Selling America: How Well Does U.S. Government Broadcasting Work in the Middle East?

May 11, 2004

Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording.

Proceedings:
MR. GLASSMAN:  Welcome to the American Enterprise Institute to a conference on Selling America:  How Well Does U.S. Government Broadcasting Work in the Middle East?

I'm Jim Glassman.  I'm a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and host of the website techcentralstation.com.

Recent events in Iraq, especially in Abu Ghraib Prison, emphasize once more the dire need for serious strategic and properly funded public diplomacy, the promotion of the national interest by informing, engaging and influencing people around the world.

On October 1st of last year the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World, chaired by former Ambassador Edward Djerejian, issued a highly critical report on the state of public diplomacy and urged significant changes.  That report, while warmly embraced by many in Congress, the press, and some elements of the administration, has been greeted with resounding silence by the White House.  Implementing the report might have meant admitting the administration's own deficiencies in public diplomacy, but those deficiencies did not begin with George W. Bush.  They stretch back to the end of the Cold War.  They are understandable, but they must be remedied.

Perhaps some of the administration believe that efforts to promote the national interest through official state-to-state diplomacy and military action must supersede what is often considered the softer science of public diplomacy, which is viewed in some circles almost as sissified, not for tough men and women.

I could not disagree more.  The United States is not making a serious effort to tell its story, to convince both its enemies and its friends of our cause to change minds.  Evidence of that lack of seriousness, the single most important public official in this area is the Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy.  That job was vacated by resignation in March 2003 just before the Iraq war, and was vacant until December 16th, 2003, when it was assumed by Margaret Tutwiler.  Secretary Tutwiler then announced in late April, 4-1/2 months after taking office, that she was leaving to take a job at the New York Stock Exchange.  She departs on June 30th, a date of some urgency.  It is highly unlikely that this post will be filled before the end of the year.

And this is not to say there's been no activity in public diplomacy.  We will today focus on one part of that activity, government sponsored international broadcasting overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, whose Chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, will speak shortly.  The BBG's new Radio Sawa is beaming music and news into several Arab countries.  And Alhurra was launched two months ago as an Arabic language satellite TV service to a region that covers five time zones.

The BBG, in its earlier incarnations and this one, has done fine work.  But Ambassador Djerejian's Advisory Group, of which I was a member, made two recommendations regarding broadcasting.  First, we urged that the BBG, like other elements of public diplomacy, be, "brought under the strategic direction" of the White House through an office headed by a special counsel to the President with Cabinet rank.  Today BBG spends nearly as much money on public diplomacy as the State Department, yet it operates outside the broader policy umbrella.  Second, we urged that the BBG again, like other agencies that practice public diplomacy, set clear objectives that can be measured.  The objectives should not merely be to build an audience, but to move the needle, to change attitudes toward the United States.  Evidence of the success or failure of broadcasting entities to meet objectives needs to be public disseminated.  There should be no fear that journalistic integrity and credibility will be compromised if these recommendations are followed.

The point is to set strategic goals, not to interfere with the way specific news or entertainment is broadcast; to the contrary.  Think of it this way, a broad, international secretary strategy is set.  Then a public diplomacy strategy is set to help implement it.  Then the BBG is part of the public diplomacy apparatus, operates within that strategy.

As an example, it is in our strong national interest to promote democracy in the Arab and Muslim world.  That may be the main reason we are in Iraq.  Public diplomacy should follow this same track, even, and in fact, especially, if it means criticizing existing nondemocratic regimes.  Public diplomacy can often do what office diplomacy cannot.

"We will know Alhurra is succeeding," says an Egyptian-born friend, "when Secretary Powell is besieged with complaints from heads of government in the Arab world."

As for the prison abuse scandals, public diplomacy should not merely show what Americans have done wrong and what we are trying to set right, but should also highlight prison abuse throughout the Arab and Muslim world.  It is not an isolated problem and this is the time to discuss it.

If I sound disappointed with the greeting that the Djerejian Report and others like it have received, I am.  Yes, many of our enemies will never approve of our policies in the Arab and Muslim world, but many others, given a clear and forceful explanation, will.  We need to get serious.  That is our message.  The best sign of seriousness would be establishing the office and the structure we suggested, and to fund public diplomacy adequately.  It would not be difficult.

In this effort to promote seriousness, AEI has organized today's conference, and here is the schedule.  Danielle Pletka will moderate the first panel, The Role of Broadcasting in Public Diplomacy.  And since my friend Ken Tomlinson has to leave for a board meeting of the BBG--not great timing on our part, we're sorry--he will speak first and answer questions directly.  Danielle will introduce the panel members.

At 10:30 I will moderate a panel titled How Do We Measure Success?  At noon we will be served lunch, and Representative Frank Wolf, the Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies, will be our speaker.

Before we start I want to thank Molly McKew especially for her vigorous efforts to put this conference together.

Danielle Pletka is Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at AEI.  She was a professional staff member for Near East and South Asia with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 10 years, ending in 2002.

Danielle?

MS. PLETKA:  Thank you, Jim.

What I'm going to do--Ken, when do you need to leave?

MR. TOMLINSON:  Now.

MS. PLETKA:  Now, okay.  What I'm going to do is, rather than rant and rave and introduce everybody, what I'm actually going to do is just turn to you, introduce you, and ask you to give a brief remark.  Maybe we can take some questions and answers, and then we'll turn to the rest of our panel and talk behind your back.

If I may have just one moment to introduce Ken Tomlinson, who is the Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.  Previously he was the Director of the Voice of America, and the Editor-in-Chief of Reader's Digest.  He has more than 35 years of journalistic experience.

Thank you so much for being here, and off you go.

MR. TOMLINSON:  I so looked forward to this conference, Jim, and as you know, was quite disappointed when I discovered it was scheduled on the same day as a long-scheduled board meeting, but I could certainly understand why you had to stick with this date, because as far as I'm concerned, Frank Wolf may be the most important single person in this town to the future of broadcasting and public diplomacy.  His Appropriations Subcommittee has shown a willingness to really examine what we're doing and fund what we're doing.  I'll have more to say about that later.

Last week, Opinion Journal, James Taranto's Opinion Journal had a wonderful item which you'll have to forgive me for reading in full:

On Valentine's Day a new U.S. funded TV station, Alhurra, began broadcasting in the Arab world.  Critics jeered.  "The Middle East hates its new TV station," declared Slate.  The Middle East Times reported "a tidal wave of criticism from Arab audiences."  NBC News reported that "many didn't bother to watch the fledgling TV station or couldn't find it," but they had "a negative opinion" of it anyway.  And the Associated Press reported on February 12th that "even before its first broadcast, a satellite television station financed by the U.S. Government and directed at Arab viewers is drawing fire in the Middle East as an American attempt to destroy Islamic values and brainwash the young."

So asked Taranto, "how's it working out, less than three months later?"  Reuters reported yesterday, quote, "The controversial U.S. Arabic-language TV channel Alhurra is winning viewers as a news source in the Arab world."  A U.S.-financed poll conducted by a French firm finds that the station "is being watched by an average 29 percent of the satellite-equipped households in seven countries, including a high of 44 percent in Kuwait and a low of 18 percent in Egypt."

Taranto concluded, "Oh well, never mind."

