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IS AMERICA’S OVERSEAS BROADCASTING

UNDERMINING OUR NATIONAL INTEREST AND

THE FIGHT AGAINST TYRANNICAL REGIMES?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND 

INVESTIGATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 6, 2011

Serial No. 112–13

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

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

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

RON PAUL, Texas 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

DAVID RIVERA, Florida 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina 

VACANT 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

DENNIS CARDOZA, California 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

FREDERICA WILSON, Florida 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

YLEEM D.S. POBLETE, Staff Director 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

RON PAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID RIVERA, Florida 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

KAREN BASS, California 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable S. Enders Wimbush, Board Member, Broadcasting Board of 

Governors .............................................................................................................. 6

Ms. Jennifer Park Stout, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of 

East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. Department of State ............................... 19

Mr. Philo L. Dibble, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Near 

Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State ........................................................ 25

Mr. Amir Fakhravar, general secretary, Confederation of Iranian Students ..... 31

Shiyu Zhou, Ph.D., vice president, New Tang Dynasty Television ..................... 38

John Lenczowski, Ph.D., president, Institute of World Politics ........................... 43

Mr. Robert Reilly, former director, Voice of America ........................................... 55

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable S. Enders Wimbush: Prepared statement ................................... 8

Ms. Jennifer Park Stout: Prepared statement ...................................................... 22

Mr. Philo L. Dibble: Prepared statement .............................................................. 27

Mr. Amir Fakhravar: Prepared statement ............................................................ 34

Shiyu Zhou, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ................................................................ 40

John Lenczowski, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ....................................................... 46

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 78

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 80

Mr. Robert Reilly: Prepared statement and material submitted for the record . 81

(1)

IS AMERICA’S OVERSEAS BROADCASTING UNDERMINING OUR NATIONAL INTEREST AND 

THE FIGHT AGAINST TYRANNICAL REGIMES? 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2011

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS, 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:50 p.m., in room 

2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana Rohrabacher 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Good morning. Except it is not morning. 

Good afternoon, everyone. And I want to thank the ranking member, who isn’t here, and he will be here, and I will thank him when 

he gets here, and the other members of the subcommittee who have 

joined us here. And I also want to thank the witnesses for coming 

today. 

I have called this hearing to investigate one of the greatest failures in recent American foreign policy, and that is to define and 

follow a strategic communications strategy. As I was going through 

my background, when I said I worked at the White House, obviously most of you know I was one of President Reagan’s speech 

writers. And a communications strategy—I was actually on the 

scene to witness Reagan change the world. 

Today I would like to talk about this, a strategic and lack of, perhaps, a strategic communication strategy, and I would like to talk 

about this in the context of two of America’s most dangerous enemies, Iran and Communist China. First and foremost, American 

strategic—Russ, come right on. Sorry I started without you, but we 

did wait for you. Honest we did. 

First and foremost, American strategic communications and public diplomacy should seek to promote the national interests of the 

United States through informing and influencing foreign audiences. 

This is often referred to as the war of ideas. The role and responsibilities of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, that is the BBG, 

is not only journalism. I was a journalist before. While I was doing 

all those crazy things, I was earning a living being a journalist. 

That is not the only job for the Broadcasting Board of Governors. 

The BBG is critical to our national security effort, and not just to 

a journalism and a journalistic effort. 

While much is said about how new technology—Internet, social 

networks, Twitter—is bringing the world together and empowering 

2

the general public, not much is being said about the messages 

being carried along these new information conduits. It is often assumed that these messages are being dominated by people who believe in freedom and would liberate the country from tyranny, yet 

the dictatorial regimes of Communist China and Iran are currently 

controlling and manipulating the flow of information in their countries and about their countries. 

During the Cold War I worked in the White House when President Reagan ordered a massive infusion of funds to help Radio 

Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Reagan knew the utility of public 

diplomacy, and he used it artfully. Lech Walesa, leader of the Solidarity freedom movement, and later the President of Poland, remarked on the value of U.S. Radio broadcasting by saying of its importance, ‘‘it cannot be described. Would there be Earth without a 

sun?’’

Could the BBG’s programming today have that same level of significance and importance to the modern Lech Walesas of Iran and 

China? Is our programming helping or undermining freedom movements in those dictatorships? 

During the Cold War we defined the Soviet Union as the enemy, 

and under Reagan’s leadership we set out to defeat it. If the Communist Chinese Party is to be defeated without us suffering war, 

not just us but them suffering war, as Reagan ended the Cold War 

without a confrontation, a conflict directly between the Soviet 

Union and the United States, we must have the same level of commitment to broadcasting our message and the freedom message, 

and we need to energize public diplomacy. 

Recently it was announced that the Voice of America will lay off 

over half of its Mandarin language broadcasters, a reduction of 45 

Chinese journalists. The BBG proposes to eliminate Voice of America’s daily 12-hour Chinese radio and television broadcasting next 

year. This is worrisome. I look forward to hearing our administration witnesses address this point specifically. Is there more behind 

this reduction than merely saving money? The $8 million saved 

will do far more to weaken our efforts in trying to confront a belligerent and dictatorial China than it will to balance our Federal 

budget, that is for sure. 

In Fiscal Year 2012, the BBG has requested over $767 million. 

That is an increase from the $758 million that they were appropriated in Fiscal Year 2010. I might add, being given money this 

year of all years is no small request. We need to make sure that 

it is worth it because we are in the business of cutting down the 

level of deficit spending. So if we spend more, we have got to get 

more. And the gutting of the VOA’s China service does not seem 

to fit into this criteria. At the same time, China is spending lavishly. The Chinese regime has dished out over $7 billion over the 

last 2 years on its propaganda, this as we are slashing our communications effort. 

I seriously question the wisdom of the BBG’s recent decision to 

switch from short-wave radio broadcasting to an Internet-based 

service. This new approach will be much more vulnerable to the 

type of Internet controls and monitoring that the Chinese Communist Party has been perfecting for the last few years. 

3

As the U.S. has retreated from short-wave radio, the Communist 

China Radio International has expanded, tripling its English 

broadcasting since 2000 and going from using 150 frequencies to 

over 280 frequencies. Obviously short-wave is working for someone 

if they are expanding that way. As we are about to lay off over half 

of VOA’s Mandarin language workforce, the official propaganda 

arm of the Chinese Communist Party is aggressively expanding 

and opening an office in downtown Manhattan. 

Unfortunately, the problems with U.S. public diplomacy extend 

well beyond China. Promoting democracy in Iran has been an official U.S. policy since the Iran Freedom Support Act was passed in 

2006, though American broadcasts to Iran, of course, started much 

earlier than that date. 

Radio Farda and the VOA’s Persian News Network have in the 

past used Iranian Government sources for their reporting. Giving 

air time to the Iranian Government is a misguided effort perhaps 

to have some kind of journalistic balance. Well, the American taxpayers are not and should not be funding an effort to give a balance to the mullahs’ repressive views. This is less of a problem for 

Radio Farda, since they spend the majority of their time and resources playing music, not talking about issues or informing the 

Iranian people. 

It is disturbing to learn of the BBG’s slowness in reporting information about the violence that the Iranian mullahs unleashed 

against the Green movement when it was protesting the stealing 

of Iran’s elections back in 2009. And so at the same time we are 

trying to give balance to views, we are slow at reporting the type 

of negative things that they are doing. Certainly this is not the 

kind of record that best serves America’s national interest. 

Recognizing these problems, I am a strong supporter of U.S. diplomacy, and I believe we need more of it and not less of it. But 

it needs to be reformed, and it needs to be energized and properly 

directed. America needs an up-to-date national communications 

strategy that reflects our values, ideals and our national interests. 

U.S. broadcasting must commit itself to this. 

Perhaps background checks or more training of BBG employees 

is in order here. We will discuss that. But I am sure—and I am 

sure our distinguished witnesses, will have some ideas how to improve U.S. strategic communications, and I am looking forward to 

hearing them. 

To explain the issues today, we have a number of witnesses who 

I will introduce after my ranking member Mr. Carnahan proceeds 

with his opening statement. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to start off by 

congratulating you again on being chairman of the subcommittee. 

I enjoyed working with you on the subcommittee in the past and 

look forward to working with you as ranking member in this upcoming session. Also, I know, as you said, that you are a strong 

supporter of U.S. diplomacy to be sure that we are doing it in the 

most effective way, and I join you in that commitment. And thank 

you for holding this hearing. 

Taking a critical look on how we are conducting public diplomacy 

and strategic communications abroad is a great start for the subcommittee. Public diplomacy programs are a critical and indispenVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:51 May 31, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\OI\040611\65628 HFA PsN: SHIRL
4

sable component of U.S. foreign policy. From exchange programs to 

international broadcasting to strategic communications, public diplomacy is not only an effective component of U.S. foreign policy, 

it can and it should also be cost-effective. 

I commend Under Secretary of State Judith McHale for her new 

Strategic Framework for Public Diplomacy that she released this 

year. While there are enormous challenges facing how we conduct 

public diplomacy, I would highlight that her pointing out the need 

to reach populations that are underserved by U.S. engagement, 

such as women and young people, is especially critical. I held a 

subcommittee hearing last year on women’s empowerment in the 

political process. That hearing showed the impact that empowering 

women can have on increasing stability in many countries. 

Regarding the youth population, we need to look no further than 

recent events in the Middle East and North Africa to see not only 

the need to reach this huge group of people, but also the great 

promise it can have, and particularly their use and engagement of 

new social media. I will be especially interested to hear about these 

points from our witnesses today. 

All five of the strategic imperatives laid out in this initiative 

have great merit, but I want to make a few comments about the 

second that seeks to ‘‘expand and strengthen people-to-people relationships.’’ The value of human interaction has some of the highest 

impact of our foreign policy. One of those is our student exchange 

programs. Both Americans abroad to show others firsthand who we 

are as a country, as well as those coming from other countries here 

to learn American values are invaluable. I was very pleased when 

Secretary Clinton indicated her commitment to these programs 

when she testified before the full committee last month, and I will 

continue to encourage the administration to support these types of 

programs going forward. 

As I have stated before in this subcommittee, my district is home 

to one of the largest Bosnian American populations in the country. 

I often hear from them about the value of U.S. broadcasting to Bosnia. Many of them watch Voice of America on line or via satellite. 

This type of programming has enormous value, both here and 

abroad. It continues to reinforce American values to diasporas like 

the Bosnians in my district who stay active in their home countries. We need to continue engagement in all possible ways. I look 

forward to hearing about how we can continue these efforts in the 

most effective way. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you. 

Our witnesses today, I would ask if you could, if you do, if you 

can, limit your remarks to 5 minutes, and then we will put the rest 

into the record, and we will then proceed to have a question-andanswer session. 

With us today we have—and we are a little mixed up because I 

got everybody up here so we could have one session of questions. 

To explain these issues today we have Deputy Assistant Secretary 

of State Jennifer Stout. Pardon me, I could not read your thing 

from here, and you were supposed to be there, but that is okay. We 

will work this out. Jennifer Stout, responsible for public diplomacy 

and public affairs in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. 

5

Ms. Stout worked here on Capitol Hill for over 11 years before 

going to the State Department, and was then, before that, a staffer 

to Senators Biden and Leahy. She holds an M.A. from George 

Washington University. 

And next we have Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, 

Philo Dibble, who is a retired senior Foreign Service officer—where 

are you? There. Okay—who has been overseas on many overseas 

assignments, especially the Middle East. He has a master’s degree 

from Johns Hopkins University. 

From the Broadcasting Board of Governors we have with us 

Enders Wimbush and Michael Meehan. Of course, Mr. Wimbush is 

a senior vice president at Hudson Institute. And from 1987 to 1993, 

he served and did a great job as director of Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany. And Mr. Meehan is president of the Blue Line 

Strategic Communications, and over the past two decades has 

served in senior roles for Senators Kerry and Boxer in addition to 

others. 

Then we have with us John Lenczowski, or I should say Dr. 

Lenczowski, one of my very good friends from my years in the 

Reagan White House. John was the Director of European and Soviet Affairs at the National Security Council, a man targeted by the 

Soviets, but stood firm. And we were always proud of the good 

work that he was doing there, and a man who I think can at the 

end of his career feel very satisfied that he helped end the Cold 

War. And today he is the founder and president of the Institute for 

World Politics and International Affairs Graduate School here in 

Washington, DC. 

Another friend of mine from the Reagan years, Robert Reilly, 

who was a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and then 

went on to become director of the Voice of America. During the Iraq 

war he was a senior advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Information 

and a senior advisor for information strategy to the Secretary of 

Defense. 

