USIA: Beginning Of the End?

Who speaks for America abroad?

For more than two decades the State Department and the United States Information Agency (USIA) have shared that duty. Last week a 21-member, foundation-supported study group* headed by Frank Stanton, former vice chairman of CBS, suggested that the USIA be abolished. After 98 interviews and ten months of deliberation, all but three members of the panel decided that there was too much duplication of effort between State and the USIA. The panel's major recommendations to Congress:

> Create a new quasi-independent Information and Cultural Affairs Agency, which would be supervised by the State Department and would combine the old cultural programs of the USIA and the State Department.

> Set up a new Office of Policy Information, headed by a Deputy Under Secretary of State, which would send out information about American foreign policy to the overseas press.

>Change the status of the USIA'S broadcast division; the Voice of America would continue independent of the State Department, but the director of the Information and Cultural Affairs Agency and the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Policy Information would be members of its board of overseers, along with three private citizens. Voice journalists have complained lately that USIA, out of deference to "the U.S.-U.S.S.R." detente, has censored their stories reporting on Communist dissidents (TIME, Dec. 16). The panel recommendations were intended to insulate the Voice from future Government pressure.

The proposals have the private approval of the State Department but not of the USIA'S current chief, James Keogh, who argues that the changes would "fragment" USIA activities. Congress will not discuss the recommendations until after Easter, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee starts hearings on the USIA budget.

* Including Pollster George Gallup, International Lawyer Rita Hauser, Reader's Digest Editor in Chief Hobart Lewis, former USIA Director Leonard Marks, and Author James Michener.

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