As I've watched this satellite network develop, I'm reminded of the old adage, no good deed goes unpunished.  When we were planning this efforts and we were briefing President Bush, he seized on its importance immediately and said, "You get this on the air.  This will be the most important public diplomacy initiative of this administration."  I believe he's been proven right.

As Jim said, five time zones, 22 countries, from Morocco to Egypt to Saudi Arabia over to Yemen.  Broadcasting played a pivotal role in the end of the Cold War.  Lec Walesa, Havill, they all say that of course, and many people here, they know the role that Michael Novak and Ben Lautenberg played in the old BIB, which I served on for 8 years.  The radios won the Cold War, in my opinion.  I think if Alhurra is able to establish the trust it needs to do in the coming months and years, this will be a pivotal tool in the war against terror.

We also need vigorous public diplomacy.  We need exchanges, well-funded exchanges.  We need Internet cafes.  We need educational initiatives that will give the children of the Arab world hope for an economic future.

I am fond of saying that broadcasting and public diplomacy need to go on parallel paths.  Each is critically important to what this nation needs to do.  But we should not try to impose the disciplines of one on the other.

Two final words.  In the 10 years following the end of the Cold War, broadcasting was reduced financially by a very real 40 percent.  We have starved broadcasting and public diplomacy so long that I'm surprised that we've been able to do as much as we have been able to do.  We need to do something about that, and that's why Frank Wolf is so important to us, and that's why recognition within this administration--it was really extraordinary to be able to get this administration in tight budget times to fund this satellite television network, and we can't stop now.  We have to go for more funding.

One final word.  These are--Judy Siegel and I were talking, and these are miserable days for those of us who care about the future of the world and democracy in all its right.  But I could not help but be reminded of experience I had in Vietnam in late 1969.  I went to Vietnam with a colleague, Reader's Digest colleague to do a book on the communist massacre at Hue(?), and around Thanksgiving it became clear that this Mai Lai event was of such magnitude that doing a book on the communist massacre at Hue didn't make much sense.  So we packed up our tents in Hue and headed back to Saigon.

On the way back to Saigon I proposed to my editors in New York that we do an article on the humanitarian works of combat GIs, not the people paid to do the good stuff in the countryside, but combat GIs and all the things they did for the people of Vietnam as they fought the war.

Now, my press colleagues in Saigon chuckled at my story because Mai Lai was the story, not the combat good works of GIs.  Much like today, some may chuckle at Jim's call for us to look at issues bigger than U.S. participation in one prison.  But I did that story.  Well, it didn't have a great deal of impact at the time, but I was very proud of it.

Fast forward 11 years, Ronald Reagan was elected President, and he wants to go to the Pentagon to have a ceremony and put the Vietnam war behind the United States.  I don't recall whether it was Eliott or Dana Rohrabacher gave the President his speech, and he sent the speech back and he said, "No, no, this doesn't have the tone of what I want to say."  He said, "There appeared years ago a piece in Reader's Digest about humanitarian works of combat soldiers in Vietnam that to me leaves the tone that I want to leave.  We went there with good intentions.  We did our best, and our people served by and large honorably."

And sure enough, if you look up the presidential documents that day, you'll see that article recited.  And that is in many ways what we need to do for the public diplomacy of broadcasting.  We're in this thing for the long haul.  The Berlin Wall didn't come down overnight and we didn't win the Cold War overnight.  And anyone who expect broadcasting initiatives or public diplomacy initiatives to pay dividends overnight, is foolish.  But that doesn't mean that we don't start today.

Thank you so much.  I do apologize for--Danielle, I'd love to hear the panel.  I'll be happy to taking any questions, and I look forward to watching a tape of these deliberations today.

MS. PLETKA:  Thank you very much, Ken.

[Applause.]

MS. PLETKA:  Let's all have a quick hand and then--

[Applause.]

MS. PLETKA:  And we'll keep it very quick, at less than 5 minutes for questions.  If everybody would be kind enough to wait for a microphone.  Who has the microphone?  Jason, do you have the microphone?  No, no microphone.  How about yelling?  We're having sound problems today.  If you would identify yourself, please, and your organization?

QUESTION:  Larry [inaudible] of [inaudible] America Foundation.  A few months ago I attended a conference put on by [inaudible].  It was on media.  They had Al Jazeera and [inaudible] there.  And it was probably the most volatile panel in fact in the two days of the conference.  It was quite interesting.  And what struck me was the incredible amount of misinformation our cultures have about each other.  And I'm wondering in terms of [inaudible] are you able to utilize people who really understand the culture and how to communicate between [inaudible]?

MR. TOMLINSON:  You will see Mouafac Harb, our News Director at Alhurra, later today.  Mouafac is probably the most capable journalist and one of the great believers in freedom and democracy I've ever known.  We could not be in better hands than with Mouafac Harb and the great team he's assembled.

With the help of the White House Office of Global Communications, we were able to recruit some 85 journalists in the Middle East to come in to launch Alhurra.  We were able to get them in the country in a matter of--in very short order.  Mouafac's done an extraordinary job, both in terms of handling the news and current affairs, and recruiting this outstanding group of people who work out at Northern Virginia.  Here Mouafac and just for yourself.

MS. PLETKA:  Anybody else?

[No response.]

MS. PLETKA:  You're relieved from [inaudible].

MR. TOMLINSON:  Thank you so much.  Thank you.

MS. PLETKA:  Thank you very much.

[Applause.]

MS. PLETKA:  We're having a series of starts, which I apologize, but now we'll move to our panel, and I am very grateful for their indulgence.

When Jim and I were talking about this conference, we came at it from two different viewpoints, and Jim is more of an enthusiast with the provisos recommended in that Djerejian Commission, and I come to it as more of a skeptic.  And we thought it would be very good to play out some of these debates, and you'll see that we've tried to reflect the questions that have been raised about broadcasting as public diplomacy and about American public diplomacy in the Middle East in general.

[Technical interruption.]

MR. FINN:  I'm Chester Finn.  This is a terrific panel, and they deserve their full opportunity to be--

[Technical interruption.]

MS. PLETKA:  Okay.  We're going to try again, ladies and gentlemen.  I apologize.  Can you hear me?  Yes, everybody can hear me.

Well, I was busy telling you about how I come to this as a skeptic, which sounded a lot better beforehand when our mike system worked.  The biggest problem that many outsiders perceive, particularly people who spend more time looking at the Middle East than they do at public diplomacy in broadcasting like me, was that there was a failure in the halls of public diplomacy and broadcasting to take account of the differences between the Cold War broadcasting and broadcasting to the Middle East, that we had a very receptive audience in the former Soviet Union in the captive states of the Soviet Union.  They loved America and they wanted to hear what was going on.  They hated their own government, and that is not the case in the Arab and Muslim world.

They begin with a prejudice against us and with a hostility and skepticism towards the media in general which they view as a tool of manipulation of states.  And if it is a tool, if Al Jazeera is a tool of the Qatari Government or Al-Arabiya is a tool of the Saudi Government, is that right?  Then Alhurra and Radio Sawa are all tools of the American Government and equally untrustworthy.  And this means that we start with a credibility deficit which is very hard to overcome.

