Silenced

National Review, Nov 6, 1987

Silenced

RADIO FREE EUROPE/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America are planning to build a joint transmitting station in Israel's Negev Desert. President Reagan personally presided over a ceremony in June at which the United States and Israel signed an agreement on construction of this relay station.

When completed, the U.S. transmitting facility in Israel will be the largest short-wave relay station in the free world and the linchpin of the Reagan Administration's efforts to strengthen America's influence in the war of ideas throughout the world. For one thing, the station will enable Radio Liberty to overwhelm Soviet jamming in much of European Russia and in the strategically significant Moslem areas of Soviet Central Asia.

Regrettably, funding for this project may now be postponed owing to objections from the State Department. The green eye-shade types in Foggy Bottom evidently fear that the Israel project may compete with State Department priorities in the battle for funding on Capitol Hill. Columnist William Safire claims that George Shultz himself supports postponing the project--not on budgetary grounds, but to do a favor for the Soviets that will conduce to pre-Summit euphoria. (Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze is reported to have raised vigorous objections about the Israel project in a meeting with Shultz earlier this year.)

Whatever the State Department's motives, this is clearly a time when the President should overrule the Department. The required $50 million in start-up costs can surely be found in a $20 billion foreign-affairs budget. If the project is not launched and gotten solidly under way while President Reagan is still in office, the risk increases that it will be postponed indefinitely, which is to say, canceled. The President personally intervened with Prime Minister Peres a few years ago to persuade Israel to agree to the project. It would be a serious setback for the Administration's broadcasting efforts if it were derailed now.