turkey were very or somewhat fearful and they were fearful that they feared the United States might

attack them, they really believe this.

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At this time, the support for the United States has plummeted.

Polls taken in Islamic countries just after September 11 suggested

something quite different. At that point, people felt we were doing

something right and there was a lot of support for us at that point,

even in the Arab world, for our fight against terrorism. But by

2003, the bottom had fallen out of that support in most of the Muslim world. Negative views of the United States among Muslims

which had been largely limited to the countries in the Middle East

have spread. Since last summer, favorable ratings for the United

States have fallen from 61 percent to 15 percent in Indonesia and

from 71 percent to 38 percent among Muslims in Nigeria.

Now, what we know is that many of these views are uninformed.

At worst, some of these views of course are informed by cartoonish

stereotypes, the coarse expression of fashionable Occidentalism

among intellectuals who caricature U.S. values and policies. Local

newspapers and a few influential satellite broadcasters like al

Jazeera often reinforce such Jihadist theme that portrays the

United States again and again as simply antiMuslim.

The small number of Muslims who are committed to Osama bin

Laden’s version of Islam, we can’t dissuade them. We’ve got to jail

them or we’ve got to kill them. That’s the bottom line. But, the

large majority of Arabs and Muslims are opposed to violence, and

with those people, we must encourage reform, freedom, democracy

and perhaps, above everything else, opportunity, even though our

own promotion of these messages will, for a while, be limited in its

effectiveness simply, because we are the one carrying the message.

Muslims themselves often reflect on such basic issues as the concept of Jihad, the position of women in their societies, the place of

non-Muslim minorities. We can promote moderation. We can ensure its ascendancy. Only Muslims themselves in their own countries can do that.

So the setting is difficult. Forty percent of adult Arabs are illiterate. Two-thirds of them are women. One third of the broader

Middle East lives on less than $2 a day. Less than 2 percent of the

population has access to the Internet. The majority of older Arab

youths who express the desire to emigrate, particularly to Europe.

So this is fertile ground. This is fertile ground for any ideology

which is dedicated to hate. This is the kind of soil in which it can

grow best.

So in short, the United States has to defeat an ideology, not just

a group of people, and we must do so under very difficult circumstances. How can the United States and its friends help moderate Muslims combat these extremist ideas?

As a Commission, we believe the United States must define its

message. We believe that we have to define what we stand for and

we believe that simply have to offer an example of moral leadership. We’ve got to be committed and show we’re committed to treating people humanely to abiding by the rule of law and being generous and caring about our neighbors. You see, America and its Muslim friends can agree on respect for human dignity and the belief

in opportunity.

To Muslim parents, terrorists like bin Laden have nothing to

offer their children, as I’ve said, except violence and death. America

and its friends have a crucial advantage. As we can offer if you’re

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a parent in the Muslim world, we can offer you a vision, and that

vision can give their children a better future. If we heed the views

of thoughtful leaders in the Arab and Muslim world, we believe we

can seek a moderate consensus.

Our vision of the future should stress individual educational and

economic opportunity. Our vision includes widespread political participation and contempt for indiscriminate violence. It includes respect for the rule of law, openness in discussing differences, and

tolerance for opposing points of view.

Where Muslim governments, and this even those goes for Muslim

governments that happen to be friends, when they do not respect

these principles, the United States must stand for a better future.

One of the lessons of the cold war was that the short term gains

in cooperating with the most repressive and brutal governments

was sooner-or-later outweighed by long-term setbacks for America’s

stature and interests.

Above all, we as Americans must not be hypocrites about our

own values. American foreign policy is part of this message. America’s policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply

a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular

commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.

Now it doesn’t mean that the United States choices have been

wrong. It means those choices must be integrated with America’s

message of opportunity to the Arab and Muslim world. Neither

Israel, or hopefully a new Iraq, will be safer if worldwide Islamic

terrorism grows any stronger.

So the United States has to do a lot more to communicate its

message. Reflecting on bin Laden’s success in reaching Muslim audiences, as the chairman mentioned this, Richard Holbrooke wondered how can a man in a cave out-communicate the world’s leading communications society? Deputy Secretary of State Richard

Armitage worried to us that Americans have been exporting our

fears and our anger, not our vision of opportunity and hope.

Just as we did in the cold war, we need to defend our ideals

abroad and we need to defend them vigorously. America does stand

for values. And at our best, we always have stood up for those values. If the United States does not act aggressively to define itself

in the Islamic world, the extremists are going to define us instead.

Recognizing that Arab and Muslim audiences rely on satellite television and radio, the government has begun some promising initiatives in television and radio broadcasting to the Arab world, Iran

and Afghanistan. These efforts are just now beginning to reach

some large audiences. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has

asked for larger resources. They ought to get them.

The United States should rebuild the scholarship, exchange and

library programs that reach out to young people and offers them

knowledge and hope and where such assistance, by the way, is provided, it should be identified as coming from the citizens of this

United States.

At this point, I’ll turn to my colleague and one of the most productive and intelligent and hardworking members of the Commission, Jamie Gorelick.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

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Ms. Gorelick, you have the floor.

Ms. GORELICK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I think that your mic may not be on.

Ms. GORELICK. There we go. As I said, thank you to both chairmen. Let me reiterate just a few points and then address the rest

of our agenda. As Chairman Kean said, we are losing the war of

ideas. We clearly need to kill or capture those who are most hardened against us, but the challenge for us here and the subject that

we are addressing today is how to separate out the vast majority

of Muslims who are currently providing support and affirmation to

those who are the hardened extremists. That is the challenge and

we have concentrated on the first category at the expense of the

second.

The message I hope you take away and that we hope you take

away from our report is that if we do not address the second challenge, the threat that we face, will pale in comparison to the one

that we face today because we will have created and sustained tremendous hostility against us across the Muslim world.

We have lost the high regard of most of the world, and that is

a stunning conclusion of our report and we have to regain it.

Our national security depends on this as much as it does on the

might of our military and on the capability of our intelligence community. The problem is that we, as Secretary Armitage said, we

are exporting our fears and our anger. We are not seen through

any lens but the lens of our military and the lens of corporate

America—we are more multifaceted than that. We have fought to

protect the lives of Muslims. We have helped in innumerable ways

in the Muslim world and that message has not gotten through.

We have receded in so many ways from the work that we did in

the 1990’s and before.

So what can we do? First of all, to Congressman Kucinich’s point,

we have to do the right thing. We have to be moral. We have to

be generous. We have to be right-thinking. We have to abide by the

rule of law. We have to communicate the very best values of our

country that have been such a source of strength for us in our foreign policy before this. It is astounding and striking how the support for us has hemorrhaged in the last few years. The world was

behind us after September 11. Even the Muslim world sustained

support for us invading Afghanistan, and that support has hemorrhaged. This has real consequences for our national security.

We need to do the right thing.

Second, as Chairman Kean said, we have to offer an alternative

vision of hope and opportunity. I’m going to address the specifics

of that in a moment. Third, we have to communicate or we will be

defined by others and we have unilaterally disarmed in our communication. We have receded from the world. We have slashed the

budgets of libraries. We have cut our speaker’s bureaus. We have

canceled book subscriptions. We have cut our staff at the very time

when we need to be building up our presence and our outreach to

the Muslim world.

The United States and its friends have to stress educational and

economic opportunity. The United Nations, we say, has rightly

equated literacy as freedom. The international community is movVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:33 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98211.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing toward a concrete goal to cut the Middle East region’s illiteracy

rate in half by 2010 and it targeting particularly women and girls,

and it is supporting programs in adult literacy. Help is needed to

support even the basics like textbooks to translate more of the

world’s knowledge into local languages and libraries to house such

materials.

Education about the outside world and other culture is extremely

weak. For example, there is very little emphasis in Arab education

systems about American history, European history or Chinese history. There needs to be a broader understanding of cultures outside

the world of Islam. We should add, of course, that Americans too

need to better understand the world of Islam. Our own education

system in this respect will need improvement.

More vocational education is needed in trades and business

skills. The young people of the Muslim world need to have a vision

of opportunity. Right now, most young Muslims are in the hands

of madrassas, many of which teach hate and don’t communicate or

teach usable skills. You can hardly fault a parent for sending a

child to one of those schools when there is absolutely no alternative

and we have not helped to create those alternatives.

We need education that teaches tolerance, the dignity and value

of individuals, respect for different beliefs across the board.

We recommend specifically that the U.S. Government offer to

join with other Nations in funding what we call an International

Youth Opportunity Fund, where funds would be spent directly for

building and operating primary and secondary schools in those

Muslim States that show their own commitment to be sensibly investing in public education.

A second agenda is opportunity and jobs. Economic openness is

essential. Terrorism is not caused by poverty. Indeed, many terrorists come from fairly well-to-do families. Yet, when people lose

hope, when societies break down, when communities fragment,

those are the breeding grounds for terrorism. Backward economic

policies and repressive political regimes slip into societies that are

without hope where ambition and passions have no constructive

outlet.

The policies that support economic development and reform have

political implications. Economic and political liberties, after all,

tend to be linked. Commerce, especially international commerce,

requires ongoing cooperation and compromise, the exchange of

ideas across cultures and peaceful resolution of differences through

negotiation and the rule of law.

Economic growth expands the middle class which can be a constituency for further reform. Successful economies rely on vibrant

private sectors, which have an interest in curbing indiscriminate

government power. The bottom line is those who control their own

economic destiny soon desire a voice in their communities and in

their political societies.

We have very specific recommendations about free trade, which

you will see reflected in our written statement, but we believe that

a comprehensive U.S. strategy to counter-terrorism has to include

economic policies that encourage development, more open societies

and opportunities for people to improve the lives of their families

and enhance prospects for their children’s future.

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Mr. Chairman, let me sum up for both of us and for the 10 members of our Commission by coming back to the question that you

put to us about the successes achieved by and the challenges facing

U.S. public diplomacy efforts.

The issues surrounding public diplomacy have been with us since

September 12, 2001. It has not gone without notice in the policy

community, among commentators, among pollsters, among individuals familiar with the Muslim world itself that public diplomacy is

critical, and yet our assessment of where we are in this regard is

not a good one.

Public diplomacy is hard. It faces enormous challenges and has

had few successes in recent years, but we are convinced that we

cannot win this war on Islamist terrorism unless we win the war

of ideas. We need to win the hearts and minds of a great swath

of the globe, from Morocco to Malaysia. We need to understand

public diplomacy in the proper sense of the word. It’s not just how

you deliver the message. It is the message itself. It is the message

of our values which have been such a strength for this country over

centuries.

We have to communicate that America is on the side of the Muslim world, that we stand for political participation, personal freedom, the rule of law, and that we stand for education and economic

opportunity.

Of course, we cannot take on the responsibility for transforming

the Arab and Muslim world. It’s up to courageous Muslims to

change their own societies, but they need to know that we are on

their side. They need to know that we are there to help. They need

to know that we offer a competing vision. They need to know about

us and what we have in common with them.

And with that we would be pleased to respond to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kean and Ms. Gorelick follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much. Before turning it over to Mr.

Turner to ask the first set of questions, I thought I would basically

see your three points in a statement, so I got a little lazy and didn’t

write down the specifics. The last one was communication. The first

two?

Ms. GORELICK. The first two were ‘‘do the right thing,’’ that is,

be what we know we can be.

Mr. SHAYS. And the second was?

Ms. GORELICK. The second was ‘‘offer an alternative vision, and

that is about education and hope.’’

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. The vice chairman has 10 minutes, Mr.

Turner.

Mr. TURNER. I want to thank both the Commissioners for all of

our work and delivering a wonderful bipartisan report that gives

us a road map of some great recommendations and raises some

very important issues that we have to address as a country, and

I appreciated the Commission’s availability as the Congress has

sought to have hearings throughout August to be able to learn

more about the recommendations so that action can be taken.

Many times, when people talk about the war on terrorism they

talk about the cold war, and one benefit that we had in the cold

war is that communism never declared itself a religion. Communism claimed to be for the same things we were for.

In the war of ideas they claimed that their people had freedom,

that they were leading them to prosperity, that they were, in fact,

enjoying equality, and the failure of communism was in the reality

that they were not delivering as an ideology those things they were

claiming they were providing their people. Our system, though,

surpassed it.

In this instance, we have a much difference situation in that we

must not have battles of ideology and ideas. We have a group that

has taken a religion and a religious aspect in its promotion of its

ideas.

I’m very leery of the discussions of polls of the United States—

of how the United States is perceived because I would venture in

my understanding is if you looked at the polls of not just September 12th, but September 11th that the United States would have

had a great deal of more support in the Middle East and among

Muslims be viewed more favorably on September 11th than we are

now, and yet September 11th on the day that it occurred, our positive perception was probably better than it is now and yet it occurred. We were attacked by 19 young men who killed 3,000 Americans. So the goal has to go beyond just the issue of polls and how

we’re perceived because when we’re perceived positively, we can

still be subject to attack.

Governor Kean, you said how can a man in a cave

outcommunicate us, and that was a great quote that you repeated,

and our task though is difficult in that we’re trying to change ideas

instead of just trying to communicate ideas that are in line with

beliefs that may be held.

In my opening statement I referenced that in the 9/11 Commission Report, you identify the culture of celebrating death of innocents and of suicide bombers, the emergence of global terrorism

and how that feeds together.

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Our task is much greater than just defining who we are in doing

the right thing and declaring that we do the right thing. You note

in your report that the United States has liberated Kuwait, fed

Somalies, protected Kosovo, Muslims in Bosnia, and yet we are perceived as being antiMuslim, but at the same time, even if it’s not

an issue of hate, we have this issue in the Middle East that we’re

up against of the glorification and celebration of death.

And Ms. Gorelick, you talked about the issue of and we can’t do

this alone.

So my question goes to who are going to be our partners, even

if we’re communicating who we are and we’re actively using diplomacy so that the opinion polls show us more positively. The support for the emergence of global terrorism and Islamic extremism

comes from the cultural issue of this glorification of death of killing

of innocents and killing through suicides which, in our culture, is

outrageous, considered unthinkable. Where do you see that we can

get our help?

Mr. KEAN. Well, the first place, you know, it’s such a perversion

of the Muslim religion. To hurt innocents in Muslim, in the Koran

is a great sin. These are people who have taken part of a great religion, perverted it to their own purposes and are trying to use it in

that way, and it only finds fertile ground where there are areas of

total despair and hate and all of that. It’s a very small group of

people.

I guess what we’re saying today is that as long as, one, we don’t

want it to get any longer, and two, we don’t want these people who

currently sympathize with them to go any further. In fact, we’d like

them to understand what a perversion this is.

People don’t know that we’ve helped Muslims around the world

in that part of the world. We haven’t told them and nobody else

is going to tell them. We haven’t told our story.

You reference quite correctly the cold war. Well, in the cold war

you know how much this country spent on information agencies

and cultural exchanges and education opportunities and? I mean

we were very, very concerned how people thought of us because we

recognized in that battle it was a battle for ideas and so when

Communism got ready to fall, the people in Eastern Europe wanted

to emulate the United States because they thought so much more

of our values and ideals which we had communicated to them this

one way or another than they did of the ideals of the former Soviet

Union.

I think we have to go back to some of those communication techniques, recognizing the fact that libraries are important, that

schools are important, that cultural exchanges are important, that

we have to have one consistent message of who we are. Spending

money in communications doesn’t do much good unless you have a

consistent message. I don’t think we’ve developed that yet of who

we are. But I think your point is well taken and I think we can,

but we can move ahead and I think we can communicate. We’ve

done that in the past. We have.

If there’s any revolutionary force in this world, it is and always

has been democracy. If we communicate that and show these people that democracy can give their children the kind of lives that

35

they can’t even dream about now in the society they live in, I think

that’s what we’re about.

Ms. GORELICK. Concretely, I would answer your question this

way. You might think about reversing some of the changes we

made in the 1990’s where we literally shut down our support for

libraries. We actually threw people out of very, very popular outlets

that reflected on Western society. We cut back exchange programs.

We cut back scholarship programs. We had a very substantial

cadre of public information officers that we cut back.

We shut down the U.S. Information Agency. My suggestion to

you would be to look at the tools that we used so successfully in

the cold war to communicate albeit a different message, to see how

we might use those tools in this context.

Second would be education. We have ceded the one vehicle that

can affect the hearts and minds of young people to those who are

filled with hate. The school systems are spewing out hate and hatefilled information so that by the time a young person graduates

from these schools, he has no skills, no hope and believes that everyone who is defined as the enemy by someone else—and that

would include everyone in this room and everyone in this country

just about—has no right to live.

We recognize that this is a daunting task and the fact that it is

mixed up in religion does not make it different or easier.

On the other hand, we aren’t doing the most fundamental things

to address the problem. This is why we recommend challenging

Muslim countries to invest in public education and helping them.

You ask who our partners would be in this. If we create essentially a challenge fund for education, that could be an enormous

help in showing a vision of hope and opportunity.

Mr. SHAYS. At this time, the Chair would recognize Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Governor Kean

and Ms. Gorelick, thank you for your testimony. I found your statement, your written statement, very compelling and, there’s a lot of

questions that I have as a result of reading it and so I’ll begin.

The 9/11 Commission Report states that, ‘‘one of the lessons of

the cold war was that the short term gains in cooperating with the

most repressive and brutal governments were too often outweighed

by long-term setbacks for America’s stature and interests, on page

376. The report will note on page 376, American foreign policy was

part of the message. America’s policy choices have consequences.’’

In light of that, to the Governor and to Ms. Gorelick, it doesn’t

make sense to focus on public diplomacy before reevaluating American foreign policy.

Mr. KEAN. Well, I think what we’ve suggested is we have to start

elevating American foreign policy in these areas and promoting

things we all believe in as a country. I honestly believe that democracy is the most revolutionary concept. As long as we promote it,

as we understand it, and have always practiced it in this country,

and when we don’t try to moderate governments that are seen by

their own people as antidemocratic and oppressive, it doesn’t mean

we’re going to go attack somebody as a friend of ours in a number

of days who is helping us militarily or whatever, but we can use

our influence in those governments quite openly to try and moderate them.

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We’ve got to do that, for instance, in Saudi Arabia. It just can’t

be about oil anymore. It’s got to be about something very different.

It’s got to be about how to change that society and bring a lot of

the people in, all those thousands and hundreds of thousands of

young people who are under 18 and are roaming the streets without an education. We’ve got to do something about that, and we’ve

got to encourage the government of Saudi Arabia to do something

about that. I think we can as a government—not do it overnight,

but start moving people in hopefully the right direction. Some of

these leaders I hope will see that it’s not only in our State’s interest, but very much in their interest if they’re going to eventually

survive as a family or as a government.

Mr. KUCINICH. So there is, of course, different ways to communicate that message. One is force. Another one is diplomacy. Some

people mistake force for diplomacy. Do you have anything to say

about that?

Mr. KEAN. Well, my own view is force is not diplomacy, and we

are seen now as—when we gave the statistics and said that people

in other countries, namely countries dominated by Muslim populations, a large percentage of the population feels the United States

is going to attack their country.

Mr. KUCINICH. I thought that was a telling part of your testimony. As a matter of fact, I underlined it. Why do you suppose

there are so many nations around the world where people are fearful the United States is going to attack them? What’s that about?

Mr. KEAN. Well, it strikes me that we have not communicated

our values or our message or our purposes very clearly to those

people, and that’s what I hope one of the things we’re talking about

today.

Ms. GORELICK. We begin our recommendations, as you know,

with a chapter called ‘‘What To Do: A Global Strategy,’’ and, while

much of the focus of public reaction has been on how to do it, which

is the next chapter—and that has to do with how we organize ourselves in the United States—we thought it was very important to

begin with a look at our foreign policy in key countries around the

world, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for an example.