Radio Sawa versus--the congressionally created radio for Iraq, which I have a warm spot for obvious reasons, having been on the Hill when it was created, and Alhurra, will cost us over $100 million this fiscal year.  That's a significant amount of money.  It is reasonable to ask whether we get bang for our buck.  Radio Sawa is short on news, although it is long on pop music, and it is really tough to measure the effect that it has on viewers.  Alhurra has had an impact, according to the ratings that we've seen, but the real question is: are we willing hearts and minds?  And at the end of the day, one of the biggest problems with public diplomacy is that it is not about teaching people to love America, as I think many, many believe, including many who are in positions of influence.  It's much more important for us to go forward and win people over with deeds rather than educating them about what America is, which I think is largely known.

And with that rather biased introduction--because I wanted to get my two cents in--I'd like to introduce our panelists, who should feel free to disagree because that's why we have them here.

Mark Helmke is a senior professional staff member for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a long-time aid to the Chairman of that committee, Richard Lugar.  He's also a former journalist, so he brings special expertise to this.

Salameh Nematt is the Washington Bureau Chief for the London-based Al Hayat.  Previously he was the managing editor for a joint venture between Al Hayat and Lebanese broadcasting channel satellite TV, as well as Al Hayat's Bureau Chief in Oman and their London diplomatic editor.

Jeremy Sharp is an analyst in Middle East Affairs for the Congressional Research Service, where he provides analysis on Arab political, military and diplomatic affairs, and on U.S. policy, and has done a very highly-regarded report on public diplomacy and broadcasting to the Middle East.

With that, we're going to go straight down the line, and we will take questions afterwards should our sound system continue to work.

MR. SHARP:  Thank you, Danielle, for having me today.  Obviously, I can't think of a more appropriate time to speak about broadcasting and public diplomacy in the Middle East with the continue fallout from the Iraq prison photos, area security situation in Iraq, the killings of Rantisi and Sheikh Ahmed Yassi from Hamas.

I would imagine that our diplomats are involved more in a short-term situation of damage control rather than instituting some type of long-term public diplomacy strategy.

Nevertheless, I think it would be premature to declare that the U.S. image in the Middle East has been permanently tarnished.  At a lot point, sure, but perceptions can be cyclical if we expand our [inaudible] a little bit.

If you've been to the region you know that general Arab attitudes toward the U.S. Government differ from general Arab attitudes toward individual Americans, American institutions and American popular culture.  You may go to the region and you may have a conversation with someone.  It may be a contentious conversation with themes humiliation and injustice toward the Palestinians, but people still want to engage us, and I think that's a positive note.

Which leads me to the ongoing debate over the role of U.S. sponsored broadcasting endeavors in furthering our public diplomacy-- [Technical interruption] -- which is fascinated because of its complexity.

In the media journalists tend to cover it in black and white.  On one side you have those who think public diplomacy can be effective in changing attitudes, and on the other side you have people from the region primarily who see U.S. policies as the primary factor in engendering antipathy toward the United States.

Now, obviously, this may be a useful tool for reporters but I don't think it does the issue any justice.  I think if we look beneath the surface a little bit we'll find some larger issues which I'd like to focus on today, three things primarily:  Number one, the nature of the Arab media; number two, our human capacity in public diplomacy, our pool of capable Arabic speakers in the government; and number three is the growing convergence between democracy promotion and broadcasting and public diplomacy, and whether these are complementary or contradictory.

First let me start with the nature of the Arab media, and of course we'll have to single out Al Jazeera since everyone known about Al Jazeera, Alhurra's competition.  Does it deliberately engage in misreporting, exaggeration?  Does it emotionalize the news pictures of U.S. soldiers pointing guns at Iraqi children, Afghani women, or does it merely mirror a general cultural bias that's already out there, popular anger antipathy?

It's an interesting question.  Many analysts have long documented how on Al Jazeera the U.S.  On Al Jazeera the U.S. portrays the role of the neocolonialist power in the Middle East bent on thwarting the aspirations of the common Arabs in alliance with Israel.  But people also see that Al Jazeera has aired Islamist opposition figures when few other stations would do that during the peace process.  Israeli officials would come on Al Jazeera and they got labeled as being pro-Zionist because of it.  They have a show from Washington that almost daily airs U.S. officials to get our viewpoint across.  So depending on how you look at that question sort of determines what you think about broadcasting.  Still, can we expect Al Jazeera to give the U.S. a fair shake?

Now, obviously it's true that the Arab media is not monolithic, and Al Jazeera has received much attention because of reporters' access to al Qaeda in the Arab media, of pan-Arab newspapers that are over 20, 30-years-old.  You have satellite networks that act just like our own networks, NBC, CBS, with sports, entertainment.  But if the Arab media is not monolithic, it's also true that the new Arab media, these satellite channels, walk a fine line between an independent media and state-controlled media.

Some figures for you.  Market research has shown in the Arab world that there may be as little as $200 million a year in advertising revenue for all of these satellite channels.  Now, to put that in perspective, Al Jazeera may get as much as $100 million a year subsidy from the Qatari Government.  So to add to that, you have an entire media market of over 200 channels.  Sure you have 12 major channels, but you have plenty of other actors.

So what this leads us to is you have a crowded media market, little advertising dollars.  You need a wealthy patron basically to support these channels, so you have a lot of wealthy businessmen owning these channels with ties to governments in the Gulf.  So, again, we have to kind of look at what we need by the new Arab media independence.

Now, the second thing I want to mention is to take a hard look at our own human capabilities for communicating with the Arab world.  Do we have enough capable Arabic speakers in the government?  This was mentioned in the public diplomacy report from last year.  They took a look at, a hard look at the State Department, and out of the total pool of available Arabic language speakers, only about a fifth of them were fluent.  Then if you take that fifth and you look at them, only a small portion, maybe a handful, are actually comfortable going on the Arab media on a Cross-Fire like show and engaging in a debate with a critic of the United States.

And these debates are often very entertaining.  They become shouting matches almost like a Jerry Springer show, and you have to have a command of the language and you have to be able to hold your ground.  If there's a slant against us, do we have the capacity, at least at the official government level--because we have a lot of nongovernmental people that go on the Arab media--but at the governmental level do we have the capacity to hold our own?  And with a shortfall in our capacity does Alhurra provide an effective outlet for explaining U.S. policies?  I think there's a timing issue here as well.  A lot of the other public diplomacy things that we're doing over the long term that was mentioned earlier, exchanges, bringing people over here to study in the U.S., which is incredibly important, training Arab journalists to train other Arab journalists to be more analytical in their stories, to take more investigative approaches.

These are very long-term things that work over a long-term horizon.

[Technical interruption.]

MR. SHARP:  The last thing I want to talk about is the simultaneous pursuit of democracy promotion and public diplomacy strategies applied to the Middle East.

The United States is seeking to influence public attitudes on the formation and execution of its policies while openly touting political reform in the Middle East.  Some say these pursuits are contradictory.  Others say they're complementary.  Does the link between the two policy objectives inevitably compromise the reputation of the message?

Now, in terms of being a foreign broadcaster, obviously, before even Alhurra came out, as mentioned earlier by Danielle, they were already being skeptical about it, calling it another state-controlled media, and in fact, Alhurra's executives embrace the American identity to sort of downplay that and to not make it a big issue.

One should note that in terms of being a foreign broadcaster to the Middle East, I mean there is a precedent.  BBC Arabic Radio Service is highly regarded as being very credible.  It's been in the region for 50, 60 years, and it's been listened to especially during times when the British empire wasn't even that popular in the '50s when British invaded Egypt, people were tuning into BBC rather than Egyptian state radio to actually find out what was going on.  So if foreign broadcasting itself is not the barrier, the democracy promotion aspect of foreign broadcasting has been more contentious.