And we also have with us Amir—please pronounce it. 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. Fakhravar. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. Fakhravar. 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. That is okay. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. There you go. Can you pronounce Rohrabacher? 

And we are very happy to have him with us today. He was a 

writer and journalist inside Iran, who was jailed by the regime for 

opposing their despotic and violent ways. After spending 5 years in 

prison, he came to the United States in 2006 and founded the Confederation of Iranian Students to work to create a free Iran. 

Then we have with us Mr. Shiyu Zhou. There you are. Okay. And 

he is executive vice president of the New Tang Dynasty Television, 

the only U.S.-based, independent Chinese-language TV network 

broadcasting into China. Mr. Zhou is a Ph.D. and formerly a computer scientist at the Mathematical Science Research Center at 

Bell Labs. 

I would like to ask the witnesses to summarize for 5 minutes 

each. The order will be Mr. Enders Wimbush first, then Ms. Stout, 

then Mr. Dibble, and then the gentleman who I can’t pronounce his 

name. 

6

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. Fakhravar. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. There he is. You are next. 

And then Mr. Zhou. And then Mr. Lenczowski and Mr. Reilly. 

Did I forget anybody? No. Okay. 

So may we start with Mr. Enders Wimbush. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE S. ENDERS WIMBUSH, 

BOARD MEMBER, BROADCASTING BOARD OF GOVERNORS 

Mr. WIMBUSH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. It is a pleasure to be here to discuss something that has 

been part of my professional thinking for my entire professional 

life. I would like to, Mr. Chairman, submit my full testimony for 

the record and proceed with even abbreviated remarks. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Without objection. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. Thank you. 

The focus today is going to be on Iran and China. I am ready to 

address both issues from the standpoint of the Broadcast Board of 

Governors, but I want to start with a little good-news story that 

has to do with neither, but affects both, and that has to do with 

the recent events in the Middle East. 

Just 2 weeks ago in Tahrir Square, a nascent democratic movement that started in Tunisia blossomed on the streets of Cairo. 

Citizens took to the square to air their political demands and economic demands and their demand for justice and change. 

The Arab-speaking world saw and heard the events unfold 

through reporters from Alhurra Television on the air and on the 

scene 19 hours a day, providing live coverage of these historical 

events. In a flash survey of Cairo and Alexandria during the critical events, 25 percent of respondents, 25 percent of respondents, 

said they used the station to follow the news. These results are 

comparable to international broadcasting’s best success stories during the Cold War. 

At the height of the demonstrations, pro-Mubarak demonstrators 

targeted international journalists. They passed out fliers on the 

street naming Alhurra and saying, we are going to kick you out of 

Egypt. Thugs physically ejected Alhurra’s journalists from their 

Cairo studio, but the journalists immediately found another place, 

and for a significant period of time in Tahrir Square, Alhurra Television was the only network in the world with a live feed coming 

out of Tahrir Square. Alhurra is just one of the—one part of the 

global broadcast enterprise that constitutes U.S. international 

broadcasting. 

It was quoted—Alhurra’s coverage was quoted around the world. 

The leading Pan-Arab newspaper, Al Hayat, wrote that, and I 

quote, ‘‘Alhurra was distinguished for its live and continuous coverage of the protest through its network of correspondents in the 

different European cities.’’

The same news coverage continued in Libya, in Syria, in Bahrain 

and in Yemen. In Libya, a Radio Sawa correspondent, part of the 

Middle East broadcasting network, accompanied the rebels as they 

advanced toward Tripoli. Time.com commented on Alhurra’s positive coverage exposing Yemenis to ‘‘the support of the outside 

world.’’

7

On March 27th, in a cooperative transmission effort with the Department of Defense, direct broadcasts of Radio Sawa were sent 

into Libya on an FM frequency from Commando Solo, an airborne 

transmission platform provided by the United States Air Force. 

Commando Solo will provide approximately 6 hours per day of 

radio transmission from the aircraft. Prior to this breakthrough, 

Radio Sawa was only available in Libya via the Internet streaming 

or satellite broadcast. 

I cite this, Mr. Chairman, to begin my remarks as a reminder to 

all of us that we have some extremely brave people involved in 

international broadcasting, and they do some extremely important 

things in the national interest. 

In broadcasting to Iran today from the Voice of America’s Persian 

News Network and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Radio 

Farda, the BBG has taken this as one of its highest priorities. And 

I will be happy to discuss both our concern of the way things—the 

way we found things, and what we have done to pick things up and 

to get it back on an even keel. 

The Government of Iran, as we know, does what it can to jam 

both the PNN and the Farda broadcasts and to interfere with their 

Internet sites. PNN broadcasts are jammed on satellite. Radio 

Farda’s medium-wave signal has been jammed since shortly after 

its inception. Things haven’t always been perfect in these places, 

but these are pretty good measures of effectiveness. More recently 

Radio Farda was the target of a denial-of-service attack to swamp 

its incoming phone lines and disrupt calls from its audience. 

In China, as in the case with Iran, BBG broadcasts faced substantial transmission hurdles. The BBG is unable to place its programming on any media, any media, in China, despite, as you 

pointed out, Mr. Chairman, the Chinese ability to place their content on media around the world. We are not able to place it on any 

media in China, and the Chinese Government heavily jams our 

radio broadcasts. 

In spite of this, China’s firm control over access to information 

has been increasingly thwarted by the proliferation of cell phones 

and the Internet, and the Internet is particularly worrisome to the 

Chinese and offers opportunities for the BBG and other media to 

reach Chinese citizens. 

Now, I will be happy when I yield in question time to go into the 

specifics of the BBG’s realignment to China, but I need to make a 

couple things clear right at the beginning. We have not given up 

short-wave broadcasting to China. The VOA will not be broadcasting short-wave to China, but Radio Free Asia, which has been 

assigned the best frequencies and the best times, will continue 

broadcasting short-wave to China. Meanwhile, the Voice of America’s very substantial resources will be focused on the Internet, and 

when we have time for some questions, I will tell you precisely why 

we decided on going in this direction. 

But to get to the point, to get to the bottom line, this is a twoprong strategy. It is not the strategy that has been widely portrayed in the media, that the United States is going out of the 

short-wave business in China. It is nothing of the kind. We are continuing legacy short-wave broadcasts to China with one of our most 

powerful and dynamic short-wave broadcasters, and we are reinVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:51 May 31, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\OI\040611\65628 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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vesting in the Internet where the audience is migrating. And I will 

be happy to give you facts and figures on how that audience is migrating into those areas. 

So in conclusion, my time is up. I am ready to answer questions 

and eager to do so. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. You will get the questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wimbush follows:]


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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Ms. Stout. 

STATEMENT OF MS. JENNIFER PARK STOUT, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF EAST ASIAN AND 

PACIFIC AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Ms. STOUT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Carnahan. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and testify before you to discuss about our U.S. diplomacy efforts in China. 

Before I get into my testimony, though, Mr. Chairman, I wanted 

to thank you very much for the comments you made at the outset 

of this hearing regarding the solidarity and support that we are 

showing our Japanese friends and the Government of Japan. On 

Monday will be the 1-month anniversary of the tragic earthquake 

and tsunami, and so our thoughts are very much still with the Japanese as they go through this recovery. So thank you for those comments. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. You know what the greatest thing about 

being a Congressman is you can say things that are really important like that and that are weighing on your heart, and you can 

express them, and the message might even get through to some of 

the people in Japan. So you didn’t need to thank me, but I appreciate that. Go ahead. 

Ms. STOUT. Thank you very much. 

We at the State Department very much appreciate Congress’ 

longstanding interest in what we do to engage and inform and influence the Chinese public through a variety of means. In this endeavor we do face many hurdles. Within China we function in a 

highly controlled information environment, often with no option but 

to use platforms that are either run by the People’s Republic of 

China or censored by the PRC. 

Our challenge, and the one that we believe we are meeting with 

some success, is to build trust and understanding with the Chinese 

public. Although our two governments do not always see eye to eye, 

the United States and China have shared interests, as do the Chinese and American people. Our task is to emphasize those interests 

in a way that moves forward the U.S. global agenda on trade, rule 

of law, human rights, regional stability and combating terrorism. 

We are unstinting in representing American values and sharing 

examples of our own democratic, transparent and law-based society. As we work hard to present these in a manner to which the 

Chinese people can relate—and we work hard to present these in 

a manner to which the Chinese people can relate rather than in a 

prescriptive manner that would be as poorly received in China as 

a prescriptive approach from a foreign country would be received 

by the American people. The U.S. domestic system and our global 

approach have resulted in a prosperity and a security that are respected around the world, and these successes lead our Chinese audiences to draw the right conclusions from those examples we 

present. 

We are, of course, not naive about the challenges we face in our 

public diplomacy efforts in China from a government that sometimes blocks access to our messages to an oftentimes nationalistic 

public that has been taught to be weary of foreign influence. In our 

public diplomacy we remain forthright about discussing openly the 

20

complexity of the bilateral relationship and those points on which 

our two governments agree, just as our leaders do. As the President and Secretary of State have done, we emphasize to the Chinese public that the United States welcomes the rise of a prosperous, stable China even as we state honestly our differences over 

various issues and our concerns with certain aspects of PRC policies. 

We have many diplomatic tools in our public diplomacy toolbox. 

The explosive growth of the Internet in China has given us new 

avenues through which to reach out to the Chinese public that 

would have been inconceivable decades ago. Chinese bloggers enjoy 

a certain latitude that state-run television stations and newspapers 

do not, and we have used that trend to blog and microblog to reach 

millions of Chinese readers. 

When President Obama held a town hall with students in Shanghai, 55 million Chinese Internet users visited the site. Chinese 

bloggers and microbloggers invited to a book store event with Ambassador Huntsman got over 100,000 hits to their site within just 

2 hours of the event. Web chats with top U.S. Government officials 

often receive tens of millions of hits. 

Our Embassy in Beijing is one of the busiest cultural and academic exchange offices in the world. We have more than 200 Americans and Chinese learning about each other’s countries every year 

through Fulbright. We expect to bring 135 Chinese professionals, 

up-and-coming Chinese professionals, to the U.S. We fund the 

translation of U.S. law texts into Chinese for the use in Chinese 

law schools. On the basis of a successful opening of an American 

study center run as a partnership between Arizona State University and Sichuan University, we are moving forward with other 

pairings of American and Chinese universities to promote American studies on campus. 

The State Department is securing private-sector support from 

many quarters for the 100,000 Strong initiative, which will encourage and help facilitate 100,000 U.S. students to study in China 

over the next 4 years. Our EducationUSA advising office in Beijing 

advises the huge and growing number of Chinese students who 

want to study in the United States. The nearly 130,000 students 

from China in the United States is our single largest foreign student contingent and represents a unique opportunity for the U.S. 

to influence the next generation of Chinese leaders. They are also 

tuition-paying customers who make no small contribution to our 

economy. 

Before I close, I would just like to reemphasize a point I made 

earlier about the greatest asset of our public diplomacy, which is 

the attractiveness of the United States, including to so many in 

China, due to our power of our example and the appeal of our values. So while we do not underestimate the challenges that we face 

in conducting public diplomacy in China, I am confident of our continuing progress in that realm thanks to the strengths of our society, our form of government, the freedoms we enjoy and our culture. 

Though any country’s public diplomacy will benefit from more resources at the end of the day for public diplomacy to be successful, 

the country itself has to put forth the model that others aspire to 

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emulate, and that is certainly true of the United States and China. 

The U.S. public diplomacy mission, therefore, is to continue showing the very best of our Nation. Chinese citizens can glean from our 

examples a way to make their own society more just. Our efforts 

to explain U.S. policies aim to develop a common understanding 

that makes our countries readier to cooperate with one another on 

the global challenges we both face. 

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Carnahan, thank you for extending this opportunity to me to testify today, and I look forward 

to responding to your questions. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much for your testimony. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Stout follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. And Mr. Dibble. 

STATEMENT OF MR. PHILO L. DIBBLE, DEPUTY ASSISTANT 

SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF NEAR EASTERN AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Mr. DIBBLE. Chairman Rohrabacher, Ranking Member 

Carnahan, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the Department of State’s public diplomacy work on Iran. With your permission, I would ask that my written testimony be submitted for the 

record. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Without objection. 

Mr. DIBBLE. The United States and Iran have not had diplomatic 

relations since 1980. We do not have an Embassy in Tehran. Our 

diplomats do not have regular contact with their Iranian counterparts. We have very few official avenues for dialogue, communication, influence or interaction with the Iranian people. For that reason, U.S. Government broadcasting and public diplomacy activities 

play a more crucial role for our policy on Iran than for virtually 

any other country. 