We also note that the places where terrorism will flourish are the

failed states of the world. And, therefore, a major emphasis of our

foreign policy has to be the prevention of failed states.

Mr. KUCINICH. Back to Governor Kean, one of the things that

I’ve been concerned about is that the reason why we may now have

so many countries that fear us is because the message that was received in many of those countries is that the United States did not

have a proper justification for attacking Iraq. I’m not asking you

to make an evaluation of that, but I know that’s, you know, beyond

the scope of the committee’s work, but I just wanted to share with

you that one of the difficulties that this country will have is that

if you go back to September 11 with so many people in America believing then and believing now that Iraq had something to do with

September 11, that perception then fed into support for military action against Iraq. Those perceptions remain today and also in other

countries, they perceive it differently.

It’s my thinking that if we do not really have a kind of a clear

understanding in this country of what the very basis of our policy

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is, how in the world are we going to be able to construct a foreign

policy which has some kind of symmetry? It’s actually called coherence.

So I just offer that for your consideration. I mean, I think that

what the Commission has done is to lay out some of the challenges

which this country faces, but all too often in our national experience we look at image problems as being public relations problems

and not having deeper-rooted policy derivatives. And so a book by

Boorstin called ‘‘The Image’’ speaks directly to that. We think that

somehow if we can change the way things appear, that we have addressed the underlying realities, and I think that we’re still in that,

in terms of our national experience with respect to how September

11 is interpreted by a large segment of the American public.

And it’s very difficult, Mr. Chairman, to do what the members

of this Commission have done, because what you’ve done is to bring

together people who have differences of opinion, different partisan

backgrounds. You’ve been able to meld kind of a statement of

where we need to go, and I think that you’re addressing the issue

of public diplomacy and calling for an inspection of it, of essentially

the historical roots of what we’re talking about. It sets us on the

path toward resolution, and it’s really terrific that you’ve been able

to do what.

Now, I’ll just try to ask one more question, if I have a moment

here, and that is that U.S. Muslim groups have argued they should

have had more input into the Commission’s final report. Were Arab

American groups consulted during the Commission’s investigation?

And do you think that U.S. Muslim organizations should be involved in U.S. public diplomacy in the Middle East?

Mr. KEAN. I think unless we make use of the diversity of this

country, we lose one of our greatest weapons, and Arab Americans

obviously, as Muslim Americans even more, are now very, very important part of the fabric of this country. We should use them in

every way possible.

Ms. GORELICK. I would second that and just say for the record

that we consulted very widely. I’m sure that time constraints did

not permit us to consult with every possible group, but many Muslim American groups were on our list of consultants. I would second what Tom Kean has said, which is one of our great strengths

is our diversity. That is, we are uniquely—among all the countries

in the world—because of our immigrant background, able to reach

out people of different types, ethnicities, races, much more effectively, or we should be. We need to counsel with those who can

help us in framing our message, because the substance of our message should be a good one. Yet, we have failed to communicate to

the rest of the world our highest values.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Platts.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, my appreciation

for your work and your participation here today with our Commission members.

We certainly have a lot of work to do, and as you reflect the good

work of our Nation over many years, not just in liberating 50 million Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan but Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia,

38

that message isn’t being understood or fully appreciated in the

Muslim community, and somehow to get the message that I personally receive when I visit Iraq, with about seven other members, we

were up in Kirkuk and meeting with the city mayor and counsel,

and in the opening statement, the mayor of Kirkuk, his opening

statement to us to bring back to our constituents was please go

home and thank the mothers and fathers of America who are willing to send their children, our soldiers, to Iraq to liberate his people.

Mayor Mustafo understood that we were willing to put the lives

of our courageous men and women on the line to protect ourselves

and to liberate him and his people. Clearly, that’s not a message,

though, that’s understood and appreciated.

One of your recommendations is about us doing good work, like

the library and scholarship programs, exchanges. We continue to

fund, maybe not in those direct programs, the level—we fund a lot

of money through the United Nations, and do you think it’s something we need to evaluate, because in making your recommendation that we should do these things and then say where such assistance is provided, it should be identified as coming from the citizens of the United States, that we give a lot of money for school

books for Palestinians, but it’s not necessarily seen as from America.

Maybe it’s through, you know, the U.N. and UNESCO, whether

it be education, health care, food. Do you think we need to reevaluate how we fund programs through the United Nations, which then

is seen as the help versus directly, you know, engaging in these nations so it’s clearly an American initiative and not a U.N. initiative?

Mr. KEAN. Well, as we have seen among our enemies, the U.N.

is viewed almost as badly as we are, and they blow up the headquarters and they would like to destroy the U.N. and the community of nations as well. I’m sure it’s important we keep on working

through the United Nations, but we also have a number of programs in our government that don’t have anything to do with the

United Nations, and very often, whether it’s charities or whatever,

we give a lot of aid, and American people are extraordinarily generous, and we don’t identify as such. People don’t know that’s where

the aid came from. We find that out. I mean, people don’t know

that the food they got and the emergency and the help or the medical care, whatever, comes from the United States of America, and

we’re saying, you know, fine, we’d like to expand that kind of help,

but people ought to know where it comes from. People ought to

know this is because of the generosity of the people in this democracy and that we have an outreach around the world for people

who are in need and always have had. And we just should not, at

this point in our history, hide our light under a bushel.

Ms. GORELICK. If I could add two comments to that. If you look

at our recommendations with regard to Afghanistan, we make a

couple of observations that might be of help in addressing the question that you just asked. First of all, we note that the State Department presence in Afghanistan is woefully understaffed and that we

don’t really fully utilize all the resources of our government but

mainly rely on our military resources there.

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Second, we heard when we visited CENTCOM from the war

fighters that in both Iraq and Afghanistan what they find most effective is their ability to deliver assistance. They were proudest of

and thought they’d made the most progress with clinics that they’d

opened. We heard again and again that money for assistance is rigidly allocated on the ground. Somebody who is on the ground, in

a community—with the face of an American—can only give money

for a certain purpose and not for another. Individual initiatives are

blocked almost entirely.

I think if you are interested in trying to address this question,

I would dive down to the ground. I would ask the war fighters who

are on the ground in communities in Iraq and Afghanistan how do

you bridge the gap? How do you relate to the mayor of Kirkuk?

What can you do for that community? What are the resources at

your disposal? How much flexibility do you have to present a good

face of America, to be of real concrete help?

I think that we are too hide-bound and too inflexible and we are

not using all the tools that we have when we have wonderful

Americans on the ground in communities that are war-torn and

that need our help. I think we have those tools and we’re just not

using them.

Mr. PLATTS. I concur with your observation that direct assistance—and heard that as well—in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Iraq

where our soldiers were able to use some of the confiscated funds

to then go back and have the flexibility unit by unit to give $1,000

to help improve a drainage ditch, whatever it may be, that direct

impact, and that kind of relates to one of the challenges for us here

in Congress in achieving this effort of better public diplomacy. It’s

something that the military, the war fighters told us when we

voted on the supplemental last fall and about $181⁄2 billion of

that—I think $87 billion or so, if I remember my numbers, was humanitarian assistance, nonmilitary-related, and that was some of

the really most criticized part of us for political reasons.

And we’re helping to, you know, rebuild fire companies or

firehouses in Iraq, but we’re not doing it for our own. Yet, your recommendation is then what the war fighters are telling us, that humanitarian assistance that would make a difference in the everyday lives of those Iraqis or Afghanis, that is as important to winning the war on terror as the military effort.

And so if I take that message that internally Congress needs to

stop politicizing public diplomacy efforts versus military and diplomatic efforts, but it’s also a part of the same effort and truly approaching it in a more statesman approach and putting the partisan politics aside and just doing the right thing.

A followup question—I think we’re still OK on time—is in doing

the right thing, a challenging—one of your recommendations is

leading by example and being the moral nation that we are and not

including in our relations around the world—including with some

of our allies, and I specifically am interested in your comments regarding Saudi Arabia and how—are there—is the Commission—is

there specific things that we should do differently with Saudi Arabia given their internal challenges and how they treat their own

citizens that we should consider as someone who is an ally of that

nation?

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Mr. KEAN. Well, we do make a number of recommendations specifically about Saudi Arabia in our report, and the basic bottom line

is it just can’t be about oil anymore. I mean, oil is a very important

part of it. It’s got to be, because the need of the industrialized

world for oil is still so great, but that can’t be all it’s about, because

if anything—we identified countries, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, that if any of those three areas went their own way,

that would become a terrible breeding ground for terrorists.

So what we suggest is helping the leaders of Saudi Arabia to

move in the direction that many members of the Royal Family

would now like to move anyway and giving them a little push and

helping them to move in a direction which is in their best interest

and which will give their citizens greater freedom, will move

women in an area toward being a greater part of the overall economy and the overall country and to help them move in those directions with our rhetoric, with our policy, with our people on the

ground. If we do that, we believe we have a much better chance

of having a stable Saudi Arabia to work with in the future, and if

we don’t, we fear the consequences.

Ms. GORELICK. I would only add this: We call Saudi Arabia a

problematic ally, and the problems, we say, are on both sides. We

have a great deal of mutual mistrust right now between these two

countries and our peoples, and that has to be dealt with in a very

straightforward way.

First, as Chairman Kean said, it can’t be about oil. It has to be

about a mutually adopted and shared set of goals, economic opportunity, a commitment to political and economic reform. We tried to

do our part by clearing the air of some of the rubbish that was out

there about what the Saudi Government had and had not done,

what the Saudi Royal Family had and had not done. But the fact

of the matter is that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.

The fact of the matter is that a great deal of the charitable

money or money that has flowed to bin Laden comes from Saudi

sources. The fact of the matter is that the support of the madrassas

and other school systems around the world that are harmful, a lot

of it comes from Saudi Arabia.

Since the attacks on their soil, as Chairman Kean said, they

have gotten religion, if you will, and we are much more closely

aligned, but we need to do what we can to create incentives for the

leadership of Saudi Arabia to stay on a path toward greater democracy and toward reform. Otherwise, we will have a huge failed

state in Saudi Arabia, and the dangers there could be enormous.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for

your testimony.

As a former teacher, I was most interested in your focus on education, and I truly believe we can win any military war, but as long

as madrassahs are teaching hatred and raising well-educated

young people who are willing to be suicide bombers, we will never

be safe.

I’m most interested in how you foresee or how you predict or how

do you suggest that we create alternative educational systems in

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tries. Do you see this as a—you said, an international effort? But

as you mentioned, the coalition of the willing, whether it’s the

United Nations or the commitment to Afghanistan, it becomes primarily an American focus. How do we stop Saudi Arabia from fund

these madrassahs? How much money do we now spend in our foreign aid for education? Do you think we should shift our entire foreign aid package toward education and providing young people

with an education? You really cannot fault a Muslim mother for

sending her child to a madrassah if that’s the only form of educational system that is there for her to approach.

Also Governor Kean and Ms. Gorelick, you focused a great deal

in your original report, 9/11 Commission Report, on coordinated responses. How do you see the educational coordinated response from

the United States? Should it be under the State Department, under

the education department? Where would this be? How would we

implement what we obviously need to do? Thank you.

Mr. KEAN. Well, first of all, as another former teacher, I think

we come from the same place. You can’t do it alone. There’s no

question about it, and these countries have to see it in their own

interest to do it. I mean, part of our job is to convince them of that.

By the way, not all madrassas teach hate. It would be a mistake

to say that. But some of them still do, and those are the ones of

course who are most at fault, but even the madrassas who don’t

teach hate don’t teach much else. People don’t get the kind of skills

that they need to have to earn a living at these schools.

Therefore, we’ve got to make these countries understand that to

have a trained work force of intelligent young people is the best

thing they can do to give their whole society a better life, and certainly to give their young people usable skills for the modern world.

That’s in their interest, even more than it’s in our interest. It’s the

right argument, so it should be an argument that we can make

with conviction. That’s the only way I think we’re going to move

on this one is to really convince these countries—we can help. I

hope we’ve got moneys out there that we can use to help them, but

they’ve got to be committed to it and it’s got to be their initiative

and it’s got to come from their governments, because we can’t do

it otherwise.

Ms. GORELICK. The Saudis already spend a great deal of money

on schooling, and the pressure from us has to be for them to examine what their output is from those schools, measured in what the

skills are that the young people are learning and in the values that

they’re coming out of those skills with.

There’s been, I would say, a Faustian bargain struck, which is

that the schools have been given over as if their output had no effect on the Saudi way of life. You can’t produce unskilled people

filled with hate and not expect that to have a consequence for the

stability of your country. And we make that observation, and we

would encourage the Saudis to examine their own education system.

We’re now giving a tremendous amount of aid to Pakistan, and

we would like to see some incentives there to create an education

system that shifts direction. As you would know better than anyone, this is a generational challenge. The problems that we’ve idenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:33 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98211.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
42

tified have been in place for decades, and they’re not going to be

turned around in a minute. This is a generational challenge.

Mrs. MALONEY. You testified that you would support an international youth opportunity fund, an educational fund. Do you foresee this, for example, in Pakistan, to use one example, as working

with the government to set up a youth opportunity educational system that a parent then could decide whether they go to a

madrassah or go to the youth educational opportunity system? Do

you see literally creating an alternative to the madrassah educational system?

Mr. KEAN. Yes, we do. I mean what we’re pushing for basically

is that there should be choice of a public school. I mean, that’s

served our democracy extraordinarily well, the public school, and

what we’re suggesting is that these states have to be encouraged

to have a system of their own public schools where there would be

an alternative to the madrassas.

Mrs. MALONEY. Do you have a sense of how much of our tax dollars in foreign aid goes to education now in developing countries?

And how much of a foreign exchange program do we have for higher education for Muslims? Do we have a specific program to promote exchange between American and Muslim students?

Mr. KEAN. I’ll say as a college president, I don’t know of one.

Mrs. MALONEY. You don’t know of one.

Mr. KEAN. There may be one out there, but nothing I’m aware

of, and I think as a college president, I would be aware, certainly,

if there was anything large.

Ms. GORELICK. We do say that the changes that were made in

the 1990’s in our education programs, in our scholarship programs,

in our exchange programs to essentially withdraw from the field

have had a deleterious effect on our ability to help in this most critical area. You could double our public diplomacy budget, for example, for the cost of a B–1 bomber, and it would probably be a good

investment. I don’t know the specific answer to your question, although I’m sure it’s readily available, but our general assessment

is that we need greater emphasis on education funding.

Mrs. MALONEY. I’d like to know how you see this being coordinated. We have many different departments in our government

doing diplomacy. We have the State Department. We have USAID.

We have our U.N. commitments. We have many commitments and

many different areas, none of which is coordinated.

One of your themes is that we needed a coordinated intelligence

effort. Do you believe we need a coordinated diplomacy effort? All

of these various budget lines are independent, and they make their

decisions independently. And it’s not coordinated. Do you feel that

in the public diplomacy area we should come together under one

heading and have a discretion under one person to focus more on

the goals that you outlined, specifically education and diplomacy?

Mr. KEAN. Well, I assume—and Commissioner Gorelick knows a

lot more about it than I do—but I assume the public diplomacy

area should be coordinated under the State Department. I would

think that’s part of their job.

But as far as the education goes, not for each area of government

to know what the area is doing would be a great mistake, and that

would have to be coordinated. We didn’t make recommendations as

43

to how to coordinate it. We sort of set out what we thought the

ideals were, and we thought the administration in Congress—we’d

find out the ways to do it.

Ms. GORELICK. I think it’s an excellent question. As Chairman

Kean said, certainly we didn’t address this issue specifically in our

report, but it would be in line with the kinds of recommendations

that we made elsewhere to align responsibility and authority in one

person, to coordinate the many pots of money that operate against

the same goal. I would make sure that you add to the list the considerable funds that are spent for humanitarian aid through the

Defense Department. They are, in fact, the people on the ground

in many respects. I would look at the different sources of funding

and who controls them, and I would try to make sure that they are

working together in a coordinated fashion, and I would imagine the

administration would want to do that as well.

Mrs. MALONEY. But at it stands now, each of these departments

have control over their budgets and their decisionmaking, and they

may be duplicating or not working together. And, therefore, our

message of what America is doing and doing to help becomes——

Ms. GORELICK. We honestly did not look at the specific question

that you are raising, and I know that you have other helpful panelists here today. One of the reasons that we suggested and made as

a key recommendation a very high-level national counterterrorism

center run by someone at essentially a deputy secretary level is

that this person would bring together all the tools available across

the government in a coordinated plan. While we did not suggest,

for example, that all of the budgets relating to education be vested

in the National Counterterrorism Center, we do say that all of the

planning against the challenges of Islamist terrorism be vested in

one place.

As you may recall in our hearings, when I sat where you are, I

kept asking who our quarterback is, and we found no one with responsibility across the board for focusing all of the tools of our government against this challenge. If I were creating this position, as

you have the opportunity to do, I would say this person should also

look across the board at these kinds of aid programs to advance

education in Muslim countries as one of the key important tools.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentlelady.

Before claiming my time, I just want to introduce into the record

a statement offered by the Muslim public affairs council and read

two to two-and-a-half paragraphs. It says ‘‘Thank you, Congressman Shays, and your staff, for asking the Muslim public affairs

council to submit written testimony in response to the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations from public diplomacy in the Muslim

world. The goals of the Muslim Affairs Council comprise two equally important and parallel tasks, to promote peaceful relations within the United States and the Muslim world and to make Islam a

positive component of American pluralism. The Council views these

goals as independent.’’

Then further down they say ‘‘public diplomacy among nonmilitary goals made by the 9/11 Commission is the vehicle that will

be utilized effectively and with leadership to enhance dialog with

the United States and the Muslim world and to create a global constituency to advocate on behalf of our interests, namely by the folVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:33 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98211.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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lowing: Elimination of terrorism as an instrument of political influence in the region, movement toward Middle East peace; three, advancement of a nuclear nonproliferation for development of stable

democratic governance; and five, restoration of human rights, including rights of minorities and emancipation of women. In short,

public diplomacy means to achieve these goals and not a goal

itself.’’

I’ll just make reference to the fact that they do then question the

term Islamism in terms of the Commission’s report. So why don’t

I start my questions by taking that up. I was struck by the fact

that if I had done that, I might have been called the racist, even

though it’s a little different. Obviously it’s not about racism, but

making that reference that Islamic terrorism, did you all have a

debate on this? And in the end you say, listen, we’re not being attacked by the Norwegians, Christians? I mean, what ultimately

made you want to state that term, and what should we infer from

that?

[The information referred to follows:]

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46

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Mr. KEAN. Well, we really wanted to define the enemy. We said

at the Commission—and we debated this for long hours, talked

about it a lot. Simply the word ‘‘terrorism’’ as a war against terrorism didn’t do us a lot of sense. It’s a war against one particular variety of terrorism as practiced by a certain group of people, and

they are Islamic terrorists. So we came really to define who the

enemy is by using that term so it wouldn’t be too undefined or too

vague.

You were a part of that debate.

Ms. GORELICK. Oh, yes, I was part of that debate. Let me say a

couple of things. One, we read the national counterterrorism strategy and were astonished to find no mention of Islamist religion in

parts of the globe. It was as if the enemy were this inchoate tool

called terrorism, and we honestly don’t believe that you can address the threat in that way. You have to identify the fact that we

have an enemy. The enemy that we have identified is Islamist terrorism, Islamist extremism. It is not the Muslim religion. It is not

Islam. It is not Islamic terrorism. It is Islamists, and we take some

care in defining what that is, but it is basically a very radical

group. As Chairman Kean said, sort of hijacked element of the religion, which defines anyone that they don’t agree with as infidels

worthy of murder.