Arab reaction, there's been some people put off by Alhurra's symbolism in its promotional spots, scenes of wild horses running free, eyelids slowly opening to the light. Even the name Alhurra, the free one, has made some people it was patronizing.

I'd like to end my remarks by going back earlier to what Jim mentioned about the advisory report's sort of key question.  That is, can U.S. supported broadcasting change attitudes and perceptions of the U.S. Government?  I'm sure we'll continually come back to this throughout the day, but from my own research I found that there is agreement by supporters on the need for U.S. broadcasting to provide some type of value added.  I mentioned before that there's a crowded media market out there, 200 channels, not just Arab channels, but also you have CNN, people can get BBC, people can get translated tapes of NBC shows. So how do you make yourself stand out?

Now, does value added mean that we have more reporters in war-torn areas breaking news, beating Al Jazeera at their own game?  Value added could mean that we sort of have hard-hitting interviews with foreign officials, asking them tough questions about human rights.  It could mean having--accepting Islamist opposition figures, moderate opposition figures, for interviews, the way Al Jazeera has done.

So overall, the challenge for U.S. funded broadcasting will be to do a better job than stations like Al Jazeera at presenting--to use Al Jazeera's own motto--"the view and the other point of view," all the while maintaining an American identity of U.S. broadcasters without appearing to be trying to pose an outside identity on the Arab world.

Thank you.

MS. PLETKA:  Mark, take it.

MR. HELMKE:  Thank you.  Good morning, everybody.

A year ago at George Washington University, I reported that American public diplomacy was a mess.  I said that it lacked a strategy, a vision and money.  Today I have to say the situation is worse.  American public diplomacy is a disaster.  It lacks a strategy and vision and money, but has also become a disaster because of bureaucratic disorganization, political infighting and scapegoating, an insular Pentagon leadership that disdains the State Department, and proven communications practices.  American public diplomacy has been hijacked by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the State Department's public diplomacy agencies, including the Broadcasting Board of Governors, has been relegated to underfunded clean-up duty.

The problem, however, doesn't end there.  Public diplomacy at the State Department lacks strong and sustained leadership.  State also lacks the personnel system, the necessary training programs and the culture required to make public diplomacy part and parcel to every diplomatic initiative.  The Broadcasting Board of Governors, meanwhile, is hobbled by a confusing organizational structure with duplication of services and competing services.  The Board structure is designed to generate organizational and political strife.

My friend, Ken Tomlinson, who was just here, the Chairman of the Broadcasting Board, deserves credit if not the Purple Heart itself, for doing the best anyone could under a very difficult situation.

Almost 35 years I've been working at the intersection of politics and communications.  I've been a journalist, political press secretary.  I helped build a successful strategic communications company with offices all over the world.  I worked an American presidential campaigns and advised foreign political campaigns.  I've counseled on corporate takeover battles and crisis communications.  And my skills are really not that special.  There are a lot of people like me in Washington and throughout the country.

Given that fact, my boss and long-time mentor, Senator Richard Lugar, continues to ask, why can't we get our act together on public diplomacy?

One solution proposed by Senator Lugar and approved by the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is to authorize the State Department to establish what essentially would be a department of nation building.  This would include a special reserve corps of experts from around the country, including those experienced in strategic communications, media and public diplomacy.

Another solution is that we need a full-scale debate and reassessment of everything that we're doing in public diplomacy today.  From a strategic and a structural and organizational standpoint, we are still fighting the Cold War.  We have not yet come to grips with the politics of the new national security threats we face, what causes them and how we should address them.

In October 2001, a task force of outside experts for the Defense Science Board, reached a similar conclusion.  The report called, "Managed Information Dissemination," a name that would give pause in and of itself, recommended strengthening State Department programs and for greater support by the Pentagon's PSYOPS, or Psychological Operations Programs.  The Pentagon only implemented part, and it implemented the recommendations for itself.

What happened is that the Office of the Secretary of Defense, through the Bureau called SO/LIC, which stands for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflicts, and its PSYOPS operations took over most all of American public diplomacy planning and implementation for the war in Iraq and its aftermath.  The State Department was locked out and so was the Broadcasting Board.  With approximately $200 million basically, half the overall Broadcasting Board's overall global budget, the Pentagon has hired private contracting firms with little knowledge of public diplomacy in media communications to operate the Iraqi Media Network.

When I first learned of this last year, I asked the Pentagon officials why State, the Broadcasting Board were not doing this work.  The reply was that the State Department and the Broadcasting Board weren't very good at it.  This arrogance and disdain is at the root of the devastating international public opinion fallout from the Iraqi prison scandals.  This is more than a public diplomacy disaster, it is a national security crisis.

Lesson one of any crisis communications plan is to get the bad news out yourself, all of it and immediately.  Did anyone at the Pentagon call Margaret Tutwiler, the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and say, "We have a problem here?"  She was notified last Monday.

For those at fault in this devastating national security crisis, we can only hope they receive their deserved fate.

For the rest of us, it is time to begin an immediate reassessment of all public diplomacy initiatives in bureaucratic structures.  This is a serious national security challenge.  PSYOPS and managed information disseminations are not the answer.  Nor should we let historic nostalgia over the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe obscure a clear vision of the new challenges we face.  Maybe we should consolidate all the various broadcasting entities into one simple agency.

Unlike the Cold War, we are now broadcasting into highly competitive marketplaces.  Should we attempt to compete with our own broadcasting as we are, or focus more on providing programming to these already working in the marketplace?  Are the old Smith-Mundt restrictions against broadcasting to Americans counterproductive?  Does a so-called political firewall protecting--[tape change] -- enhance their public diplomacy effectiveness.  As the Pentagon has proven in Iraq, if the broadcasting is owned by the U.S. Government, maybe it's all equally suspect to foreign audiences.  We still have the Cold War images in our head of the charismatic resistance leaders heartened in their struggle against the Soviet empire while listening to the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.  Do we have any evidence that is still the case in the Middle East?  And what exactly are we asking these new leaders in the Middle East to struggle for or against?

Given the limited amount of funds we spend on public diplomacy, would it be more cost effective to hire and train hundreds of new spokesmen for the State Department, who would full time to get on Arabic TV every day?

There is no Madison Avenue magic wand to wave over the mess of American public diplomacy.  A sustained and well-funded government-wide and State Department led effort is required.  To do that, we need to expand this discussion and build intellectual and political support for a renewed public diplomacy strategy and effort in Washington, in the nation and around the world.

Thank you.

[Applause.]

MR. NEMATT:  Good morning.

Without disagreeing with my fellow speakers, I'd like to emphasize that the problem facing public diplomacy, U.S. public diplomacy in the Middle East or in the Arab world, is more a political problem than a media problem.  It goes beyond the message.  It goes beyond the means of delivering public diplomacy.  Fundamentally we must recognize the fact that most of the media in the Arab world, most of it, the overwhelming majority of media organizations in the Arab world are owned and run by governments.  In other words, the staff are employees of these governments.

And we also have to recognize the fact that the Arab media has been by and large with very few exceptions, extremely hostile to U.S. and Western policies since the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser from the '50s.  Part of it has to do with the creation of the state of Israel and the U.S. alliance with Israel.  Part of it is cultural.  Part of it is basically the outcome or the results of the colonialism and the end of colonialism, the west being associated with the suffering of the people in the region for decades.