The tools we employ to engage the Iranian people include broadcasting, social media, the Internet and traditional people-to-people 

educational and cultural exchanges. The witnesses from the Broadcasting Board of Governors can speak about U.S. broadcasting efforts to Iran, and they have. I would like to share with you the Department of State’s public diplomacy outreach plans and efforts, including how we participate in the BBG’s programs. 

First, traditional media, meaning radio and television broadcasting, play an important role in our efforts. President Obama 

himself began his Presidency with a commitment to change the 

tone of the U.S. relationship with Iran. He did that on live television. Since his inauguration the President has conveyed this message personally and in a variety of ways, including through several 

New Year’s messages directly to the Iranian people and to the government, again through broadcast means. Despite this increased 

outreach, the majority of Iranians continue to hold unfavorable 

views of U.S. policies, even as they acknowledge and appreciate the 

President’s initiatives. And we have seen that the Iranian regime 

continues to reject the President’s offer for meaningful dialogue. 

But we cannot rely exclusively on the highest levels of our Government to convey all our messages to Iran. Especially since the 

elections of June 2009 and the evidence of popular unhappiness 

that followed, we recognize the importance of communicating directly with the Iranian people. Consequently, in order to do that 

and to make clear the support of the United States for the changes 

Iranians wish to see in their government, the Department of State 

created a plan to communicate our policy message via interviews 

by Persian-speaking U.S. spokespersons. 

Those interviews clearly must include Iranian state-owned 

media. For years private-sector studies have shown that a majority 

of the Iranians, upwards of 80 percent, get their news from government-owned media. We are offering to those media appearances by 

U.S. official spokespersons on live Iranian TV and radio in Farsi. 

We hope that by engaging with all aspects of Persian-language 

media, private, Western, Iranian state-owned and, of course, Radio 

26

Farda and VOA Persian, we will expand what Iranians hear about 

U.S. foreign policy and enable them to hear messages directly from 

U.S. sources. This long-term effort to engage in Persian-language 

outreach will become a part of our messaging strategy for all elements of Iran policy. 

Second, I want to discuss briefly exchange programs, which have 

long been a staple of traditional public diplomacy. We have found 

that educational, cultural, sports and science exchanges are an effective means to engage Iranians and have produced significant results. Exchanges have started the process of reestablishing contacts 

between academic and scientific communities and helping reconnect ordinary Iranians to the West and to the United States specifically. 

Exchanges over the past year have included, for example, a partnership with the National Academy of Sciences, which brought two 

groups of Iranian academics and professionals in solar energy and 

urban transportation to the United States for professional exchanges. Because Iran is an earthquake-prone country we funded 

a workshop on seismic risks in urban areas. American and regional 

academics as well as private-sector experts discussed practical applications for mitigating the impact of a future earthquake. 

Finally, I think I need to refer to new media efforts, because I 

think that is where the future is, even if the present is with broadcasting. We recognize the importance of new media, especially to 

rising generations of Iranians. Hence, we also use Farsi language 

in social media sites to communicate directly with the Iranian people. The State Department’s official Farsi language Twitter account 

at USAdarFarsi, launched earlier this year, already has more than 

5,000 followers. Our Farsi-language Facebook page and YouTube 

channel both provide active platforms for engaging Iranian youth. 

We employ native Persian speakers who engage on Internet forums and portals to communicate and clarify U.S. Policy to Iranian 

audiences. Two of these individuals were recently transferred to 

the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to ensure close collaboration 

with policy makers who are already seeing the fruits of this collaboration. 

Finally, I wanted to say a word about the Secretary’s position on 

Internet freedom more generally. It is one of her greatest priorities, 

which is why we provide training and tools to civil society activists 

throughout the region to foster freedom of expression and the free 

flow of information on the Internet and other communications technology. Current projects support countercensorship, virtual communication and peer-to-peer technologies. The State Department is exploring means with the interagency and allies to combat cyber vandalism coming from Iran under the banner of the Iranian Cyber 

Army, and recent attacks have targeted U.S.-based e-mail servers 

that are used by many Iranians as well as the VOA Persian Web 

site itself. 

Mr. Chairman, we are making use of every tool we can to reach 

out to the Iranian people to explain our policies in spite of the restrictions imposed by the government in Tehran, and to give the 

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preciate the opportunity to discuss these questions with the committee and look forward to the discussion. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. I am sure there will 

be some questions about that as well. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Dibble follows:]


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Mr. ROHRABACHER. And Mr. Fakhravar. 

STATEMENT OF MR. AMIR FAKHRAVAR, GENERAL 

SECRETARY, CONFEDERATION OF IRANIAN STUDENTS 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. Good. Great. Thank you. 

Good afternoon, honorable Members of Congress, ladies and gentlemen. I am honored and delighted to be among members of the 

House Foreign Relations Committee and distinguished guests who 

are testifying today. I don’t want to torture everybody with my 

weak English and speak. 

I spent more than 5 years of my life in jail and with a lot of torture, and I have the sign of torture in my hand and I love it. And 

after—I am talking today on behalf of the Confederation of Iranian 

Students. The CIS was recognized by the Congressional Research 

Service as one of the most important Iranian opposition groups 

since 2009 until now. 

And I was arrested for the first time when I was 17 because of 

one of my speech in school about Supreme Leader. And I just said 

maybe we don’t have that much freedom the Supreme Leader is 

telling us, that is it, and they put me in jail. And then for 14 years 

on and off, I was in jail, the revolutionary court, and the law school 

and medical school. 

In 2005, I escaped from prison, a notorious Iran prison. And then 

for months before coming out of country, I was living underground, 

and I had chance to watch Voice of America and Radio Farda. First 

of all, that was a good feeling to hear some real news. And then 

after a few days I realized that some anti-American message is 

coming in the middle of the news. And then I realized more and 

more. 

And after I escape from the country and came here in May 2006, 

Senator Tom Coburn invited me to testify on behalf of the—in front 

of the—what is that—Homeland Security Committee, U.S. Senate, 

and that was about the nuclear issues in Iran and next step. And 

I tried to put the spotlight on Voice of America and Radio Farda 

during my testimony. And I just mentioned that Voice of America 

and Radio Farda, they have a more potential and the great potential to promote freedom and democracy. And that is exactly their 

mission, the mission of Broadcasting Board of Governor and the 

mission of Voice of America, the mission of Radio Free Europe, to 

promote freedom and democracy and to tell the truth about the 

United States to make a better face of United States in the world. 

It is clear that is the mission. 

And I said the Iranian people right now are confused because of 

these type of so-called balanced news. Because when the people for 

years, for more than three decades, they don’t have any access to 

other source of media, and they, the government, they are brainwashing the people via state media. That is not fair to send some 

type of balanced news, and it is not balanced, it is anti-American, 

and make people confused. 

And then I started to help Senator Tom Coburn. After that testimony, the Voice of America and Radio Farda, both they boycotted 

me and entire organization and all of my friends, and they didn’t 

let us to talk at all. And they even criticized me on air several 

times. 

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And then we helped—me and my organization, we helped Senator Tom Coburn, and we reviewed some of the programming, and 

we helped them about monitoring the programs, and we collected 

a lot of facts. And in 2008, September 2008, finally, with the help 

of Senator Tom Coburn, the inspector general investigated the 

Voice of America Persian Service. And thanks God that management of Persian Service, they were removed, but nothing changed. 

The same people, they came to the power again, and for next 2 

years again that was the same problem. 

And then we had briefing on February 23, 2010, in House, and 

the Congressman Trent Franks after briefing told me—asked me 

about the U.S. taxpayers and some type of watchdog on Voice of 

America Persian Service, and I said you don’t have anything. And 

then he said, okay, I will write a letter to President Obama, and 

I ask my colleagues to sign this letter. And he send this letter with 

69 signatures to President Obama. And then after maybe 2 

months, the second layers of the management of Persian Service, 

they were removed. But the problem was still there. 

And then we had several meetings with Governor Enders 

Wimbush. And again, thanks God, he came to the power, and the 

new governors, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and with 

their great experience, and we could see some hope about the future. 

And then we started to talking with the Congressmens, and we 

had several meetings with you, Mr. Chairman, and with Congressman Ted Poe, Congressman Ed Royce, and Congressman Ted 

Deutch, and several Congressmen and Senators. And we discussed 

the issue, and we realized the problem is, first, not following the 

BBG and VOA mission by VOA Persian and Radio Farda. They 

changed the mission on their Web site. You can right now look at 

the Voice of America Persian Service, and you can see clearly they 

changed the mission by themselves. And the mission on BBG Web 

site is to promote freedom and democracy, and on the Persian Web 

site is our only duty is to report the news. This is not the mission. 

They changed the mission. And please find, Mr. Chairman, who 

changed this mission and who asked when they should follow this 

one. 

And also, the second problem is broadcasting anti-American messages regularly without balance. We will give you, Mr. Chairman, 

a lot of facts and date and document about this with the document; 

and wasting money for unnecessary traveling and personal matters. 

Four, nepotism. It is not hard to find a lot of family members 

and friends as an employee of Voice of America. And you can find 

mother and daughter and father, all of them, working together. 

And it is a lot of family business over there. It is really easy to find 

and investigate these things. 

And also favoritism, number 5. 

And 6, lack of background check. Again, give you several examples about the people without any background check. They came directly from Islamic Republic. They worked for state TV in Iran. Ms. 

Mana Rabeei, last year March 17, 2010, she asked Congressman 

Ed Royce about the sanction of the Revolutionary Guard. And she 

said, why do you want to put sanction on Revolutionary Guard; you 

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can’t do that because they are protecting the Iranian people. And 

then we realize that 3 days after Neda was killed, she produced a 

video for the state TV in Iran, and she was working at that time 

for the Press TV in Iran, and she produced that video to tell the 

people how much the messages are the great people. And it is not 

hard to just Google her name and see who is this lady. 

And lack of oversight and supervision, number 7. 

Eight, misusing the power of media to support the political views 

of its employees. 

Nine, boycotting and even slandering people they don’t agree 

with. Our organization is one of the best examples for it. 

And 11, not supporting and criticizing the U.S. policy. 

And 12, acting as a political party that shores up those with 

similar points of views and tries to weaken others. 

And 13, misusing VOA to support their——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Fakhravar, is that the last one? 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. I am so sorry. It is the end of it. And you know 

my English is not so good. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Your English is great. 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. Just give me 1 more minute. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. You are over. But I do want you to ask you 

to reread one part. What was it you read? The change that took 

place in the mission statement. Could you reread that for me, 

please, and where you found that? 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. It is on BBG’s Web site. You can find the mission is to promote freedom and democracy and to enhance understanding through multimedia communication of accurate, objective, 

and balanced news, and to tell the truth about the United States. 

And they change it to, our only duty is to report the news. You can 

find it really easy on the top of the Persian Web site. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. When did that—report the news—when did 

that change of mission take place? 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. 6 years ago. And they put this one as a mission 

on the top of their——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. So 6 years ago it went from promoting 

freedom and democracy to basically report the news. 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. Only report the news. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. Got it. All right. Thank you very 

much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fakhravar follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. We have a couple more witnesses, and then 

we will get to our questions and answers. And I am going to have 

to—Mr. Zhou. 

STATEMENT OF SHIYU ZHOU, PH.D., VICE PRESIDENT, NEW 

TANG DYNASTY TELEVISION 

Mr. ZHOU. Chairman Rohrabacher, Ranking Member Carnahan 

and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to join 

you this afternoon. 

Since the mid-1980s when waves of immigrants came abroad 

from China, Beijing had been concerned about communication between the overseas Chinese and those on the mainland. Surveys 

have shown that Chinese living outside China still rely heavily on 

Chinese-language media as their information sources. As a result, 

people have seen over the past two decades the aggressive efforts 

made by the Chinese Government to expand the global presence of 

its own media and control the existing overseas Chinese media. 

For example, CCTV’s Chinese service alone is on 26 satellites 

around the world. Eight of them are over North America, including 

the DirecTV and Dish Network satellites. In the U.S., CCTV channels are carried by all major cable and direct-to-home satellite TV 

systems in both Chinese and English languages. In the meantime, 

using a vigorous campaign over the past two decades to infiltrate 

and influence third-party Chinese media, and at the same time 

suppress independent voices in the Chinese community, the Chinese Government has by and large successfully controlled the overseas Chinese-language media market and manipulated public opinion among the overseas Chinese population. 

But Beijing’s propaganda machine would rarely pass up a chance 

to rouse Chinese nationalism, sometimes mixed with anti-American 

sentiments. Just months ago the Chinese media under Beijing’s 

control have successfully convinced many Chinese Americans that 

the ongoing inflation in China was caused by some plots of the U.S. 

Government, including Federal Reserve’s QE2, to transfer the U.S. 

problems to China. 