Mr. SHAYS. See, the challenge that we have, I think is—in trying

to win the hearts and minds of ‘‘the Islamic world and others,’’ I

happen to believe, for instance, and everything I’ve read about

Wahabism, that it is a fairly aggressive, almost violent, approach

and extraordinarily intolerant, and yet that defines a nation. It defines Saudi Arabia, quite frankly.

So I think what you did was extraordinarily important, but I

don’t think you made the job any easier now in terms of winning

the hearts and minds, because we’re being honest with each other,

and that honesty I think says we’d better confront it. And I would

view your use of the polls, Governor Kean, as real, but I’m not

quite sure how I’m to interpret it, because I think when you strip

open the carpet and you see the bag that’s underneath there, you

have stirred things. You have created anger and so on that has to

be dealt with. I would make the argument that we’ve got to go

through this process, and we aren’t going to be so popular right

now.

I happen to look at Churchill and think he wasn’t too popular in

the 1930’s. Nevil Chamberlain was a hero, and Nevil Chamberlain

was wrong. So were the French, obviously, and so were the Germans and so on, and I’m not so sure that having bad polls isn’t an

indication of something, frankly—and I’d have constituents who

would take issue with this—really an indication that we are finally

standing up to a reality of fundamentalism within a particular

faith that is widespread and promoted, frankly, even by governments.

I’d have you comment.

Mr. KEAN. Well, as long as you narrow these people down, because you can’t say, oh, Wahabism is Islamic terrorists. A lot of it

is not. It’s a very, very small group of people who have taken that

extra step and said that in order to promote their particular philosVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:33 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98211.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ophy, you’ve got to murder a lot of innocent civilians. That is not

even what the majority of Wahabists believe.

Now, some of the climate that’s created by those schools,

Wahabism, sets the necessary climate that this particular small

group of people can exist within.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes. I would think, frankly, that’s almost an understatement. I mean, we have Saudi Arabia in former Yugoslavia,

their contribution economically is, frankly, more mosques, teaching

their brand of the Islamic faith. That’s what they are doing. Instead of doing what we would like them to do, which is provide economic assistance and preach tolerance and so on. So it just strikes

me that we’ve got a real big task.

I salute you for bringing this up, but I believe that—three commissions told us, before you ever existed, before September 11 ever

took place, they said you have a terrorist threat out there; you need

to develop a strategy to deal with it, and you need to reorganize

your government. They only disagreed on the reorganizing government, but I will say to you they weren’t as explicit as you were to

narrow the threat in the way you did, and I think that it was important that you did that.

I would like to ask you in terms of the three categories, do the

right thing, let me just mention about do the right thing. Jimmy

Carter wanted to do the right thing, and he said, I’m just going to

work overtime to negotiate the release of, and what he said to the

Iranians, America, what a world, we can keep them for 20 years;

all we have to do, the Iranian government, is negotiate, and you

did have a President who said we’re going to treat this as what it

is, an act of war. Usually when you have even a war, you exchange

your diplomats, and here we had a government now holding American diplomats. It was an act of war. Immediately they were returned, and I’d like you to just comment. I don’t want to leave on

the table this concept that somehow force is useful, diplomacy is

the answer. It strikes me that diplomacy without the potential to

use force is useful.

Ms. GORELICK. If I’ve left the impression in any way that I think

that force is useless, I want to correct that impression right now.

We are very clear about this, that there are people bound and determined to kill us and that the only way to deal with them is to

kill or capture them and to be most aggressive about it.

What we have tried to say is that you have this hardened, committed, zealous group of people that have to be dealt with in a swift

and clear manner. You have, however, a looming danger, which is

the greater public support for this type of activity across the Muslim world. We want to drive a wedge between the committed zealot

on the one hand and the person living in the Muslim world who

is right now much more sympathetic to Osama bin Laden than he

is to George Bush, and that’s wrong.

We cannot condemn and we do not wish to condemn the entire

Islamic world. We do not do that. The fact is that we are harmed

and our national security is harmed when we have as little support

as we have in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Jordan, in Turkey, of all

places, in the countries that have been a bulwark of support for us.

We need them. We need their support for basing. We need their

support for the education reforms we were talking about. We need

51

their support for covert action. We need their support for the sharing of information. We need them, and we need them to understand us. We need them to respect us. And so this is difficult. It

is not all one or the other.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m happy that you’ve made it very clear the position

of the Commission. The sad fact is that Saddam Hussein never

thought we would remove him from Kuwait, or he never would

have gone in, and he never thought we would do a regime change,

or he would have cooperated. He never wanted to be hunted like

an animal. He never wanted his kids killed. He never wanted his

daughters in Jordan. We know that. He never thought we would

attack him. He misread us twice, which strikes me that a deterrence that people don’t think you’re going to use becomes a meaningless instrument, and as a result, we’ve had a loss of life. A tremendous loss of lives.

I’d like you to speak on one issue. I have a red light, and I’ll let

Members come back with one or more questions and then get to

our next panel, but I do want you to tell me the pluses and

minuses of your recognition that there is a way that we appeal to

people in the Third World. That’s important, I would think, schools,

speeches, I mean, forums, come to the United States, but that generally impacts the elite within society, those that basically have an

opportunity to study in this country become the elite. Let me put

it that way. Whereas, the other approaches mask communication

with the downtrodden who live there.

Tell me the pluses and minuses of each. I know that you’re suggesting we do both.

Mr. KEAN. Well, we’re doing a less effective job on both at the

moment. I mean, I’ll tell you in my present world as a college president that we’re getting less of those exchanges now than any time

in a long, long time. I mean, the future leaders of the world, we

have benefited because they have come to this country for education. For whatever reason, in the present atmosphere, they’re deciding not to come, in very large numbers, and those people from

Africa and Asia and other places are finding other places to get

their education, and I think that will hurt us over the long haul.

It’s hard to differentiate between the two. Obviously you’ve got

to appeal to the educated people, the people who will be hopefully

the future leaders of the country, and you need to do everything

you can to appeal to them. One of the best ways was getting them

to see this country themselves, and then go back and most of them

understood the benefits of our society and economy and promoted

it in their own country in various ways, but that does not come at

the exclusion, particularly these days, of trying to communicate

with larger numbers, and we have the ability to do that now.

There’s no reason that Al-Jazeera should be unchallenged, that

there should be no other means of communication that these people

hear in this part of the world, whether we fund part of that, whether we do that with the combination of others, but that shouldn’t be

challenged, the method of communication, particularly what they

put on the air is not in our interest.

So, yes, I think we’ve got to do both. I mean, you can’t just say

I think deal with the elites and you can’t just say deal with the

52

masses. We have different ways of doing both, and I think your

point is correct. We’ve got to do it.

Mr. SHAYS. Does any other Member have a closing comment? I’m

just thinking that Mayor Lindsey who was losing the election won

the election when the Mets won the World Series. I wonder the impact if the Iraqis get the gold medal.

Mr. KEAN. It would be nothing but good.

Mr. SHAYS. Is there any question we should have asked that we

didn’t, any question that you prepared for that we should have realized or any statement you want to make?

Mr. KEAN. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just thank both of you for honoring this subcommittee and all of Congress by your extensive time spent with

so many of us. It will pay off. Your work will pay off.

Mr. KEAN. We want to thank you and the Congress for coming

back during the month of August. I know how extraordinary that

is, and I think when most of us in the Commission cheered the fact

that you were willing to do that because of your understanding of

the crisis this country is facing, I don’t think members of the Commission realized that meant we were going to be here in August

too.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just ask you right now, though, your staff

members are no longer paid. Is that correct?

Mr. KEAN. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. Because what we have, one more hearing tomorrow,

and we were asking the Commission member, a staff member to

come, and we realize they’re out around the countryside, but if you

find a staff member loitering around Washington, I hope you send

them to our subcommittee tomorrow.

Mr. KEAN. We’ll do your best to get them here. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you both very much. We appreciate it a lot.

The Chair will now recognize our next panel, and thank them for

their patience. Patricia de Stacy Harrison, acting Under Secretary

of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Department of

State; Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman, Broadcasting Board of Governors. Charles ‘‘Tre’’ Evers III, Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Commissioner; and Jess T. Ford, Director of International

Affairs and Trade, Government Accountability Office. We recognize

all four. If they would remain standing, and we will swear them

in.

If you’d raise your right hands, I’d like to swear you in.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Note for the record our witnesses have responded in

the affirmative.

We’ll start with you, Madam Secretary. We appreciate your being

here today. We appreciate your service as acting secretary on two

occasions here now. We just know that a lot of work is required,

and thank you for that, and thank all the other witnesses as well.

So you have the floor.

53

STATEMENTS OF PATRICIA DE STACY HARRISON, ACTING

UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND

PUBLIC AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE; KENNETH TOMLINSON, CHAIRMAN, BROADCASTING BOARD OF GOVERNORS; CHARLES ‘‘TRE’’ EVERS III, ADVISORY COMMISSION

ON PUBLIC DIPLOMACY, COMMISSIONER; AND JESS T.

FORD, DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND TRADE,

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

Ms. HARRISON. Thank you, Chairman Shays, members of the

committee.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t think your mic is on, Madam Secretary. Is

that it?

Ms. HARRISON. Can you hear me now?

Mr. SHAYS. Yes.

Ms. HARRISON. Thank you for this opportunity.

Mr. SHAYS. Just do me a favor and I’ll start you over. Just tap

the—yes. That’s all right. Thank you.

Ms. HARRISON. Well, first, I do want to thank all of you for this

opportunity. I can’t think of anything more important that we

could be doing today. Mr. Chairman, my written statement for the

record provides a comprehensive report on public diplomacy initiatives since September 11th, and with your permission, I will just

make a few brief remarks.

Mr. SHAYS. Absolutely.

Ms. HARRISON. Thank you so much.

The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission underscore challenges to public diplomacy as we seek to engage with audiences in

the Arab and Muslim world.

The Commission calls upon us to define our message to take a

strong stand in support of a better future, to defend our ideas,

ideals and values and to offer opportunity to youth. I agree strongly with these recommendations.

Following the attack on our country, we began to execute a public diplomacy strategy that aligns with these directives, with the

understanding, as Dr. Rice said recently, there was much more

that must be done.

We have accelerated our effort to communicate with and engage

Arab and Muslim audiences advocating both values and policy, affirming what we have in common and the mutual benefit of working together for peace, prosperity and freedom.

The essence of America’s message to the world is the hope implicit in our commitment to individual freedom, the nonnegotiable

demands of human dignity and economic opportunity, and despite

the negative polls, we find that these values resonate. They are enduring, especially with the young, an important and rapidly growing demographic.

Our missions abroad are actively engaged in advocating values

and policy through a wide variety of programs, tailored to specific

cultures and taking into account the way people receive or trust information. We are working more closely than ever with USAID to

ensure recipients of our assistance recognize that this help does

come from the American people, and the new policy coordinating

committee on Muslim outreach, which I cochair with the NSC, will

further strengthen coordination with DOD and other agencies.

54

As we work within an environment of instant global communication, we are using all the tools of technology through the Internet,

television print and broadcast, video and film, and I’m very pleased

to be here today with Ken Tomlinson, the BBG under his leadership has been vigorous and creative, through Radio Sawa and

Alhurra TV, we are reaching increasingly larger audiences with the

preeminent mass media channels of radio and television.

The Department’s Bureau of International Information programs,

through its expanded Web presence, utilizes the other critical channel of mass media, the Internet, and also helps us connect at a

grass-roots level through American Corners.

The Bureau of Public Affairs has expanded its outreach to new

media outlets to connect, to inform and counter this information

within a 24–7 global news cycle and is inviting journalists to expose them to American life in all of its diversity.

Through exchange programs, we are reaching younger and more

diverse audiences, and we have refocused our programs to engage

a group I call youth influencers: university professors, classroom

teachers, clerics, ministers of education, journalists, community

leaders.

Almost 3 years ago we launched Partnerships for Learning. It’s

a collaborative effort with men and women from the region who

want to work with us on behalf of the succession generation, many

of whom lack a solid education, and they face a future of chronic

unemployment and underemployment.

Partnerships for Learning is delivering hope and opportunity

through Fulbright and other scholarships, through exchanges and

English teaching. We have just completed the first year of our

country’s first ever government-sponsored high school program

with the Middle East, more than a dozen Muslim countries, and we

did this with the support of hundreds of Muslim American host

families, and may I just interject that at a time when the polls, the

tsunami of polls is so negative, we have families in these countries

on a waiting list who desperately want to send their young people

to our country for 1 full year to interact with Americans and have

a little bit more opportunity for their own future, and in fact we

know that one of the greatest assets in public diplomacy is the

American people themselves.

Through our partnership with the private sector, which includes

a network of more than 1,500 organizations and 80,000 volunteers

who welcome and host thousands of people from other countries to

the United States, we are communicating values in the most direct

and enduring way.

Within the Department of State, we have taken steps to

strengthen coordination of public diplomacy and have sent to Congress notification of our intent to establish an office of policy planning and resources in the office of the Under Secretary for Public

Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

There are many lessons that we are still learning from September 11th, but one overarching theme remains, getting our message

out in words and images is only part of the job. We must commit

to working in partnership with the vast majority of people who

want a better future for themselves and their children.

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Commission member John Lehman is right. Soft options are as

important as the hard ones. In both peaceful times and times of

conflict, our mission is to ensure a positive, vigorous American

presence in the world, declaring our policies, demonstrating and

communicating our values, forging links of mutual understanding

and respect between peoples on a continuous and sustained basis.

This is not the work of weeks or months. It is the work of years

and generations, and the mission of soft power is a vital part, not

only of our homeland security but everyone’s homeland, everyone’s

security. Thank you very much.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Harrison follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Tomlinson.

Mr. TOMLINSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Kucinich, members of the committee. We thank you so much for this important

hearing on the 9/11 Commission recommendations on public diplomacy.

Earlier this year, with the enthusiastic support of President

Bush and Members of Congress, the Broadcasting Board of Governors launched Alhurra, ‘‘The Free One, ‘‘our new 24-hour-a-day

Arab language television network. Through direct-to-home satellite

communications and terrestrial transmission to Iraq, we are able

to broadcast directly to the people in the Middle East over five time

zones in 22 countries, from Morocco to Iraq to Yemen.

Our broadcasts will not overnight eliminate the effects of generations of intellectual isolation and neglect so vividly outlined in the

classic U.N. report of 2003, the report on knowledge dissemination

in the Arab world. In contemplating what we have to overcome to

establish real and substantive dialog with our neighbors in the

Arab word, it’s daunting to consider the fact that the aggregate of

western books translated into Arabic since the dawn of publishing

amounts to little more than 10,000 books, equivalent to what Spain

translates in a single year.

Indeed, the United Nations report concluded what we have to

overcome in the region is the absence of a strategic vision that provides a solid foundation for knowledge dissemination through education, media, publishing and translation. The knowledge base for

the people in the Arab world is further limited by the indisputable

fact that the news and information they have received from several

popular satellite television outlets like Al-Jazeera have given them

a picture of the world which is frequently distorted by institutional

prejudices and sensationalism.

Against this backdrop, consider what the people in the Arab

world have been able to watch in recent weeks on Alhurra television. For 3 consecutive days last week, Alhurra broadcast live

sessions of the Iraqi National Congress in Baghdad. Iraqis observed their representatives freely debating the future of their nation, democracy in action, in stark contrast to the repression they

had experienced before.

These broadcasts were not restricted to the people of Iraq.

Throughout the Arab world, people were able to see that freedom

and democracy can exist within a Muslim country, that universal

values can be embraced by Muslim societies.

Daily talk shows on Alhurra which present points of view across

the political spectrum, including positions unsympathetic to our

own, mean that for the first time people in the Arab world see,

hear and participate in the foundations of democracy. We present.

You decide.

Alhurra is helping to frame the debate and the focus on issues

facing this region. We will not win every argument on every political talk show, but as President Bush has said time and again, in

the long run, truth is on our side. Moreover, we believe the very

existence of free-flowing debate on Alhurra will encourage people

to demand free and open and objective presentations on indigenous

Arab outlets throughout that region.

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Consider the effects of in-depth Alhurra coverage of the genocide

in the Darfur region of the Sudan. Long before the world had come

to focus on this tragedy, Alhurra reporting teams were on the

scene, which led other Arab media outlets to follow suit and make

the events of Darfur a matter of serious concern to all people. The

ability to debunk anti-American conspiracy theories by credible

Arab thinkers alone were worth the price of U.S.-financed satellite

broadcasting. The truth is on our side.

In the midst of all this broadcasting, it is critical that accuracy

be our standard. The people of the region aren’t stupid. If we’re

slanting the news, they will figure it out, but if we establish longterm credibility on these broadcasts, people will begin asking questions: What went wrong? What slowed the development of a civilization that was once far ahead of the west? What were the factors

behind the crushing absence of economic opportunities for youth in

the Arab world? And we will be there to answer them.

Let me turn to Radio Sawa briefly. To me the most striking success of Sawa has been the widespread acceptance of Sawa news

and public affairs programming as credible.

We realize the draw to this youth-oriented station is popular

music, and when we started, people said, they’ll never listen to

your news and they’ll never take it seriously. Well, according to

surveys conducted earlier this year by A.C. Nielsen, Radio Sawa

was found to be a reliable source of news and information by 73

percent of its weekly listenership.

In an era when Arab youth systematically boycott American

products, they not only have widely accepted U.S.-sponsored entertainment radio, they have accepted its news as accurate and dependable.

I do want to pay tribute to a fellow board member, Democrat

Norman Pattiz, the father of Radio Sawa, and an irrepressible force

for international broadcasting. Thanks to his spirit and a dedicated

core of journalists led by news director Mouafac Harb, Radio Sawa

has made a truly historic breakthrough in the Middle East.

And Mr. Chairman, we deeply appreciate the favorable focus on

what we’ve been doing in the 9/11 Commission Report. The report

said: ‘‘recognizing that Arab and Muslim audiences rely on satellite

television and radio, the government has begun some promising

initiatives in television and radio broadcasting to the Arab world,

Iran, and Afghanistan. These efforts are beginning to reach large

audiences. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has asked for

much larger resources. It should get them.’’

We are currently working with the administration on potential

radio and television strategies that would give us the same type of

impact in the non-Arabic-speaking Muslim world as we’re having

in the Arabic-speaking Muslim world. We have made a good start.

In Iran, we’ve built on the popularity of VOA radio with a new

24/7 Radio Farda for the youth which combines the talents of VOA

and RFE/RL. We’ve also had, thanks in no small part to the leadership of board member Blanquita Cullum, a tremendous breakthrough with the Voice of America 30-minute daily TV show in Persian carried by satellite to Iran.

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panded Urdu radio from 3 hours a day via a shortwave to 12 hours

a day with an AM signal from the region. This 12-hour stream is

designed to attract and inform younger listeners.

But we all recognize this is not enough. Our long-term plans include new transmitters and satellite television broadcasting in

Pakistan so our programming can be heard in this critical country.

In Afghanistan, BBG entities broadcast 24/7 in Pashto and Dari,

the languages of those countries. Research shows that half the people in Afghanistan are listening to us. In Kabul, we have two-third

of adults, but as is the case elsewhere in the Islamic world, television is becoming an important medium there.

Iran television is available 24/7 in Afghanistan. We need a television presence there. In other areas of the non-Arabic-speaking

world, places like Indonesia and sub-Saharan Africa, the Horn of

Africa, we’re working to expand our radio and television presence

for obvious reasons.

In reflecting on where we want to go with public diplomacy and

international broadcasting, we have to understand why we, in so

many areas, have found ourselves lacking.