Now, what does it mean, you know, when we look at what's happening now?  The proliferation of the satellite channels basically has given even a much higher voice to these anti-American feelings.  I'm not saying that everything America is doing in the Middle East is right, but what I'm saying is that this anti-Americanism existed long before the war in 1991 or the second Iraq War now and the occupation.

Most of the pan-Arab media has basically adopted, you know, from the '50s and throughout, have adopted this anti-American pan-Arabism business.  It was Gamal Abdel Nasser, United States of Arabia versus the United States of America, if you like.  You know, Nasser allied himself with the Russians as a counter-force to the American influence in the region.  Now, this has created the kind of a culture that continued until today, which is the culture of--it's almost against--you know, you're almost, not nationalistic--you are a traitor if you basically adopt views that are not consistent with pan-Arabism.  There is this almost--it goes to the level of intellectual terrorism that you cannot dissent.  You cannot basically dissent from the voice of pan-Arabism that was created, you know, at the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser, as [foreign phrase], basically that radio station which everybody was listening to, which was extremely anti-American.

Now, together with the political problem that persists until today, with governments basically running the media in the Arab world, and naturally, they are letting this media criticize everybody else except themselves, and in most cases are unable to criticize other states in the region because it depends on the balance of power.

Yesterday, an editor-in-chief of a weekly in Jordan was sent to jail for 15 days pending his trial.  He could face up to five years in prison because he wrote an article in this paper criticizing--basically, the accusation is he wrote an article disturbing relations between Jordan and Saudi Arabia.  He was unable to publish an article in the Jordanian newspaper basically critical of the Saudis.  And this writer basically is--I mean the argument is, you know, how can an article disturb relations between countries if these relations were good to start with?

But the example I'm giving is that even in a country like Jordan, which is relatively pro-western and probably the most kind of open to the west among these states, fully controls the media.  [Inaudible] way you can just go and say and have a balanced view if [inaudible] government interests.

So on the one hand, you can go and create a television station basically beaming to the Arab world, and say, "We are providing an alternative media."  I think it's not as simple as that.  It's not simple simply because in order for the U.S. public diplomacy to succeed it has to be able to report on issues that the pan-Arab media and the national media in the Arab world is not doing.  This is the real test.

In 1934 the British realized this early on and they established the BBC Arabic Service.  And at a time when there was almost not a single radio station still launched out of the Arab world, and they were there in the market early and they established credibility, and they sort of became a source for people to know what's going on in their own country at a time when the media could not deliver that, and they did not have the capacity, the technologies to develop that kind of access to the people.

Now, when I say there's a political problem it's related to the fact that most governments we're dealing with here are not democracies.  There is no free media, and as such there's no level playing field.  The media, overwhelmingly in the Arab world, is beaming material that is broadcast, that is generated from Iraq, which is under American occupation, and the media also has a free hand in the Palestinian territories which is under Israeli occupation.  And I always, you know, keep repeating this irony, that the Arab media can function freely only under occupation, and you know, foreign occupation, Israeli in this case and American in the other case.

When I asked colleagues in the Arab satellite channels why didn't they cover the massacre of Kurds in Qamishli in Syria two months ago?  Why wasn't Al Jazeera there?  Where were the Arab satellite channels?  They could not have answered.  But I know the answer.  The answer is that they won't have access to cover it.  When I asked why aren't they covering the ethnic cleansing taking place now in Western Sudan, thousands of people being killed on a daily basis by government forces and nobody is covering it.  And I understand that the story in Palestine and Iraq is very important.  Of course it has to be covered.  But I also would like to know why other stories taking place today of equal importance in some cases are not being dealt with.  And in that sense, this is what I'm talking about.  These are agencies, these satellite channels, these newspapers, they are run by governments.  They basically know that Arab governments cannot upset the Syrians and go and cover a story that they don't like.  They cannot upset the Saudi and the Sudanese.  They cannot--you know, just like the example of imprisoning this Jordanian editor who wrote about Saudi Arabia, he didn't even write about something critical of Jordanian policy.  So the result it the media has a free hand in Iraq and has a free hand in Palestine, but it cannot cover other important issues.

I always try to raise the question of occupation, which is always a very sexy story for the media, and I said, "How come nobody is covering the occupation of the three Arab islands belonging to the United Arab Emirates that were occupied by Iran in 1960, 1970?"  Three islands at the Strait of Hormuz, the most important strategic waterway in the world.  Basically, blocking that waterway by controlling these islands, literally paralyzes the oil market.  And the Arab media does not carry this issue of occupying three Arab islands by Iran.  It is because Iran is a Muslim country?  A question that we need to have an answer for this.

The dispute between Spain and Morocco over the Ceuta and Melilla Islands, also very important, does not get much coverage in the Arab media, very little, and it does not carry the same sense of injustice, you know, occupation, subjugation of, you know, taking control of these sacred territories, et cetera, et cetera.

So what I'm saying is there is a political problem, lack of democracy.  These governments are not going to give their own public a balanced view of the situation.  I don't think governments in the region are going to allow Alhurra to basically go and expose stories of torture that are taking place as official standard policy in almost all states in the region.  They cannot have access, as simple as that.  That's why when I say it's a political problem, I'm saying that Alhurra, if it's going to present itself as an alternative media, it will have to have political backing that would allow it to have access to the stories that Arab state run government owned media cannot cover.  This is the only way that public diplomacy can take a different course, and in that sense I here have to agree with Mark when he said there's no strategy.

The strategy means you cannot say you want to democratize the region, which is a buzz word for regime change, and at the same time want these states that you want to change, the regimes you want to change, to cooperate with you in the war on terrorism and to cooperate with you or Iraq, and to cooperate with you on the weapons of mass destruction all at the same time.  You cannot ask them to cooperate on these issues when you're in the same time, saying that you want to change them, basically finish them off.

So the U.S. has got to develop a strategy.  If you want democracy in the region, you have to forget about this business of cooperating with dictatorships in the sake of the fight on terrorists.  If you want democracy you cannot go and receive dictators in Washington and at the White House, and say, this is one of our best friends in the world, because the message you're sending to the Arab people, to the oppressed Arab people is that this whole business about greater Middle East initiative democracy is nonsense, because if you really mean it when you say you want to democratize, you cannot basically be buddies with leaders who are standing against the whole process of democratization.  To the contrary, the U.S. looks like it's supporting these people.

So just to make it brief, the strategy requires a strategy needs to be developed, political, social and cultural strategy to deal with the problems in the region in a very, very serious manner, and this would require coordination between all government departments, meaning you cannot have the State Department working in one direction, the White House working in another direction, the Pentagon working in opposite direction.  You cannot do that.  You've got to have everybody agreeing to the strategy and basically systematically implementing it without hesitation.  Otherwise, there would be no credibility to the U.S. message and as such we can forget about public diplomacy.

I'd like to speak just one brief thing about the cultural aspect.  I don't think there is a good understanding, I don't think the United States today understands the social, cultural problems, issues, and the way people think in the Middle East as much as, let's say, the British did at the turn of last century.  I mean I was reading here--I'd like to read a small sentence, a quote from an introduction by T.E. Lawrence, and you know, I remind you that one year before his death the BBC Arabic Service was broadcasting in 1934.