The Chinese-language media market has become very unique in 

the sense that one can hardly hear a different voice, especially on 

those sensitive issues most challenging to the Chinese Government. 

A free media in Chinese language should take up the social responsibility to be an alternative voice for the Chinese audience; however, sometimes when I read reports on those challenging issues by 

some U.S. Government-funded media, the reports repeated in great 

lengths rhetoric of the Chinese Government officials. I doubt people 

in China take great risks to break through the censorship to read 

or watch those reports just to find out what the Chinese Government’s position is. 

The damage this kind of reporting may cause to the Chinese audience could be much greater than that of the Chinese Government’s own media, since the Chinese audience had hope and trust 

in such supposedly alternative voice. 

Next I will use New Tang Dynasty Television, NTD, as an example to speak about the challenges facing independent Chinese-language media today. NTD was established in 2001 after September 

11th by a group of Chinese American media professionals, Wall 

39

Street investors and people in academia. At the time they were disappointed how Chinese-language media reported on the terrorist 

attacks and realized the importance of having an American media 

broadcasting in Chinese language that reflects American values 

and journalistic standards, and hence NTD came into being. 

Over the past 9 years, NTD as a nonprofit media has grown to 

become a global television network with reporters in over 50 cities 

around the world today and broadcasts globally via satellite, cable 

and the Internet. Just over the Internet alone, more than 1 million 

visitors from mainland visits the NTD Web site every month, using 

Internet anticensorship software such as FreeGate and UltraSurf. 

However, NTD’s development has necessarily become a threat to 

Beijing’s heavy-handed grip on media. Thus, over the years, the 

Chinese Government has launched an aggressive and relentless 

campaign to silence NTD. 

Insiders have revealed that CCTV has made some major U.S. 

cable and satellite TV companies accept its lucrative business deals 

in exchange with the condition that these companies need to get 

CCTV’s approval to add any additional Chinese-language channel 

to their broadcast platforms. Its target is NTD. As a result, NTD 

has suffered discrimination by and being excluded from many 

broadcast platforms in the U.S. 

In May 2004, in partnership with Eutelsat, a Paris-based satellite company, NTD launched the very first 24/7 uncensored Chinese-language satellite broadcast into China. Within a year 

Eutelsat was under Beijing’s business pressure and intended to 

drop NTD. Then BBG and the U.S. Congress supported Eutelsat to 

resist Beijing’s pressure and brought VOA television service to the 

same satellite used by NTD, which comprised a protection umbrella 

for this open satellite window to China. 

So Eutelsat continued to carry NTD and some other NGO broadcasters for 3 more years. However, it was unfortunate that in 2008, 

for some reasons, BBG moved VOA from Eutelsat to a Chinese 

Government-controlled satellite. Then Eutelsat shut down the open 

satellite window 2 months before the Beijing Olympics. 

In the 21st century today, the Internet and satellite TV have become the two most important high technologies to tear down the 

censorship wall of the closed societies like China. According to official surveys, there are hundreds of millions of Internet users as 

well as satellite TV viewers in China. The user bases of different 

technologies in China seem vastly different. It would be important 

that we keep the door open for not only the Internet users, but also 

the satellite TV viewers in China to have free access to uncensored 

information. 

The past experience have shown that without the support of the 

U.S. Government, no satellite companies in the world can resist the 

threat and the lucrative business deals of Chinese Communist Government to allow an uncensored TV channel to broadcast to China 

on their satellites. 

It has been proven that BBG’s Chinese-language service would 

be able to play another critical role consistent with the U.S. national interest and commitment to freedom. It can create a protection umbrella on the satellites it uses for China so that it allows 

other U.S. independent Chinese-language broadcasters to lease 

40

channels on the same satellite to broadcast to the same target audience. This by far appears to be the only hope to create a protective platform for all independent Chinese-language broadcasters to 

reach the vast satellite TV audience in China. 

Thank you. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Zhou follows:]


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Mr. ROHRABACHER. We have two more witnesses, and then we 

are going to questions and answers. 

We have been joined by Mr. Rivera from Florida. Thank you very 

much. Also a new Member of the Congress, so we welcome you to 

the committee and to Capitol Hill. 

Our next witness will be Dr. John Lenczowski. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN LENCZOWSKI, PH.D., PRESIDENT, 

INSTITUTE OF WORLD POLITICS 

Mr. LENCZOWSKI. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Carnahan 

and members of the committee, I am honored to have the opportunity to contribute to Congress’ deliberations on a matter of vital 

importance to our national security. I would like to begin by arguing why Internet broadcasting is so strategic, and then make some 

recommendations concerning current policy. These remarks are a 

summary of my prepared statement, which I would like to submit 

for the record, please. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So ordered, without objection. 

Mr. LENCZOWSKI. Thank you. 

International broadcasting is such an important instrument of 

U.S. foreign and national security policy that a strong case can be 

made that it played a more strategically decisive role in bringing 

down the Soviet empire than any other instrument of American 

power. 

Broadcasting is the only means by which the U.S. can provide 

unfiltered information to hundreds of millions of people around the 

world who are denied access to a free press and to other media. 

Those tyrannical regimes that control information tend to be more 

aggressive and hostile to U.S. vital interests than other kinds of political order. Complete control over the media and their message 


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enable such regimes to establish political conformity and a psychological sense of futile resignation among the people when it comes 

to resisting political repression. 

The rise of the Internet cell phones and other modern media has 

made communication of the truth, particularly among resistance 

forces, more possible than ever before. 

But although broadcasting appears antediluvian in comparison, 

it possesses key properties that remain decisive and are even superior to modern digital technologies in a key respect: It is able to 

reach millions of people with instantaneous unfiltered information 

even faster than viral communications that remain vulnerable to 

tyrannical State control and manipulation. It remains the only 

method of reaching many large populations in the world and an essential compliment to reaching those who do have access to digital 

media. 

Broadcasting combats tyranny’s attempts to atomize and demoralize society. It connects America with oppressed people. It encourages and inspires them, making them feeling as though they are 

not alone. It enables us to have relations with millions of people 

and not just governments. 

If those long-distance relations are well managed, we gain sympathizers, allies, and even intelligence sources. And if people living 

in a theater of war like Afghanistan understand the motivations 

underlying the presence of our troops in their country, they are less 

likely to be hostile. 

So what is wrong today? Public diplomacy and international 

broadcasting have suffered from significant neglect at the national 

strategic level. This has resulted in inadequate national strategic 

coordination; funding that is inadequate to meet the strategic need; 

resource allocation among the broadcasters that does not adequately reflect national strategic priorities; removing entire language services from the Voice of America in the absence of serious 

national integrated strategic deliberation and coordination; the 

conflation of the VOA mission with the mission of the freedom 

broadcasters, such as RFE/RL; this conflation has resulted in misguided attempts to avoid so-called duplication of, say, a Chinese 

service in the VOA and the Chinese service in Radio Free Asia 

when the two services have distinct and intrinsically valuable missions; the failure to protect against the penetration of various language services by agents of influence from target countries; and the 

failure to monitor the quality and balance of programming to ensure high journalistic standards and compatibility with U.S. national interests. 

Unfortunately, these consequences arise when the governance of 

the broadcasters is not part of an integrated national strategy. The 

fact that the Secretary of State is a BBG member appears to have 

little effect on many board decisions. This is due to the historic pattern of an almost complete lack of attention to broadcasting policy 

within the State Department. Ensuring that broadcast programming serves U.S. foreign policy interests is extremely difficult, 

given the BBG structure, which suffers from an absence of truly accountable executive power. 

The absence of serious executive responsibility means that some 

of the most vexing challenges that have historically faced our interVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:51 May 31, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\OI\040611\65628 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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national broadcasters have gone unaddressed. Prominent among 

these have been the ideological and factional struggles within the 

various language services. The task of balancing and managing 

such factionalism is a very hard thing. It may be the hardest thing 

in the U.S. Government to manage. But it is made all the more difficult by the vulnerability of these language services to the penetration by foreign agents of influence, whose activities can sabotage 

huge parts of our broadcasting effort. 

Given the many problems faced by these most important of national institutions, I believe that the following reforms are necessary. And I am going to begin with macro reforms and get a little 

bit more specific. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Can you summarize those? 

Mr. LENCZOWSKI. Yes. Very quickly, public diplomacy needs to be 

raised to the highest level of national strategic attention. I believe 

we have to create a new U.S. public diplomacy agency, which would 

be much more than an information agency. It would comprise all 

the major public diplomacy functions of the government, including 

the State Department, USAID, Peace Corps and BBG. And I believe that 50 percent of all nonpolitical ambassadorships should 

come out of that agency, and then you will see a rejiggering of the 

incentive structure in U.S. foreign policy so that the State Department will start taking public diplomacy seriously again. 

The services of the BBG should be divided into two categories; 

one under the VOA umbrella and another under the freedom 

broadcasters umbrella. Each would have their own director. Radio 

Sawa and TV Alhurra, for example, should be placed under the 

freedom broadcasters umbrella. And the Arabic service, which was 

shut down in a fit of absence of mind, should be restored to the 

Voice of America. The Chinese service should not be gutted at the 

VOA. It should be preserved and strengthened. Disbanding it, in 

my view, is the height of irresponsibility, given the rise of China’s 

power, its manipulation of the media that we have just heard, its 

espionage efforts in this country, its military build-up, its increasing territorial claims and so on and so forth. 

Then the BBG should cease to have any executive power. It 

should serve the role formerly served by the Board for International Broadcasting; namely, it should be a programming oversight board. Here is where the bipartisan composition of that board 

can really make a difference. The executive director of that board 

would hire independent language-fluent scholars to do systematic 

program reviews to test for propagandistic content and so on and 

so forth. All broadcast services should be subjected to background 

checks by counterintelligence agencies. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And finally? 

Mr. LENCZOWSKI. Yes. And finally, Congress should consider 

combining all foreign affairs spending with the defense budget into 

a so-called defense and foreign affairs budget so that America can 

fund the nonmilitary elements of our national defense at levels 

commensurate with national strategic needs. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lenczowski follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you. 

Dr. Lenczowski, it is very difficult for a Ph.D. to get this down 

to 5 minutes. 

But how about Robert Reilly, who has more of a journalistic 

background, can you meet your deadline in 5 minutes today? 

STATEMENT OF MR. ROBERT REILLY, FORMER DIRECTOR, 

VOICE OF AMERICA 

Mr. REILLY. Yes. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Carnahan, 

members of the committee, thank you very much for this opportunity. 

You are not going to get an awful lot of traction with your constituents by paying serious attention to these issues. But if you get 

them right, you are going to save American lives. And I thank you 

for the attention you are bringing to this. I would like to submit 

my extended critique of public diplomacy for the record. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Without objection. 

Mr. REILLY. And restrict myself to—at least when I went over 

them last night, they were 5 minutes of remarks with a red California Zinfandel. I will try to replicate this, albeit——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. It started 30 seconds ago. 

Mr. REILLY. Indulge me in an imaginative exercise. If we were 

setting up a broadcasting service for the U.S. Government from 

scratch today, we probably would want to focus on the 10 most important countries and language groups in the world. In our hemisphere, say Brazil, the largest country, biggest economy; in Eurasia, certainly Russia; to the south, China; to the southeast, India; 

in the Near East, certainly the Arabic world. Our mission would be 

to tell these countries and audiences who we are, what we are 

doing, and why. If we want the world to be reasonable, we had better give it our reasons. 

We might, in other words, create the Voice of America, whose 

purpose, by charter, is to do these very things. Now if an outside 

observer looked at what has happened to VOA over the last 10 

years, he might discern a pattern that broadcasting to the largest, 

most important countries of the world has been eliminated. Portuguese to Brazil, gone. Hindi to India, eliminated. Arabic to the 

Arabic world, ended and replaced by a pop music station. Russian, 

eliminated. And now the Chinese service is on the block for extinction in all but its Internet presence, which is blocked. 

The pattern is clear but the purpose is not. Why have we done 

this to ourselves? The excuse 10 years ago or more was that history 

had ended in the sense that the model of the democratic constitutional free market political order stood undisputed in its moral authority. But 10 years ago, at the price of 3,000 American lives, we 

found out this was not true. 

Why then are we continuing on this path? Economic considerations might be one explanation, but they can’t account for 10 

years of this behavior. The elimination of Chinese VOA radio and 

TV broadcasting in Mandarin will save $8 million but lose an audience of at least 6 million. Do we need no longer explain ourselves 

to the world? Do we no longer need to give it our reasons? 

Be sure that others are willing to give reasons for us. I invite you 

to the coverage of Chinese state media of U.S. policy in Libya 

56

today. If that is the way we would like the Chinese to learn about 

what we are doing, we seem to be on that path. 