In the decade following the end of the cold war, many believed

expenditures for international broadcasting were no longer necessary. U.S. spending for international broadcasting were slashed

a very real 40 percent. I would like to provide for the record a copy

of this chart that shows what happened to us at the end of the cold

war and, very fortunately, what’s happened to us because of the

Bush administration and Congress in the last 3 years.

Despite the generous support we’ve received in the past 3 years,

however, we are fighting to rebuild from a depleted base. We’re

struggling to catch up to what we should be doing in these strategic parts of the world.

And we at the BBG have benefited by the creation inside the

White House of the Office of Global Communications, as well as an

understanding inside the National Security Council of the importance of our broadcast initiatives. There would be no Alhurra Television today had it not been for enthusiastic support from this office and from the NSC for BBG initiatives. Support is critical for

our mission, and I cannot stress how much.

Mr. SHAYS. If you can wind up.

Mr. TOMLINSON. I stress the importance of credibility of what we

broadcast, and we look forward to answering your questions.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much for your nice statement as

well.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Tomlinson follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Evers.

Mr. EVERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member

Kucinich, Mr. Turner and Mr. Platts. I want to thank you on behalf

of our chairman, Barbara Barrett, and the five other members of

the bipartisan U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy for

this opportunity to share my thoughts on the successes achieved by

and the challenges facing U.S. public diplomacy.

The members of our commission are currently preparing the final

version of our annual report for its release on September 28th. The

report reviews areas of public diplomacy previously identified as

challenges, recent progresses and areas that still need to be addressed.

Today I hope to present some of these challenges and advances

to you and to address the recommendations presented in the 9/11

Commission Report.

Specifically, I’ll focus on five areas.

The first is broadcasting, and Mr. Tomlinson here gave a very

good rundown of what they’re doing. The 9/11 Commission Report

recommends that they get more resources. Radio Sawa was

launched in March 2002 and is already achieving large listening

audiences. In addition, Alhurra is doing the same and it’s a great

advancement in the satellite network arena that we were previously not competing in.

We also believe that broadcasting English language programs establishes a mutually beneficial relationship with audiences that

few other public diplomacy programs can match. Learning American English through programs like VOA Special English builds

physological bonds and deeper cultural understanding while giving

listeners tools they need to succeed in the world.

Yet these programs, despite being popular and efficient, are restricted by budget constraints. We would echo the 9/11 Commission

Report that they receive more funding.

The 9/11 Commission Report remarked on the sad state of our

exchange and library programs. American exchange and library

programs, though they may not show results for years, are essential to fostering support of the United States among opinion leaders.

Physical public diplomacy outposts staffed and owned by the

United States present prime targets for terrorists throughout the

globe. The Pallazzo Corpi, a former American consulate and library

in Istanbul, Turkey, located in the city center, was targeted at least

six times by terrorists until it was closed last year.

Newer programs, like American Corners, Virtual Presence Posts,

Information Resource Centers and others, provide similar functions

while addressing security concerns.

Over the past year, the Department of State has significantly

ramped up its investment in American Corners and Virtual Presence Posts. There are now 143 American Corners in Africa, south

Asia, east Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East and plans to

open another 130 in 2004.

The e-Diplomacy Office administers the Virtual Presence Posts

while the Bureau of International Information Programs administers American Corners. American Presence Posts are designated

by individual missions and must receive approval from Congress.

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We believe these programs should be assembled under one cohesive

and comprehensive task force, and cumbersome procedures such as

congressional approval should be streamlined.

As it comes to the message and how we coordinate America’s

message, we believe that in this global 24-hour communications environment, messages from the U.S. Government to the world are

not all communicated by the State Department. We have messages

from the White House, DOD, the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and

Congress. Without coordination of these communications, the U.S.

Government misses the magnifying effect that a unified message

could have on overseas publics or, worse, shows inconsistencies

that cause credibility.

No comprehensive inventory across agencies of all government

public diplomacy programs and activities has ever been conducted.

The sum of the public diplomacy budgets of these various agencies

is probably in the billions of dollars. Such an evaluation might

show where efforts should be expanded, combined or eliminated,

particularly useful in an environment of scarce resources.

There are several initiatives that have attempted to better coordinate public diplomacy efforts recently. The International Public

Information Core team, better known as Fusion Team, provides information-sharing capabilities for the varied government agencies

involved in public diplomacy through a list serve and weekly meetings. Another coordinating body, the Office of Global Communications, or OGC, was established in January 2003 within the White

House to coordinate strategic daily messages for distribution

abroad with the long-term goal of developing a national communications strategy. The OGC works with several hundred foreign

journalists in Washington, providing them with access to the White

House events and briefings, as well as interviews with the President and other top officials.

The Public Diplomacy Policy Coordination Committee [PCC], was

established in September 2002 and is cochaired by the National Security Council and State Department. It ensures that all agencies

work together to develop and disseminate America’s messages

across the globe. These two groups work together on strategic communications activities such as outreach to the Muslim world.

The creation of these mechanisms is not enough. They must also

be fully utilized and developed through an interagency strategic

communication plan that clearly identifies messages, priorities, and

target audiences.

We also agree with an important recommendation of the Commission that we test these programs,all programs. We believe that

focus groups and public opinion research needs to be involved at

the beginning and at the end of exchange programs and in how we

deliver our message.

In conclusion, as numerous reports including the 9/11 report

have attested, public diplomacy needs to be a national security priority. International public opinion is influential in the success of

public policy objectives, and adequate resource allocation for public

diplomacy will determine success in the areas I have mentioned

today.

The commission is pleased to see this concept being recognized

and looks forward to working with the administration and ConVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:33 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00080 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98211.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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gress toward achieving a better American dialog with the world.

Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Evers.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Evers follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Ford.

Mr. FORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee. I’m pleased to be here today to discuss GAO’s recent

work on U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting with

a specific focus on the Middle East and the recommendations of the

9/11 Commission.

The terrorist attacks of September 11 were a dramatic reminder

of the importance of cultivating a favorable public opinion of the

United States abroad. Recent opinion research indicates that foreign publics, especially in countries with large Muslim populations,

view the United States unfavorably.

Today my testimony will highlight our findings that are relevant

to the specific 9/11 Commission recommendations to increase the

support for broadcasting to Arabs and Muslims and to rebuild our

scholarship, exchange, and library programs overseas and to better

define U.S. public diplomacy message.

Since September 11, 2001, both the State Department and the

Broadcasting Board of Governors, have expanded their public diplomacy efforts in Muslim-majority countries considered to be of strategic importance in the war on terrorism. In the two fiscal years

since the terrorist attacks, the State Department has increased its

public diplomacy funding and staffing and expanded its programs

in two regions with significant Muslim populations,south Asia and

the Near East.

Among other efforts, the State Department is emphasizing exchange programs targeting young and diverse audiences, including

high school students. State is also expanding its American Corners

program which provides information about the United States to foreign audiences through partnerships between U.S. Embassies and

local institutions. These efforts are consistent with the 9/11 Commission Report recommendation that the United States build this

scholarship, exchange and library programs for young people.

In addition, since September 11, the Broadcasting Board of Governors has initiated several new programs focusing on attracting

large audiences in priority markets, including Radio Sawa in the

Middle East, the Afghanistan Radio Network, Radio Farda in Iran,

and recently the Arab language satellite network called Alhurra.

The 9/11 Commission Report endorses the Board’s request for additional resources to expand its broadcast efforts targeted to Arabs

and Muslims. However, although board research indicates that

these initiatives have garnered sizable audiences, it’s unclear

whether the program content is changing audience attitudes or increasing knowledge and awareness of issues of strategic interest to

the United States.

In September 2003, we reported that the U.S. Government

lacked an interagency public diplomacy strategy that defines the

message and means for governmentwide communication efforts targeted at overseas audiences. The 9/11 Commission Report recommended that the United States do a better job of defining its

public diplomacy message. Because of their differing roles and missions, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the U.S.

Agency for International Development, and others often focus on

different audiences and use varying means to communicate with

them.

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An interagency strategy would provide a framework for considering the foreign publics in key countries and regions relevant to U.S.

national security interests. The U.S. Government communication

channel is available in the optimal ways to convey communication

themes and messages.

We also reported that the State Department does not have a

strategy to integrate its diverse public diplomacy activities and directs them toward common objectives, and that neither the State

nor the BBG had focused on measuring progress toward long-term

goals.

The absence of an integrated strategy may hinder State’s ability

to channel its multifaceted programs toward concrete, measurable

progress. We made several recommendations addressing planning

and performance issues that the Secretary of State and the Board

of Broadcasting Governors had agreed to implement. We recommended that the State Department develop a strategy that considers the use of public sector/private relations techniques to integrate its public diplomacy efforts, improve performance measurements, and strengthen efforts to train Foreign Service officers in

foreign languages and public diplomacy.

Among GAO’s recommendations to the BBG were that the board

revise its strategic plan to include audience size and other key

measurable program objectives. In response to our recommendations, the State Department has recently established a new Office

of Strategic Planning for Public Diplomacy and is considering how

to adopt the public sector techniques in its programs.

Regarding our recommendation to strengthen performance measurement efforts, State Department officials have indicated that

they’re exploring ways to do so, and that among other things, they

hoped to do more pre- and post-testing of their exchange programs.

The State Department acknowledged the need to strengthen the

training of Foreign Service officers and told us that the primary obstacle to doing so was insufficient staffing to allow for training. Officials said they have already begun to address staffing gaps by

stepping up recruitment efforts.

In response to our recommendations to the Broadcasting Board

of Governors, the board has revised its strategic plan to create a

single strategic goal of maximizing impact in priority areas, including the Middle East.

In conclusion, the 9/11 Commission Report recommendations designed to better integrate and focus U.S. public diplomacy efforts

are consistent with our past findings and conclusions and recommendations, and they should be fully considered by the executive branch and the Congress.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ford follows:]

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Mr. TURNER [presiding]. Thank you. Obviously this has been a

very important discussion, and when you read the 9/11 Commission

Report and you look at their recommendations with respect to intelligence gathering and restructuring of our ability to respond, one

of the elements of their recommendations that really goes to the future of our ability to have a relationship in the Middle East and

to be successful long term is the issue on public diplomacy.

And Secretary Harrison, in listening to your description of some

of things that were undertaken and still some of the questions as

to our effectiveness, what do you see as the message of the U.S.

public diplomacy in the Middle East? I mean, we’ve talked certainly about the issues in trying to define more of who we are, trying to talk more about the values of democracy, but what do you

see as the message of public diplomacy?

Ms. HARRISON. Right now, as we are working in an environment

of what I would call constant snapshot polling, I think it’s important to move beyond the initial questions which I would characterize as one, two, three: Do you hate us; how much do you hate us;

do you hate us more today than you did yesterday?

As one woman who was part of our exchange program from the

region—these were journalists, publishers, editors. She was from

Egypt. She said I just wish the American people would stop asking

us all the time how much we hate you. First of all, it makes us

feel bad; and second, we are forced then to answer a question instead of a real question. A real question might be how can we work

together? And then she said, ‘‘When you ask the question, please

be prepared to listen.’’

So as we talk about outgoing messages, we also have to talk

about incoming. And the part we seem to forget sometimes as we

seek to influence and inform, part of engagement is listening. I

know the polls are negative, but I think, though, that there are

some bright spots on the horizon.

We have to work with people within these communities who understand that their young people want a better life as well. We

have to stand for individual freedom and economic opportunity and

then take those lofty words and put them into practice. And that’s

why I was saying it’s not just the message. It’s some of the things

we can do.

And where are the opportunities? Well, in Malaysia, Prime Minister Badawi—and this is his quote and that’s why I’m reading it—

he said, as a practicing Muslim. We are in deep crisis. Muslim

youth is vulnerable to extremist ideas. We must recover the hallmarks of peace, prosperity and dignity. Then he said, I believe that

now more than ever, we need to find a moderate center. We need

to bridge the great divide that has been created between the Muslim world and the West.

Our message, in addition to who we are as a people and our values—and it is what our message has always been from the beginning of time—we do not seek to stay in any country. We seek to

help people find their personal freedom, and we have enough ways

to demonstrate that. When you demonstrate it, then the message

becomes one of trust.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Tomlinson, do you have any comments you

would like to add to that?

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Mr. TOMLINSON. I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the able acting Under Secretary, Pat Harrison. I knew

you were good. That’s a superb answer.

We at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, consider ourselves,

as most people in journalism, as being in the truth business. We’re

trying to produce an informed citizenry out there wherever we

broadcast. We want people to know what’s actually going on in the

world.

I sometimes think that there may be an overemphasis on this

thing of coordination. I was for many years editor-in-chief at Reader’s Digest, a great magazine. We didn’t worry about coordination

at Reader’s Digest, we worried about excellence. We worried about

making people want to read us. We worried about making people

want to hear our message.

That’s what I think we’ve been able do using good journalistic

and broadcasting strategies at BBG and the entities that are under

us. We want people to hear us. We want people to hear what’s actually going on in the world. We want people to understand the

fruits of freedom. We want people to understand the great benefits

of the kind of opportunities that we offer, and we want people to

observe the universal values of the rights for women and opportunity for youth. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Secretary Harrison, I agree with you on the issue

of the polls. I think the polls don’t necessarily give us an understanding really of the fabric, of the context in which we need to

have this discussion.

The issue of, as you described it, of how we’re perceived is also

very separate from the issue of values and the Islamic extremist

message of glorifying death and of the acceptable killing of innocents and the acceptable killing through suicide bombers.

What do you see as, one, our ability to impact that message and

that cultural issue that makes this that much more of a dangerous

conversation, and second, who are our allies in the Middle East to

help achieve this discussion of values that would celebrate life and

a relationship based upon that?

Ms. HARRISON. It’s an excellent question, and one would think

we have no allies. The fact is, in this war of words and images, we

have a lot of allies, but we have to work with them in a way that

they find productive. That means in some cases, through NGO’s,

through religious schools, through secular schools, through community leaders, with new strategic emerging communities.

I’m going to emphasize what I said earlier. We need to listen to

how they want to work with us. For example, when I went to Pakistan, I met with the Minister of Education, and she said we’re not

going to take on the madrassas; we’re going to offer more choices.

Here’s how we would like to work with you; we need more of our

teachers coming to the United States to learn how to teach.

When we had the first opportunity to engage with Afghanistan,

the first thing we did was create the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council.

We brought over teachers so that they could be trained and go back

and train other teachers. And I just feel I must honor the response

to a question I asked this one Afghan teacher who had taught

young children, despite torture threats from the Taliban, she kept

moving these children from place to place. I said, how did you find

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the courage to do that? She said, it wasn’t courage, it was the right

thing to do.

When we work with people in partnership on behalf of their

young people, that’s the message. We are doing the right thing, and

that’s when the trust is in the message.

I think truly, if I can answer you frankly, we should forget about

talking about image. Image is only about us. We should be building

long-term relationships with people, who even in these polls, if you

go below the fourth or fifth question where, finally, one polster

asks, is there anything you admire about America? The first answer is, ‘‘yes, education, opportunity and how can I get there.’’

I’m not minimizing the terrible environment in which we live,

but the fact is this is our environment and we’ve just got to do

what we can do now.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Tomlinson, do you have any other comments?

Mr. Evers, Mr. Ford, anyone like to add to that?

Mr. EVERS. The only thing I would add is on messages, we just

teach our American values which are equality, tolerance, individual

rights, democracy, rule of law. And I think as we do that, especially

in Alhurras, they see the journalistic ethics as it compares to some

of the indigenous journalism, these types of ethics that we have

and our values, because these are the same values that people hold

all over the world.

Mr. TOMLINSON. If you look at the pupils, some of the pupils had

some of the worst messages for us in terms of popularity of Americans. When you ask the people, as the Under Secretary said, what

systems do you want, throughout the world they admired the freedom of America. Throughout the world, they wanted our economic

system. Throughout the world, they wanted opportunity-based systems. So I think we’re building that now.

Ms. HARRISON. I was just going to say that I am very biased because, as you know, I’m wearing two hats, and one is as Assistant

Secretary of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and what this

means is I get to rediscover America through the eyes of people

who come here for the first time and tell me, ‘‘Do you know you

really do have the freedom to practice religion? Do you know that

your media really is free?’’ And one woman after September 11,

says she wanted to be here to find out one thing, do we still say

after September 11th, ‘‘have a nice day?’’

That was a profound question because she was trying to find out

if the basic nature of the American people, in terms of how she understood us, generosity, humanity, all of the values we’re talking

about, had fundamentally changed. When she came back from her

3-week tour, I asked her what did you find out? She said it’s amazing. I was welcomed by communities. She talked about our volunteerism, and here is the catch–22, they don’t expect to find that.

And that’s our challenge. They don’t expect to find the generosity.

They are being shaped by messages that are distorted, and we

don’t have enough Americans going to these countries. As someone

said fax to fax is never going to replace face to face.

We need to engage as citizen diplomats. In this war on terrorism,

everyone needs to do what they can do, and that means engaging

a lot with the private sector which I am focused on right now.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. Mr. Kucinich.

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Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much. To the panelists, thank

you for your work and for your presence here.

I want to pick up on this discussion because I think what I sense

from Ms. Harrison is kind of a puzzlement or perplexing dilemma

when we know there are people who do like America but at the

same time we’re seeing these polls reflect what Commission member Gorelick just called an astonishing hemorrhage of support for

the United States, and the polls that have been the subject of discussion in the previous panel pointed out that two-thirds of countries surveyed in 2003 from Indonesia to Turkey were somewhat or

very fearful the United States may attack them. Support for the

United States has plummeted—this is testimony from Commission

members—and that the bottom has fallen out of support for America in most of the Muslim world. Negative views of the United

States among Muslims has spread and they go on and give statistics.

How does that square with what you know and all of us know

to be true, that people—there still is a desire for people to connect

with America but there is this broad negativity toward America

right now? How do you explain that contradiction?

Ms. HARRISON. I think, sir, there are many elements. For the

first time, there is only one global power in the world, and that has

great ramifications on how people view us. I also think that we are

in an environment right now that is very volatile, and people are

being asked what they think when things are happening in Iraq

that haven’t yet been resolved.

For example, from my standpoint and if I were polled, the Iraqis

I meet come here and say, thank you so much. One Fulbrighter

said, ‘‘you’ve given me the keys to my future; I will go back and

build a perfect society.’’ So I might answer a poll a little bit differently from those who haven’t heard Iraqis talk about what they

can achieve, or the Iraqi soccer players who said, ‘‘we’re going to

do the best we can, but we know if we lose we will not be killed

and our family harmed.’’

I think polling is almost a cottage industry almost at this point.

We’ve probably all read the examples of movies and plays and various things going on that provide an outlet for people attacking the

United States, and that certainly is significant. And one always has

to ask in business, is the trend your friend or not? And we would

say, no, the trend isn’t our friend.

Mr. KUCINICH. In your experience, have you seen any actions

that you can think of that the United States may have commenced

with that could have caused some kind of an undermining in support for the United States? How do you account for this?

Ms. HARRISON. I account for the fact that we did not have a

strong public diplomacy presence in the region for a long time. September 11th was a wake-up call. Now it seems what we’re doing

is saying why haven’t we fixed it in 3 years? I think that’s shortsighted.

I think we have a lot to do in the region, and it’s tedious and

it’s labor intensive, and it requires a lot more engagement with

Americans on a very local level, at a university level, at a business

level. We have to communicate and define who we are over and

over again. We can’t rely on a generation being grateful to us even

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for what we’ve done for Muslims. We can’t rely on the fact that we

feel X, Y and Z group should be grateful, even after what we did

in World War II.