He says:  Their knowledge is--referring to Field Marshal Lord Kitchener about their campaign in the Middle East.  He says:  Their knowledge--and also he is disappointed with his own government, that they failed him, that they failed the mission to free the people of the Middle East.  He says:  Their knowledge of the nature and power and country of the Arabic-speaking peoples made them think that the issue of such a rebellion would be happy--look at the parallels in Iraq--and indicated its character and method.  So they allowed it to begin, having obtained formal assurances of help for it from the British Government.  Yet nonetheless, the rebellion of the sharif of Mecca came to most as a surprise, and found their lives unready.  It aroused mixed feelings and made strong friends and enemies.  Amid clashing jealousies, its affairs began to miscarry.

This is what we're witnessing in Iraq today, and unfortunately, nothing has been learned from the British campaign, an alliance with the Arab peoples in the Middle East to oust and defeat the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with the Nazis.  Now, no lessons, I don't think lessons were learned from something that happened 100 years ago.

So my final recommendation is for the U.S. to understand, to help the U.S. understand public diplomacy we've got to understand the works of, in my view, three people that I chose, one of whom is T.E. Lawrence.  I recommend that the administration, you know, policy makers should read very well what he had to say about that part of the world almost 100 years ago.

The other one is Abdur Haman Kawakabi [ph], an Arab thinker and philosopher, who published a book 200 years ago about dictatorships, and he says, he describes how the Arab nations are going to decline because of the lack of democracy and freedom.  He was, you know, long before, you know, the United Nations Development Program, UNDP Human Development Report on the Arab World, this guy had a book 200 years ago that literally says more or less what they're telling us now today as if they reinvented the wheel.  I think, you know, we should read his book, [inaudible].

And the third person to understand Arab culture is Abu at-Tayyib Al Mutanabbi, a poet, an Arab poet who lived several years ago, and he's very famous as a very, very proud Arab who used to brag in his poetry.  You have to understand from the way he died, something about Arab culture and something that persists today.  It's very hard for me to translate what he said, but he basically was so proud of himself, he said that:  I am to whose works the blind have looked, and I and my words have made the deal hear me, something like that.  Now, once he was traveling with two companions and they were attacked by a band of thieves.  So the three of them of course fled on their horses and then one of the thugs who were after them, screamed at them, you know, "Mutanabbi," he called his name because he recognized him, and Mutanabbi stood there, and he said:  Aren't you the one who said this poetry, you know, this, [Arabic spoken]?  And he said yes.  And he realized then that if you--having said that, you cannot but come back and fight.  So his companions left, ran away.  He went back, knowing that he's going to be dead.  Basically he committed suicide for the sake of sticking to what he said.

Now, what's the message here?  The message is there's a tendency now in the Arab world towards--you know, there are suicidal tendencies.  The question that we ask: when do we know that we won a war or we lost a war, in the Arab world?  You know, when in Germany we know because, you know, they surrender, whoever is left they surrender.  In Japan, the emperor comes and signs, you know, and surrenders.  And they start building from there, and we know what happened in Germany and Japan.  The problem is that in the Arab world this cannot happen.  You will not have anybody surrendering.  The approach has to be completely different.  There has to be an understanding of the culture, which is, under the circumstances, almost suicide.

You know, two days before Rantisi was assassinated in Gaza, he was saying--and look at the rhetoric here, when you become a prisoner of your own rhetoric in our culture--he said:  There will not be a single Jew left in Palestine, I promise you.  Two days later he's dead.

Saddam Hussein knew he had no chance of confronting the United States.  He knew he was going to end up possibly in a hole like he was found.  Yet, he went for the confrontation.  He did not seek a peaceful settlement.

I don't want to go on and on.  I'll just stop here and leave it for the questions and answers.  Thank you.

[Applause.]

MS. PLETKA:  Now, we have our sound problems again.  What I need everybody to do is wait for that mike, and if you would, again, identify yourself and your organization, and if you would also be kind enough to tell us to whom your question is directed, so I can pass them the microphone.  Thank you very much.

This gentleman here.

QUESTION:  Good morning, Danielle.  Congratulations on your distinguished panel and the program that you put together today.  This is for Mark Helmke.

I'm Steve Johnson from the Heritage Foundation.

And, Mark, a question for you on the organization of public diplomacy.  You sort of gave the impression that the State Department was under attack from the Department of Defense, and there may be some aspects of that that are very cogent to today's arguments.  But could you address a little bit the tendency for the Department itself to shoot itself in the foot?

In 1999, for instance, when USIA was folded into the State Department, one of the things that happened was people in the senior leadership in the Under Secretariats decided that the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy would be somebody that would be serving essentially in an advisory capacity as opposed to having budgetary or personnel authority, people in the field.  And it's hard to imagine how a person could have very much strength in making policy and also affecting policy without having some kind of--is earmarking a way to do this?  Is this a lack of political will on the part of the White House to take on State Department senior leadership?  How would you strengthen that line of authority?

MR. HELMKE:  Senator Lugar has said that we need a sea change in the culture at the State Department.  We need to make everybody at State understand that talking to foreign publics is as important to their mission as is talking to foreign elites and other foreign diplomats.

The integration of the public diplomacy parts of USIA into State's has been a difficult process.  They do come from different cultures.  There's been a lot of complaining.  There were different rules, personnel rules on advancement and so forth.  There is a issue in which the public diplomacy officers in the regional bureaus do not answer to the Office of the Secretary for Public Diplomacy.  The budget for Office for Public Diplomacy are bifurcated.  It's hard to figure out exactly how much is going to what.  Even when you look at things like the exchanges, the exchange programs, which mostly everybody on the Hill supports, there is a budget for the Education Cultural Affairs Bureau, but also USAID and now the MEPI Program at State also get involved in exchanges, and it's very difficult for us on the Hill to really get a good handle on exactly how much money is being spent where.

For example, the State Department two weeks ago sent to us a reprogramming notice which we have to approve or disapprove, in which they're transferring a large chunk of money from Russia and the former Soviet Union to the Middle East.  We put a hold on that reprogramming to get some questions answered on, you know, just because we have new problems in the Middle East doesn't mean we stop doing exchanges in Russia, in Central Europe and elsewhere.  They explained that they don't have enough money, but I don't figure out exactly where all the MEPI money is going right now, for example.

So these are problems in the weeds that Lugar has instructed me to spend as much time as I possibly can to figure out where is the money going and so forth.  I think the real answer, as I said in my statement, if we had a Under Secretary who would offer sustained leadership, I'm talking sustained leadership over the course of an administration.  I think a lot of these problems can be solved without trying to legislate the rearranging of boxes in an organizational chart at State.

And I'm fearful also of earmarking because the more Congress gets into earmarking the more meddlesome Congress gets and we don't give people a chance to do real leadership.

QUESTION:  My name is Ira Rifken.  I'm with Jerusalem Report Magazine.  This is a question for Mr. Nematt.

You talked about the inherent problem in the United States working with Arab dictatorships to try and create change within the region.  What is then the answer to getting out of this?  Does the United States stop trying to create change in the region, stop trying to create democratic governments, or does the United States stop cooperating fully with dictatorial governments with all the consequences that that then holds?

MR. NEMATT:  Yes.   Well, I guess it's, you know, the priorities, political priorities have to be determined by the U.S. Government.  If they want to win hearts and minds and basically establish democracy as the main strategy objective, then, yes, you have to forget about cooperating with governments in the region because you basically will be working to undermine them.