The BBG rebuttal might be that we are keeping Radio Free Asia 

Chinese service, albeit diminished, and the VOA Web site. However, the Internet is highly vulnerable, and surrogate radio broadcasting, as very valuable as it is in itself, does not have the mission 

of explaining who we are, what we are doing, and why we are 

doing it. One of my predecessors, Geoff Cowan, told me that in 

meeting with foreign ministry officials in Beijing, they told him 

that the first thing they did every morning was tune to the Voice 

of America because they needed to know what the United States 

was thinking. They would not tune into RFA to learn that for the 

very good reason that its mission is to tell the Chinese about 

China, not about us. 

This brings me to the most likely explanation for the elimination 

of VOA’s services to the most important countries in the world, a 

loss of the sense of mission. The loss began with the end of USIA 

when USG broadcasting was placed under the BBG. As the BBG 

consists of eight CEOs, it is no wonder that confusion ensued. 

Rome had troubles with only two pro councils. Imagine the mess 

if they had eight. Very importantly, most BBG members have been 

highly accomplished individuals who made their fortunes in private 

sector media. They, therefore, sought to replicate their success according to commercial criteria. This meant large youth audiences 

and abandoning markets in which such audiences could not be attracted. Who listens came to be less important than how many listened or to what. 

The diminished mission became news, not the full service radio 

that VOA offered, which also presented and explained U.S. policy, 

but news. Play music for 40 minutes an hour on Radio Sawa, if you 

must, so long as they listen to the news. After all, said the BBG 

chief of staff in 2008, ‘‘It is not in our mandate to influence.’’ The 

new BBG chairman, Mr. Isaacson, said in a recent Alhurra broadcast that ‘‘we just want to get good news, reliable news, and credible information out.’’ Reliable news was always part of U.S. broadcasting, but the mission was never reduced to just that. 

When the Dalai Lama called the VOA Tibetan service ‘‘the bread 

of the Tibetan people’’ and when Aung San Suu Kyi called the Burmese service ‘‘the hope of the Burmese people,’’ do you think they 

were referring to the news? 

Hope is a theological virtue. It is not engendered by news. The 

Declaration of Independence was not a news release or report. 

I think the United States has enduring interests in the world. I 

think we need to explain ourselves in the most persuasive way and 

by the most effective means, particularly to those peoples and countries whose futures are going to most affect our future. I think we 

need to begin again to think through to whom we should be broadcasting about what and with what. I think this needs to be done 

within the U.S. Government in a command structure related to our 

national security and not by an independent part-time board. 

Failure to do this will be paid, I am afraid, in American lives. 

Better to win the war of ideas than have to win a war. That is simple economics. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Reilly appears in the appendix.] 

57

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. 

And I appreciate all the witnesses today. 

As I said before he got here, Russ, that I would be keeping the 

tradition that we started with what they call ‘‘The Bill and Dana 

Show,’’ Bill Delahunt and Dana Rohrabacher, when Bill was the 

chairman. We want people to be able to get to the heart of the matter and to ask as many questions as is necessary and not to let the 

5-minute clock, which we would like to bring it under, get in the 

way of actually seeking answers and getting to the proper questions. 

And what I intend to do now is to—because the ranking member 

does have something to do in about a half an hour, I thought that 

we would let him go first into questioning. So you may proceed. 

And I am going to let our new freshman take over the chair for 

about 5 minutes, and we will go from there. 

Mr. Carnahan. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you to the panel. You really covered a lot of items here, 

and I want to try to jump into a few follow-up questions. Let me 

start with the last witness first. 

And the chairman mentioned your background, working during 

the 1980s with regard to the former Soviet Union. I wanted you to 

compare the public and cultural diplomacy work that the U.S. engaged in then with the work today in Iran in terms of what 

worked, what didn’t. You know, where you see similarities, where 

you see differences. 

Mr. LENCZOWSKI. Congressman, I presume you are asking me 

about this because I worked on the Soviet Union. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Yes. 

Mr. LENCZOWSKI. I think that it was vitally important that—I 

believe the radios—there were many different public diplomacy vehicles with the peoples of the Soviet empire. However, many of the 

traditional instruments, such as exchanges, which we tried to do, 

certain kinds of cooperative agreements, visitors programs and so 

on and so forth were extremely limited. 

What was successful about our public diplomacy programs in the 

Cold War was that they helped, first of all, to combat the atomization of society. In a society like that, atomization is created where 

nobody can trust anybody else. And this is because of the pervasive 

network of informants, secret police and so on and so forth. And 

so the individual is left alone against the all powerful State. 

And what broadcasting did, whether it was news, whether it was 

even music that could uniquely be heard, say, over Radio Free Europe rather than, let’s say, Warsaw one and Warsaw two is that 

secret listeners who would sometimes risk their lives or risk being 

severely punished for being caught listening would hear something 

like that—a wonderful story is a guy who got on a bus in Warsaw 

and started whistling a song that he heard over Radio Free Europe 

that you couldn’t hear anywhere else. And then somebody else 10 

seconds later started whistling with him and somebody else 10 seconds later. Pretty soon, the whole bus was whistling it. They all 

looked at each other. They said, we are all secret listeners, and 

there is more of us than there is of them. And they could start establishing relationships of trust. 

58

The radios—when Vaclav Havel came, the first president of postSoviet Czechoslovakia, post-Communist Czechoslovakia, came he 

didn’t come to the Department of State to thank them for all the 

negotiations and the arms control agreements. He went to the VOA 

and thanked them for keeping their national flame alive. The VOA 

was giving them history programs that restored the national memory that the regime was trying to flush down George Orwell’s memory hole. And by destroying the national memory, they would try 

to change the national identity in order to create their new Soviet 

man, their new Communist man. 

So, then, the radio supplied alternative ideas. They supplied religious programming, real religious programming, services of many 

different faiths. It wasn’t a violation of the First Amendment to do 

that. And then they gave real information to expose the lies of the 

regime. And one of the great techniques of the dissident movements inside those countries was to try to tell the truth one day 

at a time and not repeat any of the official lies of the regime. 

Solzhenitsyn said that when the lie—the daily force feeding of 

the steady diet of lies was the single most oppressive thing about 

life in that type of a political system, and that when the lie fastens 

its claws around your neck, it is not only a political act; it is an 

attack on your very human dignity. 

And so these people thirsted for the truth more than they thirsted for food or the basics of life. Solzhenitsyn said that the power 

that resides in the airwaves, what we are talking about today, to 

kindle the human spirit is beyond the scope of the Western imagination. This is how it can be the bread for Tibet, the hope for 

Burma, and it is the hope for all of these people in China. This is 

a tonic—it is a gift that we give these people of incomparable magnitude. 

And I don’t remember the numbers today. But when I start 

thinking about economies and saving money in this business, at its 

zenith, the VOA had a budget that was the equivalent cost of five 

F–15 aircraft and that was the time when we were ordering 900 

F–15s. This is cheap stuff we are talking about. Probably the single 

most cost-effective instrument of American national power, especially in dealing with these people. 

When the instantaneity of information was huge, when you get 

a signal into a region, people have incentives to order resistance 

groups. If there is no signal, there is no incentive to organize the 

resistance group. This is because if they know they can get an underground line of communication to the headquarters of some of 

our radios, then if there is a strike, a civil disturbance or something like that, which is normally crushed. But part of the crushing 

involves cutting off all communications. 

This is what happened with the Solidarity Trade Union strikes 

in 1980. They cut down all communications to the city, and they 

said that the hurricane blew down the telephone lines. But the Solidarity strikers had an underground line of communication to Munich to the RFE/RL headquarters, and within a matter of hours, 

the fact of the strike was broadcast to millions of Poles. 

The normal modus operandi is, crush the strike; and then if the 

rest of the people learn about it, they have learned about it weeks 

or months later, and the news is that the strike was crushed. But 

59

here, the news is, you can join it while it is still going. This is a 

huge threat to the——

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you for the great historical perspective 

that you bring to that and lessons I think that are very valuable 

in looking at what we are doing right now. 

I wanted to turn to our witness Mr. Wimbush from the BBG to 

talk about what you mentioned, you had explained and that is why 

the shift of resources from VOA to RFA, how much of the population do you expect to reach via shortwave radio through RFA? 

And is the trend line that we can expect BBG to defund shortwave 

radio in China and other countries? What can we expect? 

Mr. WIMBUSH. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member. 

Let me begin answering that by stating that the BBG in making 

this realignment did not plan to make it easier on Chinese authorities. In fact, we planned to make it more difficult for them. We 

think the realignment of platforms tracks with good common sense, 

good strategy, and good budgeting, and I will tell you why. 

In 2006, 24 percent of Chinese owned and used radios for news 

and information. In 2009, only 8 percent of adults were weekly 

radio listeners. That is a drop of one-half since 2007. With regard 

to shortwave—and the research and surveys we have got—these 

are not just ours. These are from the BBC from Deutsche Welle 

from Radio France International, from other radio broadcasters as 

well. Ownership and use of shortwave radio is in dramatic decline 

everywhere. Now, I am not saying we are going out of the shortwave business, and I will come back and give you specific examples 

of that in just a moment. The BBG’s and others, 2010 showed that 

only 0.1 percent of Chinese listened to the Voice of America in 

Mandarin. Only 0.4 percent reported listening to any shortwave 

broadcast in any previous week. Survey results showed hardly any 

acknowledged of listening to an international broadcast. 

But in contrast, the trend for use in the Internet and mobile 

technology is increasing rapidly. China today has the largest number of Internet users in the world. The growth of mobile technology 

will offer additional means for content delivery to Chinese audiences; 75 percent or more of Chinese mobile subscribers are projected to have access to the Internet within 5 years. By 2015, more 

than 550 million people are projected to have 3G subscriptions in 

China. 

From a recent survey by the OpenNet Initiative Citizen Lab’s report from MIT, it concludes that as of 2008, Chinese Internet users 

had grown 42 percent year over year, 42 percent year over year; 

90 percent of these have broadband access. There are about 600 

million cell phone users currently. Here is a critical piece: Although 

the rural-urban divide remains substantial, at the end of 2008, 

rural Internet users, according to the MIT survey, made up almost 

a third of the entire online population, a jump of over 60 percent. 

And this was driven by a policy goal that every village has access 

to the telephone and every township has access to the Internet by 

2010. 

Expansion of infrastructure development has given access to 92 

percent of the townships already. Web site registrations grew 91.4 

percent since 2007. Almost a third participate in online chats. If 

you look at this strategically as somebody who is trying to make 

60

it more difficult for the Chinese to filter the flow of information to 

their own population, it is not—one can debate the merits of different approaches, but the long-term approach is pretty clear. The 

Internet, which can be filtered, is going to play an increasingly important role. Shortwave, which can be totally blocked, is going to 

play a less important role. That is just the way it is going all over 

the world. 

When we announced this realignment, it became almost an 

urban legend that the BBG was proposing to go out of the shortwave business. We are not proposing to go out of the shortwave 

business. We have a weekly listenership of about 165 million; 38 

million of those listen in shortwave, some exclusively in shortwave. 

And they are in critical target audiences: Burma, Nigeria, Ethiopia, 

Zimbabwe, North Korea. We are not going to touch any of those. 

We are not going anywhere near those. 

The realignment was intended to take advantage, to get scarce 

resources into exploiting this burgeoning digital technology as best 

we can while maintaining our legacy shortwave broadcast capabilities to the extent that we feel that that is justified. We think that 

we have got the balance about right. I am sure we are going to be 

debating it a lot going forward. 

But the reality is, we are not going out of shortwave in China. 

We are going heavily into digital because that is where the audience is and particularly that is where the demographic is that we 

seek to reach. 

And I agree totally with Bob Reilly on this, although I would dispute the idea that we are necessarily going to lose 6 million listeners. That assumes that none of them are going to tune in to 

VOA on the Internet or to Radio Free Asia, which has Internet capabilities as well. Thank you. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would like to just follow up to that. Is it 

possible for a government to track down who is listening to a shortwave broadcast? Is it possible for a government to track down 

someone who is involved in an Internet exchange? I think the answer to the first one, I believe, is no. And I believe that the answer 

to the second question is yes, thus what we are saying is, we are 

eliminating the communications channel that cannot be traced, and 

we are depending on the channel that can be traced. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am glad you brought that up because it raises a very important 

point. I think you are probably correct on the first part that it is 

very hard to track who is listening in shortwave, if they can receive 

the shortwave. 