And I think the lesson, one of the lessons of September 11 is we

have to make a commitment to engage, not declare it’s the end of

history, as Fukiyama did, and decide we’ve won and there’s no

need to have exchanges because we’ve got the Internet, we’ve got

e-mail.

So I think we’re in the process, sir, of learning a lot of hard lessons about what it means to build relationships.

Mr. KUCINICH. So you’re talking about a dialog?

Ms. HARRISON. Yes, I am, and I know in my native New York,

conversation is characterized as talking and waiting for the other

person to stop. Dialogue means listening.

Mr. KUCINICH. I didn’t know you were from New York.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. Thank you. Basically, Mr. Evers triggers

this comment in measurement. I’d like you all to define ‘‘success’’

for me. What is success? How do we measure it? How do we know

we’re doing a good job?

Ms. HARRISON. Yes, sir. Measurement.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to give you a rest for a second. I’m going

to have Mr. Evers start off. Then we’ll have all of you respond.

Mr. EVERS. I don’t know what the exact answer is, but it’s probably somewhere north of where we are now. It seems to me, picking up on the comments, Mr. Chairman, that you made earlier

about the difference between diplomacy and force and sometimes if

people don’t think you’re going to use force, as Saddam Hussein,

they keep pushing you around, that—and then this age-old question of whether we should be loved or hated or respected or feared,

that until—on September 10, 2001, my suspicion is we were a lot

more loved and respected in the world, and I’m not sure what type

of safety that provided us.

So I think there’s a medium between where we are now and

where we need to be. We don’t need people blowing up buildings

and flying planes into them, but I don’t think we need to be universally loved. I think as Americans we feel the need to be loved by

everybody, but we need to be respected, and we need to be known

as an honest partner, but we don’t need to be dancing in the

streets together.

Some of these poll numbers, I don’t agree with everything that

polling’s done because, if you ask me to go do a poll, I could probably give you the answer you wanted, too, depending on how I

worded the question. But I think that we do need to have some respect and a little bit more understanding from people, and I think

that one of the things—when I talk about measurement, especially

as it relates to exchanges, it’s a very small sample of people, hundreds that come, not tens of millions; and that is, that when they

come to America they ought to leave with the understanding that

we have tolerance and equality and that we’re honest, just like

Under Secretary Harrison said the lady who came here left with.

And so they ought to come to America with their questions, and

when they leave we ought to know that they got their questions answered, and if they didn’t we ought to reengineer the programs.

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Mr. SHAYS. Well, I’m tempted to have a bigger discussion with

you here, because it’s not going to be necessarily what polls say,

but you’re the one that basically triggered some type of measurement. Just give me the sense of what are the various kinds of

measurements, and if you want time to think about it, I can go to

someone else. I mean, let me go to Mr. Ford. I’d like you to just

think, Mr. Evers, of whether it’s polls or whether it is that they—

I told someone if I lost the election, I want to lose having people

know how I voted and not like how I voted than to vote against

me thinking that I voted differently than I actually did, and even

if the result is still the same, even if I still lose. I want to know

it’s based on good information that we just happened to disagree

on.

Mr. EVERS. Sure.

Mr. SHAYS. Maybe you can think a little more about this. I’d like

to come back. Mr. Ford, measurements.

Mr. FORD. Yes, I think there’s several different ways that we can

obtain information to help us try to sort out the answers to questions we’re trying to get, and it’s not just polling. There’s lots of different types of surveys.

Mr. SHAYS. No. What are the questions that we’re trying to get

answered?

Mr. FORD. Well, I think that’s the first thing is you have to define what that is. In many cases in the past on an exchange program, we merely asked the individual things like did they have a

good experience in the United States. They were designed to give

a short-term answer to an experience they just had. They weren’t

necessarily geared toward answering a broader question about how

they really felt about U.S. values, democratic principles and how

they might translate those into their own country.

So I think that first you have to define what questions you want

to answer, and I think there are a lot of tools out there that can

be employed to try to get those answers, not just polls. You can do

different types of survey research. You can do focus groups. You

can do pre-and post-questionnaires. There are a lot of different research instruments out there, many of which are used by academics and private research outfits.

So I think those are the kind of things you can use as tools to

get the answers to the questions, but first you have to define what

the question is.

Mr. TOMLINSON. Mr. Chairman, our son is in the Navy. He’s an

officer on the USS McInerney, but when he was a little boy in

Chappaqua, New York, we couldn’t go more than 10 or 15 minutes

on a trip without him saying, are we there yet, are we there yet?

And I think in many ways the question of how do we judge whether we’re meeting our goals is like that question.

Of course, we need to know are they listening to us. We’re in this

to have an informed citizenry abroad. We’re in this so that people

will share our values, universal values, and in many ways, it’s just

a never-ending process. Sure, we should check to see if our programs are effective, but I don’t think we want to be so survey conscious that we stop telling the truth or we try to change our message to be effective. I think the truth will out in the end.

Mr. SHAYS. Madam Secretary.

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Ms. HARRISON. Yes. First, let me say that we have a culture in

the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs that is one of measurement and evaluation. As someone said, anecdote is not data,

and the bureau, ECA, if I can use the initials, received OMB’s program assessment rating at the highest score of 92 percent. Now,

this means they rated our exchange programs in NEA and SA, and

how did they evaluate them? They used a series of questions. It is

to see if attitudes have changed in any significant way on several

levels.

As a result of coming to the United States as either part of Fulbright program, International Visitor, or Humphrey program, citizen exchange, did you learn more about the United States than you

knew before; did your attitude change? And then there’s a list of

indicators that go through policy and other things about the American people.

The other way that we measure is regular reporting that comes

in from our nonprofit organizations, our partner organizations, and

that’s part of every grant agreement, the evaluation of the specific

exchange program, and then we have reports and stories from our

missions. Then we have a results data base. Then we have use of

demographic indicators, and some of them I know you’re familiar

with: How many people are now heads of state, or did that experience in the United States shape and inform them. Hamid Karzai,

for example, or Tony Blair; another one is Megawati Sukarroputri

and others; and then we have formal independent program evaluations that are conducted by outside professional evaluators.

This system of measurement and evaluation is carried out

through our new Office of Policy and ECA’s evaluation office. We

want to take this system that is successful in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and apply it to public diplomacy programs and products across the board. We haven’t done that in as

systematic a way as ECA has been doing for the last several years.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Any further comment? I’m just curious,

what do you think the United States did or didn’t do to help the

Iraqi soccer team? I’ll tell you why I’m wondering. I’m wondering

because Iraqis turned the Al-Jazeera to watch the Iraqi team play.

Did Alhurra televise?

Mr. TOMLINSON. We did.

Mr. SHAYS. You did as well, live?

Mr. TOMLINSON. We didn’t have a contract to do it live, but we

certainly have covered it massively.

Mr. SHAYS. So the only reason we didn’t do it is we didn’t have

a contract to do it live?

Mr. TOMLINSON. Right.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Has anyone done a report on who helped them

and so on? The reason I have this little bit of concern is when I

was in Iraq a week and a half ago, I saw the team being flown by,

I think, the Australians, because we have somehow a rule that we

can’t use a military plane in this capacity, and it just bothered me

if that were the case. I mean, what a huge opportunity for us to

celebrate what is, I think, one of the greatest stories of the Olympics. This team that was involved in this huge war, I mean, was

having the effects of a huge war, they didn’t have the capacity to

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play other teams, and yet they’re in the semifinals, one of four

teams standing, and I’m just curious.

Mr. TOMLINSON. It’s a great story.

Mr. SHAYS. It is a great story.

Ms. HARRISON. Yes. One of the things we haven’t talked about

in terms of public diplomacy is cultural diplomacy and how important it is that it be supported. I went to Iraq a year ago, and at

that time we worked with the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra

to have them come here and play, as culture is an important part

that was restored after Saddam Hussein. But we also worked with

the athletes through our sports programming division. They came

to Atlanta. We had archers and wrestlers, and we worked with the

soccer players, and we are in the process of not having just a oneoff relationship but a long-term training program.

At the same time, the unknown story or the story that needs to

be told is this group of soccer players are Kurds and Shiite and

Sunni, and they all play together as a team, all held hands at the

end. If a team can do it, I think a country can. Oops, I’m starting

into another speech, I apologize.

Mr. TOMLINSON. It’s good. It’s good speaking.

Ms. HARRISON. Anyway it’s a powerful story, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. It’s a hugely powerful story.

Mr. TOMLINSON. I thank you for raising it, Mr. Chairman. Daniel

Henninger of the Wall Street Journal did a column last Friday on

this very subject. I’ll pass it on to you.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m just wondering, though, if we’ve really done what

we need to do just to that one story alone.

Mr. TOMLINSON. We can’t do too much.

Mr. SHAYS. I still am very unclear, though, as to what your answers are as to the issue of measurement, so let me ask it this way.

What are the questions we should be asking and then how do we

measure?

Ms. HARRISON. In terms of are our programs and products working. What way has your attitude changed as a result of a trip? Or

as a result of a program. We have, I would say, information that

would fill books that support the validity of the exchange process,

that minds have changed, the needle moves. It does increase mutual understanding and respect which——

Mr. SHAYS. Let’s deal with that. That deals more with what I

would call the elites within the society, those whose lives alternately—I mean, they have gotten an opportunity to be in a sports

program. They have gotten an opportunity to be in a cultural exchange. It’s not the everyday Iraqi that happens to. How about

with the everyday Iraqis?

Ms. HARRISON. Within the last 3 years we have made a concerted

effort to move beyond the elites, to work with our missions and go

beyond what I call the traditional Rolodex to get out into different

areas where we know talent resides, but which are economically

disadvantaged. This is what our PLUS—P for L PLUS program is

about.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me put it this way, but ultimately, it’s reaching

a tenth of a percent, or a percent. About the 99 percent who are

left over? That is what? How do we deal with that?

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Ms. HARRISON. We’re dealing with that through other forms of

communication. We’re going to be dealing with that—measuring

that through the Internet. Now, right now the way to measure

through the Internet is how many hits. For example, we have a

new Web site in Persian, and what we’re seeing is increasing numbers of people who are going to that Web site. And we also know

that in Iran there is a proliferation of Web sites where they discuss

freedom. And right now the evaluation is that people are reading

what’s on our Web site. They’re coming back and reading more.

We’re measuring a new product called Hi Magazine that also has

a Web site.

So the measurement and evaluation move beyond how many people just viewed something, that doesn’t mean they agree with it,

but then how many people come back to it over and over and over?

Then you have the chat rooms that go along with that. Then there

are ways to monitor in terms of audience share for radio and television.

Mr. TOMLINSON. For us, it’s are you listening to us and do you

believe what we’re saying.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Evers, do you want to do another crack at this?

Mr. EVERS. Sure, thank you. I just wanted to read what the 9/

11 Commission Report said about this. They said agencies need to

be able to measure success. Targets should be specific enough so

that reasonable observers in the White House, the Congress, the

media, and the general public can judge whether or not the objectives have been attained, which is what you continue to ask us

here. And I think that the target is different for different countries.

It seems to me that one of our objectives ought to be that the political leaders of countries have the courage to support America and

not fear that they’ll either be thrown out of office if they’re in a democracy, or overthrown if they’re not in a democracy. And I think

if you look at a country like Pakistan, where you have a president

who’s had the courage to stand with us in spite of public opinion

that’s against him, he’s been able to figure out a way to make it

seem logical in his country to work. And so whatever that model

is, maybe that would work somewhere else.

One of the ideas that we’re going to have in our report is that

we’re going to propose a way to assess program effectiveness might

be through the evaluation of a test region. The selected region

would receive increased funding for a variety of public diplomacy

programs structured around a cohesive strategy and funded

through supplemental funding from Congress, where you would

take public diplomacy programs, education programs, Department

of Commerce programs and go into a region or a country and really

try to make a difference in that area and come out and see whether

it works or not.

This isn’t a novel idea. The British do this right now every year.

They have a different country that they go to and they coordinate

their government around what they’re going to do. And they go in,

they do advertising, they do job fairs, and they do all sorts of

things to move people toward them.

Mr. SHAYS. I think what I’m probably wrestling with is if I define

public diplomacy as ultimately doing the right thing, however we

define that, as presenting an alternative, and that how we commuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:33 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00117 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98211.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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nicate is part of the public diplomacy but isn’t the extent of public

diplomacy, I mean I realize, Mr. Tomlinson, this goes well beyond

you. You’re the third part of this effort. How would you define public diplomacy? And then I would get on to the next panel. Maybe

I’m having an incorrect view of public diplomacy here.

Mr. TOMLINSON. I would define it as conveying our values to people around the world, conveying what we are, what our goals are

for the world.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. See, I added more. I added economic assistance

as part of public diplomacy.

Mr. TOMLINSON. That’s a part. That’s a part. A part of what we

are is giving people the opportunity to work hard through a free

economic system and produce benefits and a better future for their

children.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you, Secretary Harrison.

Ms. HARRISON. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. If we are pursuing goals as a country that make your

job in portraiting our country well difficult, is that part of your job,

to convey to others like we are headed in the wrong direction, no

matter what we tell them, as long as we keep doing these things,

we’re going to be digging a deeper hole in terms of public diplomacy; is that part of your job?

Ms. HARRISON. Yes, it is, and if I can—my definition, which I use

in a lot of speeches, is basically people-to-people diplomacy, and

people-to-people impact has become much more important. We talk

about the Arab strength. We talk about strategic communities.

They have the ability to topple governments, to change perceptions.

We can look at a recent election in India which was a surprise, and

when you look at how that happened you see the power invested

in people beyond urban centers and rural centers.

This Secretary has brought public diplomacy to the policy table

and literally to the table every morning. Every single morning at

8:30 he meets with his Assistant Secretaries and Under Secretaries, and it is a quick trip around the world where you can hear

what’s going on in every region. You can hear what his focus is,

and he also listens to us. So we do have a seat at the table. We’re

not over in a stovepipe somewhere coming up with these things.

He and the Deputy Secretary are committed and understand the

value of public diplomacy, even as governments are engaged in necessary traditional diplomacy, and he puts high value on these programs, and he is very supportive of what public diplomacy can do.

Mr. SHAYS. President Kennedy invited the leader of the African

states to the White House. He had a cultural sense that very few

Presidents had, or somebody in his staff did. He said, when that

leader comes, invite him not to the East Room and the West Room

for a State dinner; invite him up into your personal headquarters,

because that’s how you honor people in so many societies. When I

was in the Peace Corps, there were two rooms. One was the public

and one was what was the sleeping part, the quarters, and if you

were invited to interact with a chief in that room there, he was

paying you a tremendous respect that he would invite you into a

kind of inner sanctum.

Well, when President Kennedy did that, it electrified Africa because the word got around that he had invited this leader into his

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personal home. And there are still, believe it or not—or there were

when I was in the Peace Corps in the South Pacific—pictures of

Kennedy, still remembering this culturally sensitive President who

electrified the Third World.

I have been to Iraq now six times, and four times outside the

umbrella of the military. Every Iraqi told me that why are we disbanding the military, the police and the civil service, the government? Whatever you portray, Mr. Tomlinson, in your media, that

policy was so flawed you could never undo it because it basically

said to those who were in Iraq, who had been involved, they had

no future there. So I’m just kind of thinking that we’ve got to make

sure the policy is something you can promote and we have the best

way to promote the policy. At any rate, it’s a work in process, isn’t

it?

Ms. HARRISON. Well, as Edward R. Murrow said, public diplomacy should be on the takeoffs and not just in the landings.

Mr. TOMLINSON. He said crash landings.

Ms. HARRISON. Oh, I edited that.

Mr. SHAYS. No, but that’s a huge point.

Ms. HARRISON. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. It’s a huge point. We need to be a lot more culturally

sensitive, and we do a lot better job, then, when we project our

public diplomacy in the media.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TURNER. In looking at the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, we talked about this when the two commissioners were in

front of us. On page 377 it says recommendation: Just as we did

in the cold war, we need to defend our ideas abroad vigorously.

America does not stand up for its values. The United States defended and still defends Muslims against tyrants and criminals in

Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. If the United

States does not act aggressively to define itself in the Islamic

world, the extremists will gladly do the job for us.

Now, what I found interesting about thisrecommendation is that

it talks about the United States defended Muslims and it talks

about the actions in Bosnia and Kosovo. And many times we will

talk about the actions of defending Kuwait and liberating Kuwait,

but in a lot of the language and how it has interpreted what was

done in Kuwait, and it refers to war with Iraq.

We have the Bureau Chief of Al-Jazeera’s Washington office

who’s here, and I was reading an interview that he had in September 2003, and in that one of the things that he talks about as a

possible contributor to the September 11th event is the first Iraq

war.

And so I wanted to ask you, one, about the issue of our policies,

and don’t we have one of the conflicts being how we view our policies and how others are viewed? And second, I would like you to

comment on—the report says recognizing that Arab and Muslim

audiences rely on satellite television, and Al-Jazeera certainly

being so prominent, I’d love your thoughts and questions as to your

competition.

Ms. HARRISON. Well, I think I will let Ken talk about the competition.

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And in terms of your first question and how our policies are interpreted, if I could push a button, I would have many, many more

speakers, many more people engaging, Americans going to the region. We can’t do this just one-way, even as powerful as exchanges

are.

And what I hear from our Ambassadors and our people in the

posts, when they put together, as they do, these seminars, and in

many of the cultures and Muslim and Arab countries, they would

rather have dialog one on one, a long period of time where you

sit—and I realize this isn’t thousands of people, but it can be televised, as was this Indonesian town hall meeting, as a result of

former Under Secretary Beers’ shared-values initiative.

Anything that leads to dialog. After these seminars, we asked

them to evaluate it on a lot of different levels in terms of policy,

mostly policy.

I’m not going to tell you, that they then agreed with America’s

policy, but we did find a majority say, if you consider the needle

moving, we now understand what the policy was based on. We may

not agree with it, but we no longer are indulging in conspiracy

theories, or we’re not ascribing it to something that’s negative; we

may not agree with you, but we now believe that America isn’t

going to take over our country and stay forever. The challenge of

these kinds of dialogs is that they are one on one, and we have to

find a way to magnify them in a way that doesn’t undermine the

very essence that allows people to speak freely.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Tomlinson.

Mr. TOMLINSON. Mr. Chairman, this Washington bureau chief of

Al Jazeera, he’s nice and all, and I like his wife a lot—she is an

employee of VDA—and I don’t mean to say ugly things about his

publication with his being present here with us, but I think he’ll

understand.

Imagine if people in the United States had their view of the

world based on the National Enquirer or the worst of our tabloids.

That would be the way people, Arabic-speaking people in the Middle East have received——

Mr. SHAYS. I have a hard time hearing you, Mr. Tomlinson.

Mr. TOMLINSON. I’m sorry. I said, after saying all of these nice

things about my journalistic colleague back here——

Mr. SHAYS. I got that part.

Mr. TOMLINSON [continuing]. Imagine if people in the United

States had their view of the world based on the National Enquirer

or the worst of tabloids, that would give you a sense of what the

people of the world have received through the broadcasting of Al

Jazeera.

They call American troops ‘‘occupiers.’’ They sensationalize. I

hear that Al Jazeera has issued a new standard or code of conduct,

and I look forward to the impact that Al-hurra is going to have on

the satellite broadcasters. Because the great thing we found about

Radio Sawa news during the war is, we were accurate.

When the news was good from our side, we gave it to people.

When the news wasn’t, we gave it to people, and people came to

turn to Sawa News because they wanted to know what was happening in the world and they wanted to know what the happening

right then and there.

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You know, if you tailor your news, it takes a while to put it together. So I’m very pleased that we’re finally in the Arabic satellite

game, because I think we’re going to have a significant impact on

our competition, and I think we may even help them clean up their

shows.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Evers, Mr. Ford, do you have any comment?