Now, most of the Arab public does not believe that the U.S. really is after democracy in the region simply because it's very heavily involved in cooperation on all levels with these governments.  At the same time, while it is talking about democracy and seeking, you know, talking about public diplomacy and winning hearts and minds.  You can't have it both ways.  If it's not your priority to win hearts and minds and establish democracy as a means of dealing with the terrorism problem, let's say, this is not the priority, then you can forget about--you know, you abandon the democracy goal, you abandon this winning hearts and minds.  You know, you can say, let these people go to hell.  we will strengthen these dictatorships to crush any kind of opposition, and we'll continue does that course.  It's a matter for the U.S. to make up its mind.

You cannot say, "I want democracy and I want to continue cooperation with these regimes, and I want to fight terrorism, and I want to, you know, maintain the status quo."  You cannot have it both ways, and in that sense the U.S. has to make up its mind what does it want, democracy, winning hearts and minds, or it wants cooperation with dictatorships and securing strategic interests like oil at the expense of the people and at the expense of winning anything as far as hearts and minds.

Thank you.

MS. PLETKA:  I'm going to usurp your follow up because I'd like to ask a follow up.  You know I agree with you which is why we asked you to be here today.

But we live in a world with reality, and in government you do not turn around and abandon strategically important countries just like that.  One of the themes that's come out here is the importance of building credibility, that in fact, if we're going to broadcast, if we're going to talk to the Arab world, (a), we need to talk to the people, (b) we need to have credibility in our policy and consistency in our policy.  And that's very important, but is there not a way that we can credibly split the difference, that we cannot use our leverage as the world's greatest power to help people at the same time that we maintain relationships, perhaps more limited relationships, perhaps less affectionate relationships, but nonetheless maintain relationships with countries that have enormous strategic importance to the United States?

MR. NEMATT:  I think that if you look at the long-term interests, then there should be clarity about U.S. priority in terms of really changing the region through democratic change.  This is what happened in Eastern Europe.  This is what happened elsewhere.  But, you know, I think that one thing will have to be at the expense of the other.  If you want to maintain stability, you cannot have democracy.  Democracy in the region is going to undermine the regional order by definition because it's going to be a vast change.  It's not like, you know, Democrats taking over from Republicans.  We're talking about the people taking over from families that have been ruling these countries as if they're private share-holding companies.  It's going to be a mess.

So if the priority--again, you have to determine what is most important priority for the U.S.  If it is fighting terrorism and you're convinced that one of the reasons that terrorism is basically breeding in the region is the lack of democracy, then you have to sacrifice short-term, medium-term stability.  You have to sacrifice cooperation of some states on the level of terrorism in the interim, and just go for that long-term goal and be ready to pay the price.  But if you're not, then one thing, you know, what you do with one hand is being canceled by your other hand because your credibility, your consistency will always be in doubt.  You can't say you want democracy and then give economic and military aid to the exact regimes that are fighting against the democracy.  Thank you.

MR. GLASSMAN:  I think this is an important point, so let's just stay with it for a second.  I think that the answer could be staring us right in the face, and that is public diplomacy.  This is an issue with which we dealt with the Djerejian group.  And public diplomacy can do things, as I said earlier, that official diplomacy cannot do.  For example, Alhurra could promote democracy in ways that may undermine regimes, in ways that Colin Powell cannot.  So are there--and I would like to hear from the whole panel--are there in fact ways that public diplomacy can play a role in promoting the national interest that's different from what official diplomacy does?

MR.          :  I think it's a question of degrees.  We're trying top strike a balance here between providing interesting contents without upsetting these regimes too much and then not getting cooperation in the war on terrorism.  So it's finding that niche.  You know, what exactly can you report on?

Now, there was testimony at Senate Foreign Relations a few weeks ago.  Someone mentioned that Alhurra had an interview at the Tunisian, I think it was Foreign Minister, and they didn't address human rights, because human rights is a big issue in Tunisia.  I didn't see the interview, so I don't know what other questions they might have asked them.  But you can see the difficulty and the line.  And now Alhurra wants to push the envelope, and I hope they do, but it's easier said than done.

MR.          :  I just wanted to--you know, one thing we really have to remember here is how complex democracy really is.  Elections are not a fair representative of a successful democracy.  Successful democracies, as Madison pointed out more than 200 years ago, require dozens of mediating institutions and groups, factions as he called them, in a society for a democracy to work.  And how we begin to build those mediating institutions in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan is a lot of work on the ground and a lot of time and a lot of effort.  And that I think is separate from public diplomacy.  We need to make democratization separate and long term and different from what we do with or how we explain our current foreign policies.  We just need to do a lot better job at explaining our foreign policies.  I don't think we can rely on Alhurra or the broadcasting entities to be our primary means of communicating democracy in the region.

MR. NEMATT:  I don't think that you can have public diplomacy separate from official policy.  I don't think that works unless you just  are acting without any strategy in mind.  In the sense that you want Alhurra to do something different from what the government is doing, basically, the moment that Alhurra starts doing that, everybody is going to come to Colin Powell and tell him:  Listen.  We are going to halt our cooperation on terrorism.  We are going to stop cooperating with you on this and we're going the stop cooperating with you on that if you'll keep these people at Alhurra on our backs, as simple as that.

That's why you cannot say, you know, Al Jazeera can go and say, you know, we're just trying to--you know, we're making mistakes and we're trying to correct it.  And they can get away with it saying they'll, you know, like the foreign minister says it's an independent media and everybody knows that it's government owned and run and that the Board of Directors of Al Jazeera is appointed by the government.  I mean we know that.

But he says it's an independent, et cetera, and he gets away with it because he's got a powerful lobby that protects him in Washington, and this is, you know, my conspiracy theory which I will not discuss here.

Alhurra, if Alhurra is granted the same immunity that Al Jazeera has, basically to go and fill this vacuum, huge vacuum in the region, which is vacuum related to the lack of democracy, lack of respect for human rights, throughout the region, if they adopt the agenda of human rights and democracy and they go and expose what is going on in these countries, and as a means of promoting democracy, then that's fine, but you're going to expect this government to be basically banging at the doors of the White House, telling them, you know, you'd better take these people out or else.  And that's why you need a political decision.

Qatar took a political decision.  It's fulfilling a certain agenda, and it's giving immunity to its own station.  I know it's easier in Qatar, you know, population 120,000, you know, the government vote every single citizen, but--and it's not the same in the United States.  But, you know, you have to make up your mind.  If this is what you want, then you have to be ready to pay the price.

[Applause.]

MS. PLETKA:  So the day that we see an investigation into the foreign bank accounts of certain Middle Eastern leaders or the daughters of Iranian mullahs dancing in nightclubs in Europe is the day that we'll know that Alhurra is really doing its job I guess.  I have my doubts.

This gentleman over here has a question.

If I can ask the indulgence of our next panelists, we're going to take two more questions.

QUESTION:  Just a quick comment.  I'm glad I was here to capture some mistakes on one of the statements.  I'm the Director of Alhurra News, Mouafac Harb.  And I think I was testifying on the Hill when the gentleman who was our former ambassador in Syria said Alhurra did not ask the Tunisian foreign minister a question about human rights.  It was wrong, because we did ask him and the whole interview was about the Arab Summit.  But during the interview we did ask him that question, and two weeks later we had a show on freedom of speech and the Arab world, and we interviewed from Tunisia live, a journalist who was in prison in Tunisia.  So I would like to correct the record.  Thank you very much.