However, it is not always the case that you can track who is listening on the Internet. One of the BBG’s most important efforts 

here is in the anti-Internet circumvention technologies, which we 

are deeply involved in. This is a network of proxy servers, which 

obliterates the identification. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. Well, let me yield one more question to my ranking member. But let’s just note I am on the Science 

Committee, and one of the things I know about is the Chinese are 

investing heavily in how to track people on the Internet and some 

of our Internet CEOs have shown their dedication to democracy by 

helping them out. 

61

Mr. Carnahan. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. My last question I wanted to direct to Deputy 

Assistant Secretaries Stout and Dibble and to really follow up on 

this very issue with regard to Internet censorship by both the Iranian and the Chinese Governments. I would like you to talk about 

the most effective form of public diplomacy in your respective regions and also what steps are being taken to counter some of this 

Internet censorship. 

Mr. DIBBLE. I will start, if it is okay. Thank you for your question. 

First, with respect to Internet censorship, this takes us from the 

issue of public diplomacy and public communication into I think an 

area the chairman referred to earlier, namely support for freedom 

and democracy in, in my case, Iran. It is absolutely true that the 

Iranian authorities make enormous efforts and have developed sophisticated means to try and find out first to block access to Internet sites, find out who is visiting and to interfere with the ability 

of average Iranians to use the Internet to communicate with one 

another and to organize. 

The State Department is investing heavily itself in ways to combat that. One of those is the kind of circumvention technology that 

Mr. Wimbush mentioned. But it is also important that, as the 

chairman pointed out, to recognize that people who use the Internet can be tracked. Therefore, they need not just the ability to access certain Web sites, but they need the ability to protect themselves as they do that, and they need the ability to hide, essentially, whatever they have downloaded from the authorities who 

may be seeking it. 

It is that kind of not just technology but training in security 

practices and other similar aspects of the portfolio that the State 

Department is working on. So that is sort of part of an answer to 

the first part of your question. 

On the effective form of public diplomacy, I think we need all of 

them, certainly with respect to Iran. We need to be able to get our 

message across. We need to say, as Mr. Reilly pointed out, what 

we stand for, what we are trying to do, how we are trying to do 

it, what our objectives are. 

We need to be able to demonstrate to the Iranian people that we 

are not the great Satan, that there is value in people-to-people exchanges between the United States and Iran and that, for that reason, they need not to trust what the government says about U.S. 

policies, at least begin to sell some doubts about that. 

And I think what we also need to do in order to accomplish the 

objectives of Iran Freedom Support Act is to enhance the ability of 

Iranians in Iran to reach out, not just to access information but 

also to reach each other and to organize. I think that is one of the 

lessons of Tahrir Square was the value of the kind of technologies 

that the Egyptians used to mobilize. That would be my answer. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. And Ms. Stout. 

Ms. STOUT. Thank you, Congressman. 

I would associate myself closely with my colleague’s comments 

regarding Internet freedom and the Internet circumvention technologies that the State Department has been looking at and supports. With respect to public diplomacy in China, our public diploVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:51 May 31, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00065 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\OI\040611\65628 HFA PsN: SHIRL
62

macy mission in China is our largest and most robust. In terms of 

what is most effective, obviously, we are dealing with, you know, 

an environment where we have certain restrictions that we need to 

be mindful of. So, therefore, our communication directly with the 

Chinese public is, I would say, our most vital goal. We do so in a 

variety of ways. The State Department and the Embassy run a 

number of microblogs, Twitter feeds, that communicate with the 

Chinese people through the social media platforms that we have in 

indigenous Chinese languages. 

We have over 400,000 Chinese followers on those blogs and those 

Twitter feeds. That is our way of communicating directly with the 

Chinese people about our values, our goals and our U.S. policy interests. 

In addition to that, we have, as I mentioned in my testimony, a 

number of other programs that our mission in China is actively engaged in. The 100,000 Strong program represents a desire to correct a major imbalance in terms of the number of U.S. students we 

are sending over to China. We would like our next generation of 

leaders here in the United States to have a better understanding 

of Chinese language and culture so that they can come back here 

and be more competitive in their futures. 

We have a very robust speakers program that goes and supports 

both the U.S. Government nonprofit private-sector individuals to go 

to China, not just the urban centers but outside into the rural centers, and promote democracy, civil society, human rights, corporate 

social responsibility, a number of things. And we feel that those are 

all elements of a very strong public diplomacy program. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you all very much. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And thank you, Mr. Carnahan. 

And I know that, at some moment, you are going to have to 

sneak out because you have another meeting, but we appreciate 

your participation. I have got a few areas to cover, and I don’t 

know if Mr. Rivera will be coming back, and so we will make sure 

he gets a chance to ask some questions as well. 

There are a number of issues that we need to discuss. Mr. Zhou, 

am I pronouncing it correctly? 

Mr. ZHOU. It is more like ‘‘Joe.’’

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I am sorry. I really have trouble with these. 

With a name like ‘‘Rohrabacher,’’ an American name like that. 

Mr. Zhou, did I hear you right that you are saying that the BBG 

uses a Chinese Government satellite? 

Mr. ZHOU. It is a satellite that is controlled by the Chinese Government because China has the biggest share of that satellite, and 

it is based in Hong Kong. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. It is made in Hong Kong. Now is that correct? 

Mr. WIMBUSH. It is a satellite owned by an international consortium of which the Chinese Government has a piece. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. What kind of piece? 

Mr. WIMBUSH. Not all of it, I can tell you that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I didn’t say all of it. All you need is 51 percent, and that makes you, you own the pie. And of course, some of 

the companies in Hong Kong that probably own the other part of 

the pie rather than just the Chinese Government may, well, be 

63

sympathetic, let’s say, to the regime. It sounds like to me that if 

we are relying on that satellite, that is going to make jamming 

easier and perhaps even the identification of opposition easier, certainly easier than shortwave. Go ahead. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. Mr. Chairman to my knowledge, that satellite has 

not been jammed. One of the things that makes it harder to jam 

for the Chinese is that General Electric and others are part of the 

consortium. I mean, it is not total immunity. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I have got you. But I will have to admit, I 

have been so impressed with America’s CEOs’ commitment to democracy over my career. They have just rejected signing any agreements with tyrants. You know, I remember when IBM rejected 

their opportunity to deal with Adolf Hitler. And I remember during 

the 1960s and 1970s, how our businessmen would refuse to sell 

commodities to Russia when they were indeed—hell, I remember 

all those things. 

Oh, wait a minute. I am wrong. I was wrong about—my memory 

must be slipping. The CEOs actually made deals with dictatorial 

regimes before. Okay. Enough of that. 

Let’s go into a little bit about China, and then we will do a little 

bit about Iran. Let me suggest that I am a free trader, which always disturbs people. But my motto is free trade between free people. And what I think we have with China is a one-way free trade, 

but we also have, consistent with that, a one-way free information. 

Do you recognize this paper? This is published by the Communist 

Party of China. It is distributed widely. I think it comes to every 

one of our governmental offices. Do we have a similar publication 

that goes to the people who are in the Chinese Government? 

Mr. WIMBUSH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Point very well taken. The Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, 

whomever is dealing with China, cannot get access to China. They 

won’t accredit our journalists. We have a single office in Beijing, 

which is allowed no programming. They won’t give us visas. We 

have not a single affiliate broadcast relationship in China, which 

is the way normally you do it. You beam something up to a satellite. You bring it down, and you rebroad it cast it in F.M. Or 

A.M., which is the preferred method of listening. 

Meanwhile, the Chinese, as you have just pointed out, are all 

over the world. If you think they are big in here and in Galveston 

and in places like that, you should see them in Africa. It is a huge 

investment going into the billions of dollars. We are not challenging them with anything comparable to that. And even more regrettable in my sense is that we are not even challenging them seriously to get our own media access to their market. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. There you go. And let me just note that this 

is totally consistent with the other type of negotiations that we 

have with China. You know, we have sent Peewee Herman over to 

do our negotiating when we should have sent Arnold 

Schwarzenegger or somebody. The bottom line is that there are negotiations on a number of issues in which we lose. We basically accept giving the Chinese dictatorship what it wants. I will go back 

to China in a moment. 

But I would like to ask about Mr. Dibble’s point that the majority of the Iranian people don’t like the United States, is that right? 

64

Mr. DIBBLE. No. They love us. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Maybe you could tell us a little bit. Here is 

someone who went to jail there. In Mr. Dibble’s world—I am sorry. 

I will let you comment on it. But I am taking it out of context. But 

I seem to remember you saying in your testimony that what you 

had found is that the Iranian people don’t like the United States. 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. And maybe the employees of Voice of America 

Persian Service, yes, they don’t like America that much. But about 

the Iranian people inside Iran, I am talking about the more than 

70 percent under the age of 35 and 81 percent under the age of 40, 

they love the United States. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So we have a huge group of young people 

who would be susceptible to our freedom message. And maybe, Mr. 

Dibble, you could tell me why it is important that we broadcast to 

those young people and put the Mullahs on to explain their own 

position. 

Mr. DIBBLE. Let me first correct what is clearly a misimpression. 

What I said was that they don’t like U.S. policies, not that they 

don’t like the U.S. 

In fact, it is sort of a common place in Iran policy circles has that 

Iran is the one country in the Middle East where the people like 

us better than the government. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, let me note for the record that our student leader here from Iran is shaking his head ‘‘no.’’ But we will 

go right ahead. 

Mr. DIBBLE. In any case, I think it is important for us to broadcast to the younger generation in Iran because they—one, it is the 

preferred means of getting news. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. And so how is us putting the Mullahs 

directly on with them, how is that going to help us get our message 

across? 

Mr. DIBBLE. What we are proposing is not to put the Mullahs on. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, the Mullah spokesman on. 

Mr. DIBBLE. To put our U.S. Government Persian-speaking 

spokespeople onto Iranian media. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. But you are not suggesting that we 

have a spokesmen for the Mullahs being covered by our broadcasting? 

Mr. DIBBLE. No, not at all. We are proposing to have our guy——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. Fine. I have heard criticism of that in 

the past. So that isn’t happening. 

Mr. DIBBLE. Certainly not in our plans. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Not what? 

Mr. DIBBLE. It is not in our plans to do that. Our plan is to put 

our guys——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. But is it happening now? It is not in our 

plans to do something. 

Mr. DIBBLE. Not that I am aware of. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. Is anyone on the panel aware that we 

have put the Mullah spokesman on? Because some people had 

come to me with that charge. 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. On Voice of America Persian Service, yes. Sometimes there are some people from the inside government they came 

65

to speak, and they had a super bad attitude with the host and anchors, and it happened. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. And to your knowledge, it is just not 

a policy, but that just happened once or twice? 

Mr. DIBBLE. As far as I know, yes. 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. But it is not bad, Mr. Chairman. It can be. But 

let us to have the ability to talk with them and make them some 

balance. Maybe something. But it is not fair to boycott the part, 

that it is the side of people and just give the other part to speak. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. 

Mr. Dibble and Ms. Stout, is it your position that the conflict between our countries is based on a misunderstanding of our cultures 

of each other? Or that it is based on the fact that the Chinese Government is the worst human rights abuser in the world and it continues to put religious believers in jail and murdering them, could 

that have something to do with the fact—their basic value of their 

government political value rather than all the other values of our 

cultural values? 

From listening to your testimony, you seem to be saying that it 

is a misunderstanding of their culture. And let’s have a sports exchange. And you know Hitler had that really good. I remember all 

these videos of, what, the 1936 Olympics, was it? Is that your position, that we are talking about a misunderstanding of culture? 

Ms. STOUT. No, sir. With respect to our relationship with the 

People’s Republic of China, I think what I was trying to say in my 

testimony was, in our communications directly with the Chinese 

people, we would like to build a better understanding of our values, 

of our way of life, of our promotion of democracy. This is between 

the U.S. Government and the people of China. 

I do not dispute at all you know our—in terms of the human 

rights abuses that the Government of China has engaged in, we 

have been quite vocal about our concern. We raise our concerns at 

the highest levels with the forced disappearances, the arrests, the 

treatment of our journalists, people who come out and speak up 

against repression. We have been very open and candid with our 

Chinese interlocutors about this. 

We do not hide the fact that this continues to be an irritant in 

our relationship. 

Mr. DIBBLE. And all the more true in the case of Iran. 

This is not a question of cultural misunderstanding. We are not 

shy at all about criticizing Iran’s human rights record, and we have 

any number of strategic disagreements, disputes, hostilities with 

respect to Iran. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Uh-huh. 

Mr. DIBBLE. We do have an interest in ensuring that the Iranian 

people continue to look to the United States as a repository of the 

values that they have as distinct from their own government. And 

I think much of our public diplomacy is aimed at fostering that 

feeling. And to the extent that my friend at the end of the table 

is correct, we have been successful. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. Well, let me ask someone who used to 

be director of Voice of America, Mr. Reilly, his reaction to what has 

been said, specifically in terms of China. 