Mr. EVERS. Mr. Chairman, your question at the very beginning,

your first part, Is it hard to talk about American policies when people don’t agree with them? And I think the classic is—when you

talk to Muslim-Arabs, is our relationship with Israel as it relates

to Palestine; and the fact is, this falls under the ‘‘do the right

thing.’’

I mean, we support Israel because we have a special relationship

with them, a moral obligation to see them succeed. They’re one of

the only democracies in the area. They are a huge ally of ours, and

it is our policy—I believe, is the right policy—which you would not

find a terrible lot of Arab-Muslims that would agree with us on

that. And so it is the right thing for us to continue to talk about

that, but it is a very hard obstacle for us to get over, because they

do not believe like we do on that.

We have the first President, Republican or Democrat, ever, to

call for a Palestinian state. You’ve got Ariel Sharon, who is calling

to move settlements and being attacked by his own party for doing

so, but yet we don’t really get credit for any of that.

But the answer is, yes, it’s very hard sometimes with our policies, whether you agree or disagree with them; if the people you’re

talking to don’t agree with them, it’s hard to get through that.

Mr. FORD. I don’t have much to say about the policy end, but I

can say that I think that our research indicates that we can do a

better job of touting things that we’re doing that are positive in nature.

When we did a survey for—last year in Egypt, for example, we

found many Egyptians were not aware of the sizable amount of foreign aid that we provide to that country, and we’ve been providing

it for 2 decades now. So I think there are things that we can do

to better show some of the positive things that we’re doing out

there.

I know in the case of AID, they have some restrictions on what

they can do, but there’s room for improvement in those areas.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Do any of you have anything you would like to add in closing

from the discussion?

If not, we thank you for your time.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you all very much.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you for your participation.

We’ll turn, then, to our next panel, panel No. 3. It will include

Keith Reinhard, who is the president, Business For Diplomatic Action, and chairman, DDB Worldwide. He’s accompanied by Gary

Knell, president and CEO of Sesame Workshop.

Also, we’ll hear testimony from Charlotte Beers, former Under

Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Department of State. Also, we’ll have testimony from Dr. Rhonda S.

Zaharna, associate professor of Public Communication, American

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University. Finally, we have testimony from Hafez Al-Mirazi, Bureau Chief, Al Jazeera, Washington office.

Mr. SHAYS. Please stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Please note for the record that the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

We’ll begin with Charlotte Beers.

STATEMENTS OF CHARLOTTE BEERS, FORMER UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC

AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE; KEITH REINHARD,

PRESIDENT, BUSINESS FOR DIPLOMATIC ACTION, AND

CHAIRMAN, DDB WORLDWIDE; GARY KNELL, PRESIDENT

AND CEO, SESAME WORKSHOP; DR. RHONDA S. ZAHARNA,

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC COMMUNICATION,

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY; AND HAFEZ AL-MIRAZI, BUREAU

CHIEF, AL JAZEERA WASHINGTON OFFICE

Ms. BEERS. Thank you. This is my first hearing as a private sector person.

I think public diplomacy has kind of had a diminishing in terms

of the people’s perception of what it means, not only in our own

press, but in our government and maybe in our country. It has a

connotation of propaganda, which in this country is sometimes very

negative. It can be seen as a pitch, an example of arrogant advocacy. And what I like so much about the opportunity of being here

today is that you have really raised the eyes off that page and described and defined the job in a much more comprehensive way. It’s

worth repeating.

You have asked us to consider something no less than moral

leadership, a demonstration of generosity and caring, to defend and

define our core values and to create an environment for moderates

for reform and freedom. That’s all.

That’s a pretty big job, but I have a feeling that the American

people are hoping we can pull this off and would approve of these

goals, because it’s time for us to think of ourselves as bridge-builders, as well as all the other facets of who we are in the world.

But because we’ve been so isolated and because our enemies are

seen as heroes in the countries in the Middle East, I think we have

to start with a modest goal.

You ask often, what is the message, and I think that the beginning of the communication effort has to be only a simple goal of

mutual understanding. That’s the place we have to start, and then

we can advance to those subjects on which we can agree. The end

result of that will promote national interest, but you can’t start the

other way around, because there’s not enough humility in it.

The message: The message has to be words verified by deeds and

programs and experiences, people to people, over time and consistently, which is not easy to do and is not anything we’ve done in

the recent past.

The elements of the strategy, as far as I’m concerned, are that

core values are crucial, and it’s very fascinating to me that a number of the core values we rate tops are shared by Arab and Muslim

families, and they would be stunned to hear it. And as conflicted

as they are about the United States, they are very openly eager to

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learn science, to give us credit for math expertise, to take English,

because it’s the language of the computer world.

So we have plenty of opportunities. The problem is, we’re not

equipped today to deliver on these kind of large-scale tasks.

I personally think there’s a clear problem in not having a central

leadership. I felt it greatly when I was——

Mr. SHAYS. I’m sorry. Not having a what?

Ms. BEERS. A central leadership to guide, as a team, the strategic direction of public diplomacy and then have the power to cause

it to happen in all the constituencies.

There’s not a company in the world who would agree to run fragmented businesses without a central leadership, and any time they

did, they got in terrible trouble.

We have too many uneven and diverse messages taking place,

sometime quite inadvertently. There’s a dearth of skills in the

State Department and in some of our other efforts to do modern

communication content and delivery and research. Research is not

poll taking. Research is a very sophisticated game done by experts

that understand insight, feelings, emotions and content and can

help predict attitudes and then behavior.

So it’s not a game for people who don’t really understand how to

do it. And you’re asking us to consider measurement, and that’s a

very important aspect to it.

The purpose of all of these kinds of skills is to build relationships

that will last longer than any foreign policy issue, so that they are

absolutely crucial to our well-being.

Now, with the very best of intentions, it seems to me that USIA’s

integration into State has caused certain aspects of that organization to be weakened. It is limited in its ability to adapt, to take initiatives and to create new solutions. Even with Secretary Powell’s

clear support, it has been difficult to get new initiatives and follow

through with separate funding for work we need to do to answer

those goals you’ve laid out. The public diplomacy field staff often

reports to three different bosses, because the structure has been

cobbled together, and most of those bosses are focused on traditional diplomacy.

There is little training. The first annual meeting of the public diplomacy field staff was the first year that I was in that office, and

it was a very controversial decision that had never come together.

And you can’t bring in new people, as we could have done, because

the security clearances in the State Department are so difficult.

It’s not really a lack of goodwill. It is simply divergent tasks.

The traditional diplomacy, which I’m calling the main work of

the State Department, has exceptionally qualified people who are

creating a vital dialog with our key governments. They interpret

and define with their counterparts the very meaning and context

of foreign policy. It’s hard to imagine a more important job, but it

is by its definition discreet, slow-moving and secretive.

On the other hand, public diplomacy makes this group of people

quite nervous. It’s very public. Its job is to engage a whole bunch

of people with widely diverse interests and topics, and we’re after

long-term relationships that have emotional and tangible subjects,

such as religion and trust and freedom, involved.

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Given the totally different task that traditional diplomacy and

public diplomacy have, it’s hard to see that this is the right place

for you to take us to task for all kinds of what you call ‘‘reinvigoration’’ under the present structure at the very least.

Now, there is a lot we have to work with. I mean, you can’t listen

to that last panel without being, I think, admiring of the work

that’s gone forward in terms of all of the public diplomacy efforts

that are taking place at State in terms of these new adventures,

and also at the BBG.

And we learn from the exchanges. We know that anyone who

comes to the United States has a transforming experience here, but

there’s only 25,000 of them a year, and we have to deal with the

issue of scale. If we do not take this story and our ability to cause

exchanges with one another to the countries in large enough numbers to make a difference, I don’t think we can answer the request

for the job description you laid out.

So it isn’t enough to just expand the programs that we have.

You’re going to hear some very interesting stories about the private

sector, and I think that somehow the public diplomacy center that

you will eventually, I hope, devise will need to be very powerful

partners with the private sector. You can’t expect them to get this

done without that kind of important arm in the service.

We have in the United States amazing musicians, athletes,

teachers, business people who will be very interested in going to do

their part. They are willing to go to countries to stay there, to

teach, to take part in much more complicated ways than we’ve ever

devised, but we don’t have the means, the fund or the system to

activate them.

But there’s a lot of that work done on a small basis today in the

State Department. There are charming and efficient ways to teach

science, computer skills and English on the local TV channels in

the key countries. There are departments of American studies that

we could ask universities throughout the Middle East to take.

Our own Library of Congress has the largest collection of Arab

books in the world. Why aren’t we translating those, putting them

beside a comparable American history and putting that in an

American studies class? Think how many people would come

through there as compared to the painstaking one-person-at-a-time

contact that we have been doing in the past.

It’s possible digitally to connect a teen in Idaho with a teen in

Cairo. It is possible to take partnerships with local TV and radio

stations in these countries and run stories about what USAID is

doing.

The reason the people in Egypt don’t know about the programs

is, everyone agreed we wouldn’t tell them, and USAID, when asked

to take part in communicating the brand of the United States, said,

We have no people or mandate to do that. But in spite of that,

they’ve done some impressive coprogramming with local TV shows

in the country to say, Look, there’s this little brand-new water system we have in Cairo which has literally transformed a region of

that city.

It’s unacceptable, I think, to be silent about American generosity.

We could do much more innovative things if we felt free to take the

initiative.

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It’s possible to make a virtual reality room where we build not

a library which is kind of old form, frankly, or an American corner,

but we create one in a virtual reality. We make it so much fun to

go into, and we put in it a shopping mall in Rabat. And at one time

we had the Smithsonian Institution working on that sort of thing.

So I’m actually——

Mr. TURNER. Secretary Beers, we’ll need you to wrap up your—

just conclude your comments.

Ms. BEERS. May I conclude? Thank you for signaling me. This is

the danger of being enthusiastic and running amuck.

Mr. SHAYS. We love it. We love it.

Ms. BEERS. One thing I don’t want to leave without saying—

please don’t buy the idea that the United States can’t be the messenger. We do not have a choice. There are ways that smart, talented people can get that across. And furthermore, we can’t afford

to stand for just foreign policy and military might.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Beers follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Reinhard.

Mr. REINHARD. Thank you, Chairman Shays, members of the

subcommittee. Thanks for inviting me here today. It’s an honor.

Mr. Chairman, I brought a few slides to help me summarize my

very long written testimony so, DJ, if we’re ready back there.

Let me begin with a statement you included in your invitation,

‘‘If the United States does not act aggressively to define itself in

the Islamic world, extremists will gladly do it for us.’’

I respectfully suggest that we step back a bit and view the Middle East as part of a much larger problem. The problem of America’s reputation is not confined to the Islamic world, which means

it would not be wrong to paraphrase the Commission’s statement.

If the United States does not act quickly and intelligently to define

itself in the post-September 11 world, our detractors across the

globe will do it for us. Two recent, if small, examples were this illustration on the front page of the German edition of the Financial

Times and this image from Middle East Online just last Friday.

I claim no expertise in government or foreign policy, but as a

concerned U.S. citizen and international businessman, I enlisted

some of the most preeminent professionals in the fields of global

communications, marketing, research and media to form business

for diplomatic action, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization

whose purpose is to mobilize and harness the private sector in a

separate but parallel effort to augment whatever the government

is doing to reverse the alarming decline in America’s reputation.

Let me be clear. This effort is not about ads or selling. BDA does

not stand for ‘‘business for diplomatic advertising’’; it stands for

‘‘diplomatic action.’’ Because my background is advertising, I frequently take these paddles with me to remind it’s not about ads,

it’s about actions.

Because listening is the most important part of any communications process—and not, by the way, an attribute normally associated with Americans—the first brief we gave to ourselves was a

line from the Scottish poet, ‘‘O would that God the gift might give

us, to see ourselves as others see us.’’ And our listening confirmed

that the image of America, as you know, is a montage of our foreign policy, our global brands and our entertainment product. It’s

a mix which you are we sometimes refer to as a ‘‘Rummy and Coke

with Madonna on the side.’’

Should there be any doubt that government and commercial actions are inextricably linked, one need only review the political cartoons in the foreign press the day after Saddam was toppled. A

careful analysis of all our listening efforts revealed four important

root causes for the rise in anti-American sentiment around the

world—U.S. foreign policy, as we’ve been discussing, but there are

others: the effects of globalization, so many people are feeling left

out or left behind, the pervasiveness of American popular culture

and our collective personality.

BDA believes that an activated U.S. business community can effectively address the last three. This slide shows some of the most

prominent positives and negatives that we have found in how others see us; and to paraphrase Johnny Mercer, we see BDA’s job

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tive.’’ To do both means engaging people in both the United States

and abroad.

Let me just touch on a few projects we have underway. PepsiCo

has paid for the initial distribution of this little World Citizens

Guide to the 200,000 young Americans who will study abroad next

semester. The content was provided by respondents in the 130

countries we asked for advice for Americans traveling abroad. The

response was robust, candid and prescriptive. This little booklet, an

advanced copy we’ve given you, is not a travel guide for young

Americans. Rather, it’s a compendium of insights that arouse their

interest in the world and move them a little closer to a global

mind-set.

This page says, It might be better if you don’t compare everything we do here in this country to how it is back home in America.

We also plan an abridged version of the guide for 50 to 60 million

Americans who travel outside the United States each year.

Everyone acknowledges the importance of exchange programs.

We hope to find new ways of bringing the value of these programs

to life and share them in with mainstream mass audiences. One

approach to this notion is a treatment we’ve developed for a reality

show featuring interns from Iran, perhaps, working inside a U.S.

multinational corporation here and then Americans interning in

foreign offices of the same multinational. In the final episode, the

CEO of that company may even say, You’re hired.

Now, to the Middle East, I am bothered by the emphasis on exporting American values. These people have values of their own,

and as Secretary Beers said, we can connect with some shared values. I agree with the witness who was formerly with Reader’s Digest, or at least I agree with their old headline writer’s rule which

said, Always start where the reader is; don’t start where you are.

In the Middle East especially, we need messages that inspire

hope and promise to youth at a very early age. Gary Knell, President and CEO of Sesame Workshop, is an active BDA board member. He’s here with me today. He has vast experience in enabling

locally produced children’s programming, especially in the Arab

world. I know you’ll have questions for him. This is an activity

BDA is supporting.

Although you may be anxious to create effective messages from

the U.S. Government to the Middle East, I respectfully suggest

that even with careful planning, such efforts at this time are likely

to meet with failure. Based on everything we know and hear from

the region, the U.S. Government is simply not a credible messenger. The implication for this committee, Mr. Chairman, is to

guide the U.S. Government to give real support and incentives to

empower and activate credible messengers who can begin the process of bridge-building, even as the government embraces and enacts previous recommendations to dramatically overhaul the management of our public diplomacy efforts.

Other BDA projects are included in your handout.

Mr. Chairman, in crafting a response to the challenge posed by

the 9/11 Commission, BDA would recommend you use the same

strategy development process that we in the marketing world use

for any major global brand in trouble or any company being attacked by a competitor wishing to destroy it or diminish it.

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The process is outlined in my written testimony. I’ve provided

one of the representative worksheets from that process for your

consideration.

I’d like to close my remarks with a simple way to portray this

state of America’s reputation and a way we might think about it.

This is the sigmoid for identification curve. We often use it to diagram the life of a product or a corporation or our careers or our

very lives.

We wobble a bit getting started. Then we flourish and grow, and

then at the end of the life cycle we start to wane again. The good

news is that for organizations, states and reputations, there is life

beyond the curve if we are smart enough, astute enough to start

a curve.

The integrity of an organization is maintained by making sure

that core values are preserved, perhaps even reemphasized as a

new curve begins. But not everything stays the same. Typically,

what got you from A to B will not get you from B to C. In the business world, the nature of the competition may have changed. In our

larger world, the nature of our struggle has changed.

At the risk of oversimplifying, it seems to me that while in the

years preceding September 11, we could lead the world by force, in

the days to come, we must learn to lead the world by influence and

example.

Mr. Chairman, Business for Diplomatic Action stands ready to

help in whatever way we can. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Reinhard follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Dr. Zaharna.

Dr. ZAHARNA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you for

keeping the spotlight on public diplomacy. I think it’s going to lead

to making not only America but the world a lot safer.

Sir, you asked us to step back and to view the 9/11 Commission’s

recommendation within the larger picture. This oral statement provides a brief snapshot. The written statement for the record provides what I see in more detail.

First, the reviews of American public diplomacy over the past 3

years, including the recent 9/11 Commission Report, pin America’s

communication problem on lack of strategy. They say America

needs a strategy so it can focus its message, coordinate efforts and

measure results.

Sir, when communication lacks a strategy, the results tend to be

random. You win some, you lose some, hit or miss. American public

diplomacy, on the other hand, has had a fairly pronounced losing

streak. That strongly suggests a strategy.

Second, stepping back and looking at the larger picture, the

strategy is clear. Since the terrorist attack, America has aggressively pursued an information battle strategy, borrowed from the

cold war. The national security strategy put the war of ideas second to the military war. The battle for the hearts and minds has

been a charge reverberating through the political halls of Washington to the front pages of hometown newspapers.

The 9/11 Commission echoed that strategy. Just as we did in the

cold war, we need to defend our ideas abroad vigorously.

Three, fighting an information battle was ideally suited for the

cold war era. Then you had two identifiable government powers

dominating the political as well as the communication landscape.

The bipolar context inherently defined the messages. ‘‘us versus

them’’ had persuasive power. Governments could control information. Foreign and domestic audiences were separated by an ocean

that technology struggled to cross.

Public diplomacy was a product made in America and shipped

overseas. Achieving information dominance was key to silencing

the opponent. In an information battle, the one with the most information wins.

Four, fighting an information battle has become the equivalent

of conventional warfare. The strategy lacks the agility and effectiveness to navigate today’s dynamic political and communication

terrain. The bipolar political context has proliferated into a

multipolar one. Culture has replaced nationalism as the prevailing

dynamic, filtering and distorting even the best message that America can design.

Regional conflicts, once masked by the superpower rivalry, have

surfaced with a vengeance. For the publics absorbed in these conflicts, American policy is the message of American public diplomacy. America’s domestic and foreign publics have become one 24–

7 global audience.

Today, communication is about exchanging information. In a

world suffering from information overload, disseminating information is spam. Networking is strategic.

Finally, American public diplomacy needs to switch its strategic

focus. Forget battles. Think bridges. To win hearts and minds,

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American public diplomacy needs to bridge the perception gap between Americans and foreign public. Disseminating information

cannot do this. Building bridges can. Aggressively pursued, this

strategy can cross the political and cultural hurdles.

This strategy of building bridges is not new. The Fulbright program, the Peace Corps represent America’s long tradition of building bridges. What is new is the strategic power of this technique.

Building bridges, networking, underlines the growing influence of

nonstate actors.

A woman in Maine began with the idea that led to the campaign

to ban land mines. She received the Nobel Peace Award. A man in

a cave in Afghanistan had another idea. As the 9/11 Commission

so thoroughly detailed, al Qaeda is also a network.

In yesterday’s information battle, the one with the most information won. Today, the one with the strongest and most extensive

network wins. Achieving this strategic goal requires new tactics to

identify potential links, create relationships and forge a network.

My written statement outlines some of these tactics; undoubtedly,

there are more.

Communication research also has emerged to measure the quality of relationships. The quality of America’s political relationships

impacts America’s image. Using these new research tools will help

measure American public diplomacy effectiveness more accurately

and meaningfully. In its recommendation, the 9/11 Commission

began with a call for institutionalizing imagination.

For American public diplomacy to be as effective as it was—for

American public diplomacy to be as effective in the war on terrorism as it was during the cold war, America needs to imaginatively

explore a new strategic focus. To win the hearts and minds, America needs to forget the battles and think bridges.

Sir, before I close, I must recognize a communication professional

who took the reins of American public diplomacy during extraordinary circumstances and led with extraordinary vision and energy.

Thank you, Under Secretary Beers.

And Representative Shays, I thank you for your continued pursuit to improve American public diplomacy and urging this on the

committee. Your trip last week is the epitome of building bridges,

as was your work in the Peace Corps. It’s a strategic direction that

holds the promise for, as the September 11 committee advocated,

making America safer. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Zaharna follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Al-Mirazi.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the

subcommittee, I want to thank you for this opportunity to talk to

you today about the 9/11 Commission, the report’s recommendations on public diplomacy.

I’m glad that the Arab media is being included in the discussion

of what should be done, instead of being excluded and blamed for

bearing bad news. This hearing reflects a sincere attempt to diagnose the nature of the problem instead of finding a scapegoat for

the challenges the United States faces today in the Middle East.

And as they say, diagnosis is half the treatment.

Sometimes it’s easier to talk about what is not the problem.

There is a general misconception that the Arab media—and Al

Jazeera in particular, that I am presenting here—is a major cause

of the rising anti-American sentiment in the Arab and Muslim

world. By the way, there is an interesting parallel in that many

Arabs and Muslims blame the U.S. media for reinforcing anti-Islamic sentiment and negative perceptions of Arabs and Muslims,

but I believe neither is the case.

A recent Zogby International poll of 3,300 adult Arabs in six

Arab countries shows that Arabs who have been to the United

States, who know Americans, or who have learned about the

United States from watching U.S. television, are as angry with the

U.S. foreign policy and have nearly as unfavorable attitudes toward

the United States as those who have no such direct experience.

Media, or medium, I don’t think is the main reason.

The work of Professor Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland has also clearly shown that Arab media, exactly—if we would

like to criticize—like the American media, is more market-driven

than commonly understood, and that it does not shape opinion as

much as it reflects it and responds to it. So as most experts in the

Arab world agree, the main problem is not the media; it is U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is the main source and cause

of anti-American sentiment in the region—in my view, as well.

Unfortunately, post-September 11 U.S. policies did not elevate

the existing problem, but instead exacerbated it. Before the invasion of Iraq, the United States was criticized for its perceived role

in supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Now the

United States is widely perceived in the Arab world as itself the

occupying power of yet another Arab-Muslim population, the Iraqis.

We’re dealing here with perceptions.

The United States has also been criticized in the Arab world for

its business-as-usual policy with certain authoritarian Arab dictators while promoting regime change in certain others.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did nothing to change this

view because the United States is now seen as replacing defiant

dictators with compliant, puppet regimes. All the efforts to improve

U.S. standing in the Muslim world, short of making policy changes,

are unlikely to succeed. In fact, as the 9/11 Commission Report

states, favorable ratings of the United States have dramatically decreased in some Muslim countries.

For example, as was mentioned here today, the report says that

favorable ratings for the United States in Indonesia have gone from

61 percent after September 11 to 15 percent just the last summer.

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And by the way, Indonesia is not an Arab-speaking country, so we

cannot blame it on the Arabic-language program, Al Jazeera.

Today’s hearing is titled ‘‘Defending Ideals and Defining the Message.’’ Assuming that one of America’s most cherished ideas is that

of a nongovernment-controlled and independent press, how can you

promote this ideal amongst Arabs using a government-sponsored,

funded and controlled medium such as Al-Hurra TV? You don’t

need to reinvent the wheel by creating a new medium that is inherently compromised by its self-serving goals, at least in the eyes of

the Arabs.

To give you a good example, 2 years ago the Israeli Government

launched an Arabic language television channel satellite, Channel

33, in an attempt to convey its message to the Arab world. It was

a complete failure, and they ended up going back to speaking

through the Arab media outlets that already exist and that already

had the trust of their viewers. It’s worth noting here that Al

Jazeera still routinely interviews Israeli officials and commentators.

As for defining the message, in this age of globalization, media

proliferation and the Internet, you can no longer distinguish between traditional and public diplomacy, nor can you distinguish between domestic and international discourse. Any remarks made in

a press conference or in a congressional hearing, just like ours

here, instantly reach the very audience you think you have time to

tailor a specific message for. Rhetoric is instantly available and disseminated the second it’s uttered, whether by a mullah speaking

from a mosque in Tehran or by a decorated U.S. General speaking

from a church in small-town America; and we should remind ourselves that the airwaves are just as full of anti-Muslim sentiment

as anti-American sentiment.

I would also like to interject here that General Boyken’s anti-Islamic remarks were first broadcast by NBC and that the first

photos of Abu Ghraib prison were broadcast by CBS, both U.S. networks, not Arabs, not Al Jazeera.

In summary, given these inherent problems with the whole concept of a public diplomacy, it’s understandable that it’s difficult to

keep the position of an Under Secretary of State For Public Diplomacy filled. Not even the best advertising executives can help you

market a product that serves you and not the consumer. If U.S.

policymakers are confident that their policies in the Middle East

are the right ones and do not need to be changed, then they should

not be surprised at negative reaction to these policies.

Just as U.S. officials and policymakers make the rounds of U.S.

networks every Sunday in order to explain their policies to the

American audience, they should do the same with the Arab networks, as I believe should Members of Congress that I invite on a

daily basis to be on Al Jazeera and to speak to our audience. This

kind of routine interaction with an already established and trusted

media would allow these officials to both explain the policies and

instantly gauge the reactions to them. This kind of engagement

over the long term might lead to the positive changes so desperately needed on both sides.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Al-Mirazi follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Thank you. We’ll go to 10-minute rounds of questions, and we’ll start with our chairman, Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much. I’d like to thank our last

speaker for being here. I think this is the second time he’s testified

before this subcommittee.

I’m not all that aware of what members Al Jazeera has—do you

tend to kind of focus on the Senate and get a distorted view, or do

you invite Members of Congress to also participate?

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. No. We invite all, and your office, we have made

many requests, unsuccessfully. We could not get you on Al Jazeera,

and we are renewing that request of all of you.

Mr. SHAYS. I was going to ask that question with that in mind,

because I honestly don’t know when we’ve been asked, and I would

like to make sure that you call me personally, because I would like

to have the opportunity to be on Al Jazeera——

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. I appreciate that.

Mr. SHAYS [continuing]. For a variety of reasons.

One of the things that’s very clear to me is that, in a sense, we’re

doing the reverse of what we sometimes don’t like about the Europeans. We’ve set up a government business to compete with the

private sector.

Is Al Jazeera owned privately, or is it owned by a government

as well?

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. Al Jazeera is similar to the BBC, in which it’s a

public corporation. It receives grants and funds from the state of

Qatar, but it’s had its own independent board of directors that set

the policies regardless.

Mr. SHAYS. Does it have advertising as well?

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. Yes. We do have advertisement, and we were

hoping when Al Jazeera was launched that only for 5 years would

we receive public grants, and after that we would be like CNN is,

relying on our own. But unfortunately, Al Jazeera found out that

most of the people who fought against Al Jazeera in the Middle

East—Arab regimes who didn’t like Al Jazeera bringing dissidents

to speak over there, or human rights activists to talk about human

rights views, in addition to the pressure they tried to apply on the

Government of Qatar, unsuccessfully—they found it easier to apply

the pressure on their own advertisers. So most of our advertisers

would be very intimidated and reluctant to advertise on Al Jazeera

because of their government being angry at Al Jazeera.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Knell, please feel free to participate. You didn’t

have an opening statement, but we welcome your statement as

well.

Is there anything that was said by another panelist that you

would disagree with, and would want to just make a contrasting

point?

Mr. REINHARD. I think Secretary Beers and I may have a disagreement on the point about credibility of the messenger, and I

would——

Mr. SHAYS. So maybe you could elaborate what you mean.

Mr. REINHARD. Yes.

The testimony that was given by the report of the Subcommittee

on Public-Private Partnerships and Public Diplomacy last June,

and the statement in that testimony says that in many cases in sitVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:33 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00210 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98211.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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uations, nongovernmental actors may be better placed to achieve a

given impact than the government. It goes on for a paragraph, but

it says, ‘‘Government policies and resource allocations for public diplomacy should explicitly address programs that provide incentives

to private-sector organizations to perform tasks in which the direct

and obvious engagement of the government would be counterproductive.’’

Someone mentioned a——

Mr. SHAYS. That seems like a reasonable statement. Do you disagree with that?

Ms. BEERS. By——

Mr. SHAYS. No. That was Ms. Beers’ statement, Secretary Beers’

statement, correct?

Mr. REINHARD. No. This was a statement of the Ian Davis committee saying that the government is not at this moment a credible

messenger. Fawaz Gerges, who is a Middle East expert, Muslim

professor, at Sarah Lawrence said, ‘‘Arabs and Muslims are deeply

attracted to and fascinated with the American idea,’’ but he goes

on to say, ‘‘in the last few years so much focus has been on foreign

relations and on the opposing relations between the United States

and the Arab world.’’

Mr. SHAYS. I’m just trying to understand that. Where is the disagreement that——

Mr. REINHARD. She is saying that the government is a credible

messenger at this time, and I was——

Ms. BEERS. No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying——

Mr. SHAYS. One second. Secretary Beers, I want to just understand it, and then you’ll have plenty of time; and I realize this is

a comment among friends for the most part and people with respect for each other.

What I’m trying to understand is—I’m trying to figure this all

out, and it would help me to know whether it might be subtle differences.

And you can explain what you were saying.

Mr. REINHARD. OK. Someone——

Mr. SHAYS. So what’s your position?

Mr. REINHARD. My position is that the government at this point

in time is not a credible messenger to the Middle East and would

be better advised to provide incentives to other actors, as the previous testimony said.

Mr. SHAYS. What would your position be, Secretary Beers?

Ms. BEERS. Well, we went through this experience with shared

values, which is a series of mini-documentaries, and the only place

we tested it in the form that Keith and I would both agree is substantially well researched, the process went like this: People were

able to see these stories about Muslims in America five or six

times, and in the first wave of exposure they said, ‘‘I don’t believe

you.’’ And it’s a one-sided discussion, very skeptical.

But the second viewing, they were in love with the baker who is

one of the candidates and a young woman who is a TV star in

America. After a bit, they found out that the baker was actually

coming to their country to speak, and it shifted the gears a lot for

them, even though they didn’t go to the meeting. And in the final

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debate, the attitude about the United States and its anti-Muslim

theory was completely diverted.

Now, not by every single person who saw it——

Mr. SHAYS. And this is a government presentation?

Ms. BEERS. And it was clearly—although we said it’s from the

U.S. Government and the people of the United States.

Because we’re from the State Department, we have to explain everything. That was a very artificial situation; and what I think is

important is to understand that underpinning—two things: Underpinning all of the rhetoric about the United States is a very real

curiosity if you can approach it properly.

And the second thing that’s always in my mind is that you can

be in Washington so long, you forget this. If you ask the people in

the Muslim countries what are the No. 1, two and three things in

their lives, they never mention foreign policy. What they talk about

is my faith, my family, education for my children and ninth on that

list is foreign affairs.

So I always hold out the hope, since these people are our audiences, that we have a right to engage with them. What I don’t disagree with ever is that we’ll get there faster if we have partners

like Keith’s business circle, which is inspiring, because they’ve

taken the initiative and they can go places we cannot go.

On the other hand, we have to go together sometimes.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me go to Dr. Zaharna.

Dr. ZAHARNA. I want to say I agree with both, a more arching

framework. Yes, Mr. Reinhard said the United States, it is the

messenger and it’s not credible, and that we’re going to have the—

I mean, theoretically, there’s a big problem with that.

But then also public diplomacy is the U.S. Government; that’s its

responsibility. Other people have other parts, but public diplomacy

is inherently the government. I see it as the government’s charge.

But how to work together on that? That’s the thing.

I think the government can do more partnerships and also with

local NGO’s, working with international NGO’s. Their most valuable possession is their credibility. If the United States links up

with them, they’re going to be afraid it’s going to affect their credibility. But the United States can get extra mileage if it enhances

the local—works with the local NGO’s on the ground, does capacity-building or anything along that line.

And working with American businesses, linking those two

NGO’s, an American NGO and a foreign NGO, and getting them

to find private funding, such as an American corporation; they

share the problems, they share the rewards, they build the links,

and the United States gets the credibility.

Mr. KNELL. Mr. Chairman, Sesame Workshop is one of those

NGO’s that is trying to do, I guess, a version of public diplomacy

called Muppet diplomacy, where we have been working around the

world now in over 120 countries trying to promote issues around

literacy and numeracy and respect and understanding and health

and hygiene, and we’ve been very active in the Arab world.

We have gotten good support from U.S. Government agencies

like AID, but we’ve also gotten support from other governments,

from Canada, from Holland, from the European Union, to help promote respect and understanding in the West Bank and in Gaza.

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And we are one of those NGO’s, I think, as my colleague said, who

can make a difference.

And I have to tell you that it is about listening. It is about facilitating. Americans, like our group, 300 of us based in New York,

who are working around the world trying to make a difference, it’s

about creative engagement as educators to intervene and promote

universal values. And we have not really in any country in the

world run into a huge obstacle that did not allow us to complete

our mission.

So we are engaged currently. We are in Afghanistan having

dubbed programs——

Mr. SHAYS. My time is up, and Mr. Tierney is here, so I want

to make sure we go on.

I’d like to have a second pass, Mr. Chairman, if I could, but all

I hear you gentlemen saying is that we can’t just depend on public

diplomacy, that the private side can do a tremendous amount to

present a case. But it strikes me that Secretary Beers isn’t suggesting it only be public.

And so, Dr. Zaharna, you are the great conciliator here who has

brought us all together. Thank you for your comments.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TURNER. One of the questions that I have concerning Al

Jazeera relates to the issues of the shared values that have been

discussed, the issue of—so many people who have testified before

us today talk about the concept of shared values and how America

needs to portray more the common bonds and explain its policies.

And I know that we may never agree on the issues of American

policy.

You might, of course, recall that discussion from our second

panel, I read from—you had a September 26, 2003, interview

where you were talking about the causes of September 11th, and

you reflected and said that—you cited the first Iraq war. We call

that the ‘‘liberation of Kuwait,’’ and you referred to it as the ‘‘first

Iraq war.’’ Many of those conflicts of policy we may not agree upon,

but translating those conflicts or policies to global terrorism and

the glorification of death and the suicide bombers and killing of

others is something that I think that we can look to you as having

a responsibility for.

There have been allegations that you’re cooperating with terrorists and terrorist organizations. At a minimum, there’s been, certainly, the allegation that Al Jazeera glorifies the culture of death.

You said you merely reflect the culture which you’re representing, or your market; but I wanted to ask you about, you know,

what is Al Jazeera’s view of its role in global terrorism, where

some view you as a facilitator? What do you view as your responsibility toward real stability in the world?

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. Thank you for your question. First of all, I would

like to distinguish between two things, my own personal views,

such as the one that you read in an interview that I made in September 2003 trying to explain to an interviewer, or an audience,

what I would personally consider reasons or causes that may express the right to find for September 11.

Going back to the Gulf war of 1991, or the liberation of the Kuwait war, or the first Iraq war, there are so many names of it, so

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if I choose one, it does not mean in any way eliminating the other

or, again, as to another title for that war.

And between that, my personal views that I can indulge in, if

you would like me to speak about it, Al Jazeera itself, that is a station that is committed to presenting both sides of the story in any

event, in covering the Arab-Israeli conflict. As I mentioned, we

have Israeli officials, Israeli commentators speak, and we have Palestinians, regardless of their affiliation, also speak on the war

against terrorism or the al Qaeda issue.

We also allowed videotapes or statements made from people related to al Qaeda, as well as we are covering live and extensively—

almost, I would say, more than 400 to 500 hours of President

Bush’s speeches, live, carried on Al Jazeera since September 11.

If you maybe count all of Al Jazeera broadcasts since September

11 of the bin Laden tapes, it might not be more than 5 hours in

all its entirety, but people, of course, I would understand that they

would say Al Jazeera, bin Laden, because they only heard the tape

on Al Jazeera, but for them President Bush is available everywhere, so why should they mention Al Jazeera on it? The same

way that people would say that the bomber manifesto was in the

New York Times, that does not in any way mean that New York

Times was collaborating with the bomber or trying to promote

ideas of terrorists or the publisher of Timothy McVeigh’s book

about why did he do the terrible things in Oklahoma.

And by the way, Timothy McVeigh was a soldier in Iraq in the

first Iraq war, or the 1991 war, and I believe at some point in his

book mentioned that he learned how it’s easy to kill people during

that war.

The Washington sniper was a veteran or someone who was in the

1991 war, and when I mentioned the 1991 war, I mentioned that

also the violence and the war creates violence and destabilization,

and that could be one of the reasons.

If you would like me to focus on one thing, I would like to say

that just the message and the mission of Al Jazeera is represented

very clearly in our motto, ‘‘the opinion and the other opinion,’’ or

the opposite opinion, and we have been faithful to that. And also

we have been criticized harshly, first in the region and now in the

United States—or after September 11, the United States—for that

reason, bringing both sides of the story and asking people, please

do not shoot the messenger if you don’t like the message.

Mr. TURNER. Secretary Beers, the shared-values programming

that you had put together is an attempt to communicate, if you

will, a relationship and include, of course, an antiterror message or

antiterror goal.

Our committee has information that Al Jazeera refused to carry

those. Is that correct or is that inaccurate?

Ms. BEERS. Well, I think what happened is—I’m sorry to repeat

this, but the word came back to me that Al Jazeera had moved

their rate up to double the normal rate because it was ‘‘hazardous

material’’—I’m not sure it was put quite like that—and we were refused in a number of governments. But in this case, I think it was,

we fought the very disproportionate rate and we had it covered

with some other networks. So I think we didn’t go on it.

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I’m not so sure that they said ‘‘no’’ to us, and I’m working from

a memory there. Perhaps you know.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. May I comment on that?

Mr. TURNER. Please.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. Because it came to our attention that complaint

from a colleague at the State Department working in public diplomacy, and at that time there was a visit by the general manager

of Al Jazeera in Washington, and when he heard that, he was outraged and made some phone calls.

We found out that the person that was contacted, the advertising

agent in the region, who was the one who told the people who carried the advertisement that ‘‘I could buy for you more time on Al

Jazeera for that money’’ and convinced them not to go to Al

Jazeera, but they could get more time for their money than going

to Al Jazeera, but not Al Jazeera declined it.

Al Jazeera actually until now put in advertisement that I would

say even glorified or put very positive spin on the Iraqi interim

constitution, or interim law, many other things; and we are welcome even if someone would like to bring these ads back. We’ll welcome them, but I think they might need to be updated, because

some of the people featured in these ads, I believe, have been harassed by FBI agents or had some bad experience after September

11. So maybe they need to update it.

Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Secretary Beers, you look like you’re wanting to

comment.

Ms. BEERS. No. I’m just sorry. I didn’t know what he said about

the FBI agent.

Mr. TURNER. Do you want to expound on that?

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. I’m saying that the more also we promote the stories of Arab Americans, and we do promote these stories—last

Thanksgiving, for example, I host a talk show from Washington,

and in that talk show, I brought a story of in Wayne, Michigan,

which I said, let’s do news on Thanksgiving in America, let’s explain that this guy won a mayoral election while he had only two

Arab American families in Wayne, Michigan, and that was in November 2001, immediately after September 11, yet people in Wayne

choose this guy. So we are not short of putting positive things in

America.