66

Mr. REILLY. Well, to China, I would like to—you held up a Communist Party publication. I would like to quote from one, too. May 

I? It is the Global Times, published by the People’s Daily. And this 

is the reaction to the elimination of the VOA TV and radio broadcasting service: ‘‘The cut demonstrates a blow to the ideological 

campaign that certain countries have waged for over half a century. Representative Dana Rohrabacher——’’

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Uh-oh. 

Mr. REILLY [continuing]. ‘‘California Republican whined that the 

U.S. is cowing before China.’’ And you are quoted, Mr. Chairman, 

as saying, ‘‘The Chinese people are our greatest allies, and the free 

flow of information is our greatest weapon,’’ with which I totally 

agree. 

The article ends saying, ‘‘Their Chinese service is coming to a 

historical end with their mission unfinished.’’

At least I agree with that latter part. If I may respond to a couple of things that my friend Enders Wimbush said, a person whom 

I respect greatly. I don’t think we should be faced with an either/

or in broadcasting platforms. 

If we see U.S. broadcasting as a national security asset, it requires redundancy. If you can’t reach them one way, you need to 

be able to reach them another. The Internet in China is policed by 

hundreds of thousands of Chinese police and other hundreds of 

thousands of Internet bloggers who write on behalf of the government or the party. In 2009, in Xinjiang province, the Chinese Government shut the Internet down completely for a month, and they 

also eliminated international telephone service for that month. 

Shortwave broadcasting, I would dispute, despite the enormous 

expense of jamming it on the coastal areas nonetheless does get 

through. There are almost 1 billion people in China without the 

Internet today. And if the choice were, we have to get rid of one 

of these services, Radio Free Asia or the Voice of America, why 

would you choose the service with the largest audience and the 

service that is obligated to present who the United States is, what 

it is doing, and the reasons for it? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, Mr. Wimbush’s argument is that it is 

the most effective way to do it. And we will let him express that 

and then Mr. Lenczowski will jump in. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. With respect to my good friend Bob Reilly, who 

is the smartest intellectual on public diplomacy anywhere and the 

very best, and I seldom have a disagreement with him. But when 

you are talking about the most popular versus the less popular and 

the numbers are 0.1 percent and 0.3 or 0.4 percent, there is not a 

whole lot to choose between them. 

I personally like the idea of getting Radio Free Asia onto the 

shortwave in prime times on the best frequencies because I came 

out of a surrogate service—surrogate radio, and I know how powerful those can be. 

Clearly not everybody is going to get everything. And I agree 

with Bob entirely. It is not an either/or situation, but we haven’t 

proposed an either/or situation. We have proposed a two-pronged 

situation. Can it be recalibrated? Can it be adjusted? Yes. And it 

almost certainly will be. But it is headed in the direction that the 

listenership is headed. 

67

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Dr. Lenczowski. 

Mr. LENCZOWSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I wanted to add one point about the relationship between our 

overall diplomatic approach to a place like China or Iran and our 

very specific public diplomacy programs. I think that the normal 

public diplomacy programs of the kind that Deputy Assistant Secretary Stout has described are very useful in order to try to promote American values. 

But I also believe that when people are feeling oppressed and 

when you have a country that has now had, as I understand it, 

somewhere around 75,000 civil disturbances within the last year or 

so throughout the country, people who feel oppressed need to have 

some kind of sense of solidarity with those who are free and who 

might be sympathetic with them. I would venture to say, without 

the intent of embarrassing you in your old role as a speechwriter 

for President Reagan, that Presidential rhetoric was an enormous 

weapon of public diplomacy in the Cold War and is highly relevant 

today to our relations with tyrannical governments like the Chinese and the Iranians. And this means our national leaders have 

to stop censoring themselves with regards to the human rights violations, the massive espionage operations, over 25,000 Chinese intelligence assets in the United States today, the huge military 

build-up, you know, the continued existence of the Laogai and all 

of these other things. And it was when President Reagan started 

saying the truth about that they would lie, that they would steal, 

they would you know commit any crime to further the goals of communism, there is a lot that American national leaders could be saying about China and could certainly threaten to say in the course 

of trying to modulate the tone of those relations when it comes to 

other diplomatic matters. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And when the President of the United States 

makes statements, it is a message to everyone else who works 

within the executive branch as to what the policy will be. 

I was honored to work with President Reagan who made no 

beans about it what the Communist regime and the Soviet Union 

was all about. And he also, I might add, when he went to China, 

if you read his full speeches—and I helped work on them with 

him—the freedom component is a very important part of his 

speeches in China. I was just recently—when President Hu visited, 

I asked Secretary of State Clinton whether or not the issue of 

forced abortion, where we have millions upon millions of women 

who are being forced to have their unborn babies ripped from their 

bodies—we probably have the most wholesale murder in the history of humankind, except maybe for the Jewish Holocaust during 

World War II—was that mentioned at all? I said, did that come up? 

And frankly, there was a promise to get back to me and the administration never got back to me with an answer, whether or not 

President Obama even mentioned it. Well, when you have a—leadership will filter down, and what I am afraid of and let’s just say, 

we will have many of these hearings to find out what the real policy of our Government is. I think we have had some very good testimony today. 

Mr. Rivera is coming back. 

68

Mr. Meehan, you have not had a can chance to comment and I 

am going to give you a free hand. Here I am talking about my 

views. And certainly, I want to give you a chance to get on the 

record with yours. 

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I appreciate the opportunity. And we really appreciate at the 

BBG the chance to focus in on things that we can do better and 

things that we can work with you, the Congress, to improve that 

and our colleagues in other government agencies. 

But this BBG Board came about, this new Board—we all got 

there in July. It is a part-time Board. I have a full-time job that 

is something else. But we came here—so does the rest of the Board 

actually, as does vendors. 

And so I wouldn’t disagree with some of the comments that sort 

of structural management issues need to be on the table, but we 

are putting them on the table because I don’t think that Michael 

Meehan should part-timely run a television station for the U.S. 

Government. I shouldn’t. But are there things with the kind of expertise that Enders Wimbush brings to the table should be part of 

it? It should. 

You asked at the beginning of your remarks that we have asked 

for additional sums of money. Endersand I cochair the budget committee, and we have gone through 75 of the 100 countries that we 

do services in now, and by June we will finish all of them and ask 

what can we do better with the U.S. taxpayers’ dollar. And each 

time they come back with this program works, this one doesn’t 

work, this one should be changed. 

Now, I am very sympathetic to the short-wave, but if we started the BBG today, and the Congress said, here is $110 million, would 

you put $100 million into short-wave and $10 million into the 

Internet when there is 235 million users of the Internet in China? 

I am sympathetic about the tracing. But the thing that our guys 

at the BBG do really well with a $1.5 million budget is figure out 

how to get around some of the government censors in China, in 

Iran, in Cuba. You name the place, they have figured it out. And 

with that little amount of money, they have gotten to—10 million 

people have gotten around these firewalls in these various places. 

The State Department got $5 million recently from the Congress 

they didn’t ask for. They sent us $1.4 million. As of yesterday the 

BBG sent out to two companies—450 million people use this Internet circumvention proxy for $1.4 million to get around the firewall 

to go to Facebook, yes, but to go to also VOA Persia, PNN. 

So I am with you. I don’t think it is an either/or, because in this 

changing technologies that we have, we have got to go where people are and where they can hear us. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much for that. And I appreciate your contribution to this discussion. All of you have made 

this. 

We are going to ask Mr. Rivera to—and then I am going to have 

a very short closing statement. But, Mr. Rivera, you may proceed. 

Mr. RIVERA. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, all of you, for being here. 

I recognize in the audience my former boss from my USIA days, 

U.S. Information Agency. I worked at USIA for 9 years under the 

69

auspices part of that time of Mr. Dick Lobo, a great American, a 

great patriot, and a great broadcaster. 

I see my good friend Bruce Sherman, and my former colleague 

as well, very nice seeing you. 

A couple of questions related to the international broadcasting. 

And what I recall from my years in international public diplomacy 

is the issue of surrogate broadcasting and the surrogate mission. 

And I wonder—my understanding of the surrogate mission, of 

course, is prioritizing information which is denied to the people in 

indeed what I will call captive nations by their captors, by the regime. Is that the—is that priority still in play today in the mission 

with the China service and with the Iran service? And I will go to 

Mr. Meehan and Mr. Wimbush. The surrogate mission, is that still 

a priority? 

Mr. WIMBUSH. Yes. Thank you, Congressman. This is a very good 

question. It is good because the answer to this is not as crystal 

clear as it was 10 years ago or 15 or 20 years ago. 

Let me put it this way: If you drive through almost any part of 

the world today that has got reasonably free media, take the Middle East, take Turkey, someplace like that, you can go through any 

small town, look at any apartment building, and you will see two 

or three satellite dishes on every balcony. And that means that 

they are receiving 200 to 400 channels of something. 

The idea that most people in the world are deficient in information today can’t be sustained. There are some places where they 

are totally deficient. Radio Free Asia is a perfect example in our 

network of broadcasters of a totally surrogate station. It does the 

information and the analysis and the reporting on local events, 

local dynamics, local things of importance that those people could 

expect to receive if they had a free media of their own. The Office 

of Cuba Broadcasting is another one, although it is beginning to 

loosen up. 

But what we are beginning to see more and more is a kind of 

hybridization. Some places get tons of information and still don’t 

know how to process it very well. So our mission, in a very funny 

sort of way, it comes back and focuses on precisely where we were 

during the Cold War when we were a monopoly of outsiders going 

in. It is creating the analytical context, the larger picture, the larger view, which can help people take a lot of information that might 

not mean something and stimulate their critical thinking in ways 

that help them get to the right decisions when the decision point 

comes. There is no better example of this right now than the Radio 

Martis, which are under—have been totally renovated and are really doing a remarkable job. 

But to give you—I mean, to give you an idea of how complex this 

is, TV Alhurra one thinks of as a global international broadcaster. 

But what do we hear from the Alhurra audience? We want you 

more local. We want you to be surrogate. In this respect John 

Lenczowski is absolutely right. It is part of—it is more part of the 

surrogate mission than it is of the other. But it is not totally surrogate. 

We are experimenting right now with creating an all-Egypt 

stream. The station was developed as a Pan-Arab station. We are 

in the process of developing an all-Egypt stream at this point, and 

70

my guess is that we are going to go more and more in that direction toward more local content. 

So the idea of surrogate originally was give them what their local 

media won’t give them. Today the idea of surrogate is—in many 

places it is give them what the global media won’t give them about 

themselves. So it is a difficult balancing act. 

What this Board is attempting to do with its strategic reviews 

and other things is to get away from the harsh definition between 

official broadcasters like the VOA and surrogate broadcasters like 

the ‘‘radio frees.’’ We are trying to get audience-focused here. There 

are some audiences that will take one kind of product, and other 

audiences will take a different kind of product, and some that will 

take something that looks a little bit like both. 

But we are—John Lenczowski is absolutely right in pointing out 

we have got a structural problem. We have got a structural problem. You won’t find—as Michael said, we are prepared to put these 

issues on the table. You won’t find a single member of this Board 

who believes that the BBG is a particularly sharp instrument and 

is necessarily the right instrument for this highly complex media 

world with rapidly changing technologies. 

Mr. RIVERA. Well, that is going to happen maybe in a more concise form. Let me use—in terms of your response, let me use the 

example of OCB Radio and Martin Gutierrez as a template for my 

question. Because in south Florida I can hear Cuban Government 

broadcasts because they make efforts on media Wave to broadcast 

into south Florida. And what Cuban Government broadcasts entail 

are mainly the great production of the harvest and the sugar and 

the great things that are going on in Cuba. 

So my question is when it comes to China or Iran from Chinese 

broadcasters or the Iran broadcast services, is it a priority to make 

sure that it is not just what the mullahs are saying that is given 

to the audience, but what they are denied, information that is denied to them domestically, domestic information, what is going on, 

what is really going on in Iran that the Iranian Government denies 

them, what is really going on in China that the Chinese Government denies them, as well as what is going on in the world that 

the Iranian and Chinese Government deny their people? Is that a 

priority? 

Mr. MEEHAN. It is a priority. But we are an agency that its job 

is to be communications platform-neutral. And so if you gave us a 

TV station in China, could we produce a great show? Yes. If the 

Cuban Government let our TV show Radio/TV Marti be seen, which 

probably it doesn’t—we know it doesn’t, very few people see it—you 

would say yes. 