But the problem also that you follow, what happened to Arab

Americans. Since the last 2 months, the FBI has been rounding

and meeting and interviewing Arab Americans, just to interview

them, ask about their views, their religious beliefs; and the excuse

for that has been in order—just to remind people that we are there

or collect information as preventive measures.

These things also does affect American image, as well as the

Census Bureau when they were asked by the Homeland Security

to give us information about all the Arabs living in a ZIP code,

more than 1,000 Arabs in any one ZIP code that have more than

1,000 Arabs, give us the names, and that was a reminder for people

to what happened in World War II. And thanks to Homeland Security people, the civil rights officer was in Al Jazeera in my show

and explained things. And I believe they promised to correct the

matter.

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So sometimes the experience of Arab Americans has to be reflected in order to give credibility to the message, but if it’s on an

advertisement, we don’t have to ask you to do whatever. We will

broadcast it as advertisement.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses

for their testimony.

There are some who say that no matter how good we get at public diplomacy, or think we are getting at it, that we won’t be really

good at it in this area of the world unless we learn to listen better,

enhance listening skills.

Would each of you tell me whether or not you think that the

United States is, in fact, listening to people in this region of the

world? If not, how would we enhance those skills and proceed from

there? We’ll start with Mr. Al-Mirazi.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. As I mentioned, the interaction is very important. It’s very important to engage U.S. policymakers in Arab

media interviews and in talking to the Arab people, because it

gives them a chance in order to answer questions, to take questions.

And that is pretty important just not to make it a monologue, because we carry a lot of press conferences as monologue. But in

order to answer questions and to be sincere, maybe to take it back

and digest it and in a weekly meeting say we heard that and we

couldn’t have an answer, a good answer. And just give the example

of the Homeland Security or the Census Bureau. We had someone

from Homeland Security. The second day, immediately, we had a

meeting with Arab Americans and they almost like regret what

happened, and said that has to be corrected in a very sensitive

manner in the future.

I think as you mentioned, sir, listening is very important. And

as we are talking about review of U.S. intelligence, review of many

other things, I think review of U.S. foreign policy in the region is

important. And we should not deal with foreign policy as if it is

something on the side. Foreign policy means a domestic policy for

people who are at the receiving end in the Middle East, whether

they are Iraqis or Palestinians or Egyptians.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Doctor.

Dr. ZAHARNA. Are we listening? No. Because if we were—there

is one thing in all of this. The Palestinian Israeli keeps coming up,

and now the situation in Iraq, and Najaf now, what is going on in

the religious site. Before, there was the superpower rivalry and

there was the nuclear threat and everybody looked at that. Now

that is gone, these foreign policy issues have become like the glaring spotlight. And if we were listening, we would have heard and

done things maybe differently.

And if we have a security problem here in the United States,

America’s allies in the region are sitting on a more dangerous security problem by not addressing the foreign policy issues.

Mr. TIERNEY. What do you think we would have heard?

Dr. ZAHARNA. What we would have learned?

Mr. TIERNEY. What we would have heard if we were listening.

Dr. ZAHARNA. Oh, my goodness, the military in the region. The

American military, these are the young—this was America’s best

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face. Young American people being in the region. And some of the

actions that were conducted out of cultural ignorance and cultural

sensitivity have tarnished and bruised more than anything. And

that is the biggest thing. They are the face of the American public

diplomacy.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Reinhard.

Mr. REINHARD. We talked to people on the streets in 130 countries. And this was a question—leading the witness obviously, because we asked them for advice on what they would give to Americans traveling abroad. But the two most frequently recurring words

were ‘‘listen’’ and ‘‘respect.’’ And some of the quotes: Learn to listen

instead of talking all the time. And then they went on to say, and

if you must talk all the time, would you please lower the volume.

Stop comparing everything we do to the way you do it. If you can’t

stop talking, turn down the volume, I mentioned. You might try

learning a few words in our language. The Superbowl does not

mean much to us. If we had an athletic competition called the

World Series, it would occur to us to invite other nations, and on

and on.

And then, some verbatims about the negative perceptions. The

ones I had on the screen about the insensitivity to cultural differences and the supreme arrogance which kept coming through

was that our assumption is that they want to be exactly like us.

I think one of our—I am in the advertising business and one of our

big multinational clients spends $30 million on research. That is no

human resources, no capital, just $30 million on research around

the world to win friends for their brand.

I believe the Federal Government spends something like $5 million.

Mr. KNELL. We can listen better and unleash creativity more. I

think we can connect around children. This is not just a news pingpong match, even though it sometimes turns out that way. Education and culture as was mentioned before is really important. In

Egypt, when we did Alam Simsim the Egyptian ‘‘Sesame Street,’’

this is a local show. They chose to promote girls’ education and

health and hygiene. That was not us dictating to them. And in the

West Bank, our Palestinian partners tell us that the biggest problem for the average person is boredom. They are unemployed. They

cannot leave their houses. They’re blockaded from traveling to visit

relatives.

So what are they doing? They are watching television. What are

they watching? We have heard about some of that today. So being

able to give them some of the resources and the technology to promote positive values about their own cultures and self-esteem and

to create empathy is something that we are doing and other people

are trying to do. And I would encourage the committee to think

about how our government can help promote some of those things

in the private sector moving forward.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Secretary Beers.

Ms. BEERS. In the goals that I started with, which I think is

modest compared to how we would like to approach our relationship with the Middle East, I talk about mutual understanding. And

you really can’t get there unless you have a reasonable comprehenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:33 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00217 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98211.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sion and empathy with whom you are attempting to speak. And

this is kind of a golden rule for all communication.

But in addition to understanding that, you have to be prepared

for some kinds of action, some kinds of programs or exchanges that

activate. That is why I like so much the picture of the teenager in

Cairo being able to talk to whomever he chooses in Idaho. Because

what happens there has its own chemistry. And it is not so artificial. I know that any program we put together, whether it is in the

private sector or something the government manages to put on the

table that is people to people, there is a kind of kinetic energy and

chemistry that takes place there.

So it is listening and also being prepared to take part in a responsible exchange and action.

Mr. TIERNEY. I take somewhat from this there is general agreement on the panel that the Commission’s report recommending

that we rebuild scholarship exchange and library programs reaching out to young people is right on the money. General agreement

on that? Not?

Ms. BEERS. No, I’m sorry, I do agree with those things. They are

vital, and that is why we are always quoting to you how many people in the world affairs came and studied here and now they are

leaders. We’re doing a very good job with the elite and leaders. But

you can’t stop there. I am concerned that you will think we mean

just expand those programs.

In my mind, if you can’t take those ideas of education, school,

using the local television just like Sesame has done, you are not

going to get enough reach nor will you make enough impact. So it

is a modification.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. I accept that. Anybody else?

Mr. REINHARD. I would second that. And I would also add that

in your invitation you quoted from the 9/11 report that bin Laden

has nothing to offer but death and violence, and we have to offer

hope of a brighter future. I would respectfully suggest that bin

Laden has quite a bit to offer to these people, which is the word

we kept hearing in our listening: respect and dignity. Which he can

grant. And if we can take our vision of hope and a brighter future

and make it real, as Secretary Beers and Mr. Knell said, by building bridges through this shared value of learning and education,

that would be a very, very good place to start.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, you had an interjection

you wanted to make? I yield.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you for yielding, but it has changed. Is that

all right? What you said to me is stunning in a way, but, regretfully, very true. And I would love to get Al-Jazeera’s take on this

as well. When I was in Iraq, I had more Iraqis say, ‘‘Thank you

for getting rid of Saddam Hussein,’’ and ‘‘When are you leaving?’’

in the same sentence. There is this wonderful poll that said twothirds wanted us to stay and two-thirds wanted us to leave.

But what struck me was—and it seemed reasonable, when you

think about it, is reasonable. We did not want it to be a French

revolution. In our Revolutionary War, we wanted it to be the American Revolution. So I found that they were very proud people.

The little things that we did that we think were inconsequential

were huge to them. And then all these wonderful things we did just

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seemed meaningless. I think that you have done something—you’ve

got the first criticism of this report that I basically can accept. Because your comment was ‘‘the only thing he has to offer is,’’ and

I accepted that and I believe it on one level. But on another level,

he promises them something that they don’t seem to feel from us,

and that is dignity and respect. People were willing to lose their

lives for that, which is obscene to me.

What is your take on this as you hear this, Mr. Al-Mirazi?

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. Mr. Chairman, if we would look to criticizing the

whole report, I would also mention that there is a failure when it

comes to United States help and details of United States help to

al Qaeda or the founders of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The people

who originated it, who used to be called in the Arab world the Arab

Afghanis, the people who fought the Afghani war against the Russians. And the report just mentioned very passing sentences about

the United States, Pakistan, and Saudis.

Mr. SHAYS. You would like to be very clear. In other words, we

supported the very elements that—OK.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. Exactly. Exactly, sir. And that is the need for a

review of U.S. foreign policy, not just to say that we need more

scholarships. That is nice. That is important. We can’t say that

scholarships are not going to be helpful. Of course it will. But the

damage is still there. And during the cold war and Voice of America that I did work for before, and other in the United States, the

Saudi Arabia role has been mentioned that they were only involved

in building mosques in the former Yugoslavia. Yes, they were

building mosques with the help of the United States. They were

distributing copies of the holy Koran with the support of the

United States because they were trying to beat communism and

they were helping and supporting fundamentalism in the Arab

world.

Someone quoted Mr. Casey, Bill Casey of the CIA, the CIA Director, as saying the more fundamentalists they give me in Afghanistan the better, because they kill more communists.

So we supported that brand. The United States supported that

brand. The United States used the Islamic religion in order to conquer the Soviet Union, and now we are talking about madrassa.

Madrassa, by the way, just means a school in Arabic. It is a religious schools. And when people in the Arab and the Muslim world

hear U.S. officials attacking madrassa just by the word madrassa,

it means for them as if someone is attacking in the Arab world

Christian schools or charter schools.

So we also have to find out exactly what do we mean and what

exactly are we talking about. And let’s compare. The Palestinians

have raised that issue before, when we told them we need to look

into hatred in your textbooks. And many people said we would like

to look into hatred not only in Palestinian textbooks and Israeli

textbooks, but look into hatred or antiIslamic statements in the

U.S. media as well as in the Arab media, or the other way around.

This comprehensive view, the clear condemnation of both killing

any innocent, whether that innocent is a Palestinian or that innocent is an Israeli, is very helpful. Be consistent. And as to the values of the United States, I don’t think that the Arabs or the Muslims have different values than the Americans. These are human

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values. People have taken every generation and adding to it and

enhancing to it.

So if we stand for liberty and justice for all, the Palestinians will

tell you, how about liberty for us? Why it was not difficult for you

to keep Iraq occupation for 8 months under Saddam and it is fine

for to you keep Israeli occupation for more than 56 years. And you

have to find answers for them.

And this is what we are talking about. Engaging in dialog and

really sitting down and reevaluating U.S. foreign policy toward the

Arab and Muslim world. Not because of September 11, but just because we need it.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Did you want to make a comment?

Dr. ZAHARNA. What Mr. Reinhard brought up about the appeal

of bin Laden.

Mr. SHAYS. It is my intention to end this hearing in 5 minutes.

Dr. ZAHARNA. Oh, I am done.

Mr. SHAYS. No, no, it is just that I want people to know so they

can judge their time and so on. But I want you to say whatever

you want, and I want other people to as well.

Dr. ZAHARNA. Islam, when he put what does he have to appeal

and he said human dignity and respect, it hit me today, I thought

this thing from the Council of Muslim is very important. Bin Laden

is getting a lot of mileage by the United States calling it Islamism.

Because Islam is my religion also and I have read a ton of reports.

I can’t distinguish between Islamism, fundamentalism, and extremism. It is the same. And no matter how you slice it or dice it, they

will hear it that way.

Mr. SHAYS. What do you call it? You can’t call it——

Dr. ZAHARNA. I think the Commission did a great thing by narrowing from terrorism to al Qaeda and then get it away from religion. And I have read a lot of reports, too, in the Arab world and

the Muslim world they are not distinguishing it either. It’s an important thing.

Mr. SHAYS. The reality is, it is not Japanese.

Dr. ZAHARNA. Japan is a country.

Mr. SHAYS. It is not Hindus that are basically attacking the

United States right now. It is a particular group that is very narrow among a particular religious belief. And you know, that is the

reality. That is what it is. You are saying in facing reality, it is offensive.

Dr. ZAHARNA. He is getting mileage from it. And as the 9/11

Commission said several, several times it is a very, very small

group. The Commission did a great job by taking terrorism and

narrowing it. The more we can narrow it, the stronger that is going

to be. And they debate it but it just hit me today, this does get him

a lot of mileage.

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough. And it is important for us to know that.

Go ahead. If you have something to contribute, the last thing I

want to do is stop you. What else did you want to say?

Dr. ZAHARNA. That is it.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. Just to second what she said, I know it is easier

for an audience to identify with something. But it is also risky and

we have to consider that. I heard a lot of feedback, negative one

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when the word Islamic and Islamic terrorist were put in the Commission. We cut live to the Commission when they finished reporting it and using words like ‘‘al Qaeda’’ or ‘‘bin Laden followers’’ or

something like that, it is clear. The same way we are talking about

the IRA, not the Catholic Irish, regardless of how many Catholic

Irish would identify with the IRA. But we say it is the IRA and

I think it is very important to do that. Because you have also Jewish terrorists who are on the list of terrorist organizations of the

State Department, but we do not use that.

Mr. SHAYS. And I agree with what you are saying, yet I wrestle

with this. They use as their basis their Islamic faith.

Dr. ZAHARNA. And the United States is giving them extra mileage.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. And Muslims in Nigeria, for example, saying

Muslims. So people in Nigeria understand it, and people in the

Arab world understand and they can distinguish Islamists, Because

those people carry the Islamic banner. But when you take it to a

Western audience and send it back to the Arab world or the Muslim world, it would sound for them as if you were talking about the

whole Islam. But if it is indigenous, people say Islamists, Islamist

does not mean Muslim, but it would be lost in translation.

Mr. SHAYS. It is absolutely essential we know what it means.

And if we are going to talk about winning hearts and minds, and

that’s what it means, however helpful it may mean to us, it is often

going to have a huge negative. Would you have any comment on

this, Secretary Beers?

Ms. BEERS. I think that we tried to be very careful about that

word and we have used sometimes the word ‘‘radical’’ as a way of

defining the extreme end that happens in any religious endeavor.

There is always a small group at the very end of it that are more

radical and create a different response to the whole religious practice. I do not have a solution, and I don’t know what anyone would

offer us in a way of a proper word.

Dr. ZAHARNA. A political name?

Ms. BEERS. Just a name we can use in communication.

Mr. SHAYS. The bottom line is you have told us what we can’t

do; I am not sure what we can do, and that is basically your point.

One of the values of the Commission was that we need to know

who we consider the terrorists and what do we call them, and I am

guilty of saying a war on terror, and as one commissioner said, that

is like taking Pearl Harbor and saying a war against the Zero airplane, which was the vehicle through which Pearl Harbor was implemented, the use of that aircraft. But I do not say a war on Zeroes.

So it is something, I guess, that we are all going to have to sort

out: What is the name that means something that is helpful to us

in knowing who ultimately we have to deal with, but doing it in

a way that does not come across to an entire world population as

a huge negative. Anyway.

Do you have any last questions? Is there anything you would like

to put on the record? Any of you? Yes?

Ms. BEERS. Outside the debate we had about when to activate

the government as messenger, I would like to say for the record

that Keith Reinhard, whom I have known him for 35 years.

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Mr. REINHARD. And I have known you for 35 years.

Mr. SHAYS. Maybe there is something you want to keep private

here.

Mr. KNELL. Sesame Street is in the middle.

Ms. BEERS. This is not easy to be interrupted. I am trying to say

something good about him. I have never succeeded yet. For the

record, Mr. Reinhard has provided the most remarkable leadership

I have ever seen in that organization that came to life under his

jurisdiction about a year and a half ago. These people did not exist.

He brought together the most elite team imaginable. There are people who do not have time to do anything, and they show up and

they work with him and they are going to do something remarkable

on behalf of our country. And I just hope they get the recognition

about that.

Mr. SHAYS. Secretary Beers, let me just say to you that your

service to our country, and your contribution to this committee, is

very appreciated. You have been a wonderful servant to America,

and we appreciate it more than you can imagine.

Ms. BEERS. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like to ask if anyone else has any comment?

Mr. REINHARD. One thing. I actually had three pages about how

highly I regard Secretary Beers, but in the interest of time I will

just publish that for you.

Mr. SHAYS. You sound a little bit not sincere.

Mr. REINHARD. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Ms. BEERS. We met in church. He would have to be.

Mr. REINHARD. We are very close friends. We were talking about

listening and we have also been talking about messages. And the

best advice I ever received on the subject is, you don’t learn anything by talking. And I really think we have to keep that in mind.

And what Professor Zurgis, how he envisages this. He talked

about the floating bloc of young people in Iran. And according to

him, they haven’t made up their mind yet whether to buy the

mullah’s brand or the Western brand. It is essential that we make

our ideas, which stem from their needs, their shared values, sensible to them, however we do that.

And the last thing I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, is a quote

from one of our young staffers in Cairo. And I believe that he gives

us really good advice for a mind-set that we should bring to this

discussion. He says, in investment America must be presented as

the facilitator, not the patron. In the realm of charity, as the partner, not the philanthropist. And in business endeavors, as the courier of progress, and not the preachers of Westernization.

If we can all become couriers of progress, I think we will make

great progress for our country.

Mr. SHAYS. That is a nice way to end up. I would be happy to

have both of you make a comment if you would like.

Dr. ZAHARNA. Thank you.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. The first thing I would hope and renew my request for interviews for Al-Jazeera with the three of you, and we

would be grateful and glad. That would help promote United States

and articulate U.S. policies and U.S. views to the Arab world with

no expense to taxpayers, unlike Alhurra Television.

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And just to correct for the record, in the previous panel we were

criticized by one of the speakers and the panelists as comparing AlJazeera to the National Enquirer. The harshest critics of AlJazeera compared it to Fox News, but here I got emotional being

compared to National Enquirer.

Mr. SHAYS. This is the first time I have seen you smile today.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. Thank you. Let me just for the record—and I

would like anyone to have the commission, independent commission to compare Al-Jazeera Washington Bureau coverage of U.S.

foreign policy and U.S. policies in general compared to the U.S.

Alhurra Television. We have started since the primaries in January, a weekly 1-hour election show to explain to our audience every

Tuesday and rerun twice again what the U.S. political system

means.

Mr. SHAYS. You are actually able to explain that? I should watch.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. And Alhurra just started like 2 weeks to go do

something like us to follow.

Mr. SHAYS. Competition is good. You took the lead and they are

following. The one thing I have been encouraging our government

to have Alhurra, but I think it will help you be better and them

be better. They only have credibility if they tell the truth. And

what I had is one or two individuals call me up from the media,

criticizing something that they were doing that seemed

antiAmerican. And I said if that is what happened, that needs to

be said for their credibility. They had people on the program that

others wondered whether they should have on the program. I realize there are a lot of questions.

Mr. AL-MIRAZI. And I agree with you, sir. The more the merrier,

and it is not a zero-sum game. Funding Alhurra doesn’t mean

you’re cutting Al-Jazeera or the other media.

Mr. SHAYS. We are looking forward to a continued dialog, and

you all helped us understand all of this better. And ultimately this,

if not more, certainly equal to all the other efforts that we have in

our government. We are not going to succeed unless we do better

with public diplomacy and also improve our public policy.

Thank you all very much. This hearing is adjourned without a

gavel.

[Whereupon, at 5:30 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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