Mr. RIVERA. You have other ways of getting information out of 

Iran and China. You don’t need to open a TV station in China or 

a TV station in Iran or a TV station in Cuba to know that there 

are political prisoners. You don’t need to open stations in those 

countries to know that there is human rights abuses or denials of 

civil liberties, or that there are no free elections. You know that 

without having a physical presence in those countries. Conveying 

that information, is that a priority as a surrogate function today 

in 2011 for these stations? 

71

Mr. MEEHAN. Yes. Every day, every day it is a top priority to 

convey that information, that governments that don’t allow the 

media to talk to their own people, we—no matter how we can figure it out, Internet, radio, short-wave, medium-wave, FM, AM, 

from another country, barring another country, off the top of military towers, flying a plane over Libya today, we are committed to 

putting out information that their governments won’t tell them 

about. 

Mr. RIVERA. So the surrogate function. 

Mr. MEEHAN. So the surrogate function. 

Mr. RIVERA. Now, you have heard—physically you have been 

there listening inside knowing what these stations are broadcasting. Do you believe from what you heard that the surrogate 

function of these stations, which I believe is a congressional mandate or mission, was a priority of the broadcasts? 

Mr. FAKHRAVAR. Without the surging service, the Voice of America and Radio Farda, until now, no. But the good things that Governor Meehan and Governor Wimbush they say, I agree with them, 

because the day Governor Wimbush was appointed as a Broadcasting Board of Governor, he did a great job. We had a meeting, 

and I gave him some suggestion about how the problem can be 

fixed. And he said, we need the watchdog, we need to follow people. 

They can understand Farsi and English fully, and they can prove 

their loyalty first to the United States, and through BBG and 

VOA’s mission needs to promote freedom and democracy first. And 

he said yes, and he started that mission. 

And then they forced the Voice of America to have the new manager. He is a great guy. He just came last month. He has done a 

great job right now to clean up the Persian cities. We need to have 

these things, to see these type of things in Radio Farda, definitely. 

These two things, and rehiring the all the employees that they 

came during last 5 years, 6 years, to just check their background 

and their application again to see which part of these people they 

lied, and it is a lot. 

But I am sure the Governor Wimbush and the Governor Meehan 

and the new BBG—I am talking about the new BBG because the 

old BBG, I didn’t want to say the word terrible, but that was terrible. The new one is doing a good job, and we hope—we need them 

to follow the mission to promote freedom and democracy. 

Mr. RIVERA. And I agree with that. But the way my understanding is, correct me if I am wrong, the way we promote freedom 

and democracy in the national public diplomacy, international 

broadcasting is by providing objective, balanced, comprehensive information, news and information. And a surrogate function, the objective, balanced, comprehensive information, ‘‘balanced’’ means 

providing that information denied to that audience by their own 

government. 

That is how we promote freedom and democracy in terms of the 

broadcasting function. And I want to know, I want to know here 

today, that that surrogate function, providing that audience the information and news that is denied to them by their own government, that that is a priority of all the broadcast services; that at 

least Voice of America, because Voice of America has a different 

72

mission, the surrogate function; the radio frees, the TV frees, that 

those have that priority. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. They do have priority, Congressman, absolute priority. And I wouldn’t even call out the VOA here. The VOA does 

a lot of this, too, a lot of it. 

Mr. RIVERA. But it is not country-specific. These are country-specific. Information denied to those people in those country, China, 

Iran, tell me that that is—let me know how that is a priority. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. It is. It is a huge priority. This is what these radios were put in place to do. They were put in place to do precisely 

this. There are services at the Voice of America which one might 

even think of as surrogate services. The Tibetan service, for example, it operates effectively like a surrogate service. There are surrogate services at the Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty. OCB is almost entirely a surrogate service. RFA, Radio Free Asia, is entirely 

a surrogate service at this point. 

The trick going forward is going be able to get inside this larger 

universe of services, of providers, of capabilities and adjust in the 

direction of audiences that might be changing. And this is not an 

easy thing to do. 

Mr. RIVERA. I understand that. I just want to make sure the 

message and the mission is adhering to that principle of surrogate 

service. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. Absolutely. 

Mr. RIVERA. Do I have another moment? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. You sure do. But we will be done here in 10 

minutes, and the chairman needs at least 1. 

Mr. RIVERA. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Audience measurements, are you able to—how do we measure 

audiences in what we continue to call captive audiences like China 

or Iran—let us stick with China and Iran for now. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. I really am not the person to speak to that. But 

the person who can speak to it is sitting right behind me, Bruce 

Sherman. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Oh, Bruce, okay. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. He knows more about this than anybody else at 

the BBG because he runs all of this. 

Mr. RIVERA. I would like to know if we can——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Are you sure he is going to be the only witness? 

Mr. WIMBUSH. But what I would like to suggest, Congressman, 

is if you use a very sweet tone, I will bet you Bruce will come up 

and give you a full briefing on this. 

Mr. RIVERA. Will you tell me, we do try to measure audience, but 

I understand it is very difficult to do so. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. It is not just audience size, but the largest contract the BBG lets across anything is its research and audience development contract. It is about $50 million per 5 years, $10 million 

a year. Measuring audience size is fairly simple in a lot of places; 

it is harder others. 

Mr. RIVERA. I want to stick to China and Iran, in closed societies. 

Mr. WIMBUSH. It is harder, it is harder. It can be done. 

Mr. RIVERA. Would you say it is imprecise? 

Mr. WIMBUSH. I will let Bruce discuss measures. 

73

Mr. RIVERA. Well, these are societies that people live in fear, so 

I would suspect it is very imprecise to determine audiences in captive nations where countries are living in fear. If I go back to the 

Radio Free Europe, my understanding is irrespective of those efforts to measure audiences in these countries, we continued to 

broadcast behind the Iron Curtain notwithstanding the fact that 

we could not necessarily determine the audience during the Cold 

War. And probably today as well we cannot determine in China or 

Iran the audience size. Would you agree with that, Mr. Reilly? 

Mr. REILLY. Absolutely. 

Mr. RIVERA. Well, then, let me ask you this, because we have a 

colleague of mine who recently issued a dear colleague letter saying 

that Radio/TV Marti should be shut down because the audience 

levels are low. And my recollection is that in a closed society where 

people live in fear of opining on anything, like China and Iran and 

Cuba, you cannot utilize an audience survey to justify the continuation of broadcast services to these closed societies. And I would 

like to know who would agree with that, Mr. Reilly, Mr. Meehan, 

Mr. Wimbush? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, if the gentleman would hold just a moment. I think the point you are making is that if you live in a dictatorship like Cuba, if you get a phone call and say, do you listen 

to Radio Marti——

Mr. RIVERA. You are going to hang up the phone. 

Mr. MEEHAN. It is enormously imprecise. It is enormously difficult to measure. The most recent survey we have attempted in 

China is about 8,600 people. Some of it was done on line through 

a proxy service. It is not completely accurate, and that is some of 

the best data. 

Mr. RIVERA. Would you agree not to use that as a measure of the 

worthiness of broadcast services? 

Mr. MEEHAN. I completely agree with the chairman. Hi, this is 

the government calling. Are you doing something illegal? No. You 

know, you would hang up the phone and go. So, yes, it is enormously imprecise, and that is a big challenge. 

Mr. RIVERA. Would you agree that it should not be the justification of other measurements in justifying broadcast services to these 

closed societies? 

Mr. REILLY. I would, sir. And I would add that the BBG’s own 

figures for Voice of America Mandarin had 6 million for TV and 

radio. They themselves say is an underestimate precisely because 

of this problem. 

I think the standard should be not how many are you reaching, 

because you can’t find that out, but what is it you need to reach 

them with. And part of it is that vital surrogate function you mention. 

By the way, VOA Chinese spends 40 percent of its time, as 

Enders Wimbush indicated, with local Chinese news, but the rest 

of it fulfills the rest of the VOA charter, U.S. policy and life and 

explanation thereof. That is why I think it is a terrible mistake to 

close down that service in favor of the Web site that today is completely blocked by the Chinese Government. 

Mr. RIVERA. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, thank you very much. 

74

One last question, and then I have a closing statement. And, Mr. Zhou, we just heard that there is a $50-million research budget. 

And I understand you have been developing some kind of software 

to help people get around the blocks that are put in them for receiving, I guess, the Internet or broadcast signals. What has been 

the reaction to that type of product that you have developed? 

Mr. ZHOU. So I believe the Board of Governors mentioned $1.5 

million they assigned to break through the firewall system was assigned to us to do that. And indeed, the work this Internet Freedom Consortium has done is enormous, and it is great. 

And now, I just want to also add——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So you receive support, it is in the record, to 

try to develop a software that is necessary to break through these 

blocks. 

Mr. ZHOU. It is to expand the scale of the operation, not to develop software. The software has already been developed. 

I want to echo Mr. Rivera’s comment on this. The importance of 

the content of the domestic news in those who live in repressive regimes, NTD developed a program called China’s Forbidden News, 

and that program is among the highest-rated programs on the 

Internet from China. Every day there are tens of thousands, maybe 

sometimes even hundreds of thousands, of visitors to that program 

alone. Indeed people need to know what happens around them, and 

this kind of software in a censorship platform indeed plays a critical role to provide such success to those people. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. 

I will be—this is my final statement, and that this has been a 

very interesting afternoon. This is in keeping with the tradition 

that we started, as I say, with Bill Delahunt that we really try to 

be less formal so we can actually get to the points and have interaction between the witnesses. 

I would just like to leave you with one story. And you have to 

remember I worked for a guy who taught me all about writing. Let 

me tell you a little story, and Reagan always had a little story. 

Well, this is a little story about when I worked for Reagan. It was 

mentioned about how Reagan did not—by the way, he was always 

saying, ‘‘Be very tough when it comes to policy; be very nice and 

good to people, to other human beings.’’ So he is tough on the Communist ideology and the policy, but he is very good to these people 

who were not on the other side of the table. 

But we all remember his very solid, solid statements condemning 

not just acts, but the nature of communism as being evil. And 

Natan Sharansky in our administration was traded—Natan 

Sharansky was a political prisoner in the gulag in the worst possible conditions. He was asked to sign a statement saying Russia 

is a democracy, and he could get out. He refused to sign that. A 

real hero of that era. 

And then we ended up trading him. And, John, you might have 

been the guy who arranged the trade, I don’t know, but we traded 

Sharansky. We got Sharansky for some Soviet spy. And we got the 

best part of the deal, obviously, and we got a saint for someone who 

was probably working for the worst gang around. 

So Sharansky, when he made his way out of that gulag and was 

free, he came to the West, and he went to the White House. One 

75

of the first things he did was go to see President Reagan. And the 

speechwriters were all tuned in. And there is a closed-circuit TV 

in the White House. And so when people come out of the meeting 

with the President, they meet with members of the press, and it 

is closed-circuit TV to all of our offices. 

So the press asked Sharansky about his meeting with the President, and they said, well, what did you tell the President? And he 

said, well, I told the President the most important thing was not 

to tone down his speeches. And, of course, the speechwriters, you 

know, champagne started popping and all the rest, and began to 

celebrate. And they said, well, what is that all about? He said, well, 

in my darkest moments when I was in prison, somebody smuggled 

me a little note that said the President of the United States has 

just called the Soviet Union an evil empire, and once I knew that, 

I had hope, and I did not give up and would not give up. And how 

many other Sharanskys throughout the Communist world felt the 

same way, and how did that have an impact on peace and freedom 

on this planet? 

And Reagan was condemned soundly. I mean, he—after using 

the word evil empire, if you remember, they called him belligerent 

and the rest of it. 

Well, the day after this incident Sharansky—there was a reception for Sharansky at the Israeli Embassy. And I remember he was 

coming down—I was sort of over in the back, and he was coming 

down these long stairs. He was a real short guy. And I found in 

my life that the bravest people are short and bald. They just really 

are. And so anyway, there he is coming down there, and all these 

people are surrounding him. And all of a sudden it sort of opens 

up like this, and he is sort of looking in my direction. He walks 

right across the room right to me, and he looks up at me and says, 

I understand that you write speeches for President Reagan. And I 

said, yes, I do. And he says, I have often wondered who you are. 

And it all comes back to this: There are a lot of people who don’t 

know who we are. Our Founding Fathers didn’t know who we 

would be, but they know there are good people, there are good and 

decent people on this planet, and we have to affirm that for those 

people who are in desperate situations, and through our broadcasting is what it is all about, so thank you all very much. 

[Whereupon, at 5:16 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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[NOTE: The rest of the article submitted by Mr. Robert Reilly is not reprinted here 

but is available in committee records or may be accessed via the Internet at: http:/

/www.securityaffairs.org/issues/2009/17/reilly.php (accessed 5/11/11).]

Æ


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