MS. PLETKA:  Thank you, Mouafac.

This gentleman in the blue shirt with the red tie.

QUESTION:  Muhammad [inaudible] with the villains, Al Jazeera.

MS. PLETKA:  [Inaudible].

[Laughter.]

QUESTION:  Salameh, my question to you, please.  Well, first of all, [inaudible], it was not the things you said, it was something else, just for the record.  It was [unintelligible].  Just for the record.

Your [unintelligible]  for the Arab media mostly is fair, but some of it is not.  What the Arab media missed could be said about U.S. media.  What happened to the massacres of Rwanda and others?  I mean the stories we hear about Canada and Mexico, neighboring countries.  And why you didn't cover that story with Arab media too?

My caution to you is that--because you speak Arabic, [Arabic spoken] Al Jazeera.  Do you give Al Jazeera any credit for anything in the Arab world?

MS. PLETKA:  And the rest of our meeting will be conducted in English, right?

MR. NEMATT:  Well, basically what--you quoted [unintelligible], who said it, and also the other one he said it.  So if you can go and check both of them.

Al Jazeera, basically, yes, my newspaper covered the ethnic cleansing taking place in Sudan now, and did its best to cover the events in--you know, I'm not here.  I'm not basically saying Al Jazeera is the only one that didn't cover, because the Syrian Government just is not giving access to anybody.

QUESTION:  [Inaudible].

MR. NEMATT:  Yeah, but see, the idea what I'm saying is not--in this context.  I'm not criticizing Al Jazeera.  I'm criticizing Arab Governments who are only allowing, you know, what you say proves my argument.  You can function under American occupation in Iraq and you can function under Israeli occupation in Palestine.  Nobody tells you, you know, you can't cover.  You go to Syria, you go to Egypt, you can't even cover a demonstration.  And my problem is that with the audiences in the Arab world focused solely on a regional agenda that does not touch their daily lives necessarily, that basically feeds them daily these pictures, these ugly pictures on a daily basis, charging them, inciting them to violence, you know, inciting them to hatred, without--and replacing the regional agenda in place of the national agenda.  I would imagine that people, you know, I want Al Jazeera to expose what's happening inside these countries.

I want to understand why Al Jazeera could not cover let's say the trial of the Russians who were caught, suspected of assassinating the Chechen leader in Qatar, because the courts, the trial was close.  You know what I mean?  Inside the Arab countries they're not covering it.  You know, the trial of the coup attempt in Qatar was not covered, because, you know, it's not the national interest for Qataris to do it.

And I'm not saying this is only a problem with Al Jazeera.  Al Jazeera had five or six of its bureaus closed in many other countries because they tried to cover national issues of importance.  So the question is--what I'm saying, we expect more for Harb to do it.  We cannot just expect him to do it without the political mandate and political decision.  He might be a great journalist, and of course he's a great journalist because he comes from Al-Hayat but, you know, he cannot just do it on his own.  You've got to give him the backing.  You've got to give him the political support so that he can function without fearing that his correspondents are going to end up all in jail and he'll end up without correspondents.  Thank you.

[Applause.]

MS. PLETKA:  With that, I'm afraid we do have to go to our next panel, and I apologize to all those who didn't have an opportunity.

But I thank our panelists for their wonderful presentations, all of you.  And we will take a two-minute break and then move on to our next panel.

Thanks.

[End of first panel.]

MR. GLASSMAN:  Now, we're all set.  Recent events in Iraq, especially in Abu Ghraib prison, emphasize once [audio break].

Some scheduling information.  It's now a quarter of 11:00, and Chairman Wolfe will be here precisely at noon, so I'm going to try to wrap this up at about five minutes to 12:00.  There will be a buffet outside.  So when we're finished, just go get your food, bring it back in here.  We would like to have Congressman Wolfe begin speaking at about 12:15 or so.  So we'll have time for Q&A.

Let me introduce the panelists for the second panel, which is titled, "How Do We Measure Success?"  Specifically, in our work at the Djerejian Group, we emphasized over and over again--and probably way too much for some people--the importance of measuring whether you're actually succeeding at reaching your objectives, and this is especially important in broadcasting.  So we're going to focus on that.  Obviously, we will get around to some of the issues that were raised in the first panel, very important issues, which we could only touched on.

Directly to my right is Judy Milestone, who was a member of the Advisory Board on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim world.  She, and I and Mamoun Fandy were the three members of the Broadcasting Committee.  She was formerly Senior Vice President for Network Booking at CNN until 2001.  She serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees at Smith College and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Next to her is Mouafac Harb.  You just heard from him in the Q&A.  He's the News Director of the new U.S.-funded Arabic language satellite channel, Al-Hurra.  He's also the News Director of Radio Sawa.

And to his right is Judy Siegel.  Judy Siegel is Deputy Coordinator for Thematic Programs in the Bureau of International Information Programs at the Department of State.

Next to her is Andrew Kohut, who is Director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, formerly the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press.  He was formerly President of the Gallup Organization and has had a distinguished career in the science of surveys.

We are going to start with Andy Kohut, next Judith Siegel, next Judy Milestone, and finally Mouafac.

Andy Kohut?
* MR. KOHUT:  Over the past two and a half years, since mid-2002, we have conducted over 22,000 interviews with Muslim people around the world in 18 countries.  In many cases, these were return visits.  We've done waves of surveys in 2002, 2003, just after the war, and our most recent survey was in 2004--March of 2004--to mark the one-year anniversary of the war.

The title of the talk is "How Do We Measure Success?"  And I would say change some of the things that I'm going to tell you about Muslim public opinion toward the United States, and that will be a measure of success.

One of the clear findings of our surveys and facts about public opinion in the Muslim world is that the war in Iraq was a real turning point.  In the surveys that we conducted in 2002, strong anti-Americanism was centered in the Mideast and in the region of conflict, in Pakistan and in Central Asia.  After the war in Iraq, anti-Americanism became a global phenomenon with respect [audio break].  We saw the image of America plummet, and I use that word very carefully, in Indonesia and among the Nigerian, the Muslim public's portion of Nigeria.  So that's one fact.

Secondly, we saw what we could have described as loathing in 2002 be transformed to fear and loathing in the Muslim world.  We found large percentages of Muslim publics in, I think we went to about nine countries in 2002, saying they worried that the United States would attack their countries militarily.  And a lot of this, if you look at where this comes from, it reflects an irrational fear of the United States.  Thirty-five percent of the Turkish respondents that we surveyed said they were [audio break] that the United States would attack Turkey militarily.  It's that level of antagonism is such that it creates [audio break] extraordinary in my view.

The percentage of people who saw, who volunteered that there are threats to Islam in the world spiked in 2003.  Those sentiments were largely concentrated in the Mideast.  They became worldwide.

In 2004, we saw some signs of moderating dislike, of moderation of dislike for the United States in Morocco, in Turkey, even in Pakistan.  These were surveys that were conducted in March of 2004.  We didn't find more favorable attitudes towards [audio break] fewer people expressing strongly unfavorable views.  I can't believe that these surveys, these opinions haven't changed again in response to [audio break] revelations of the prison [audio break].

Fourth, Muslim distrust and Mideastern distrust of American policies in Iraq goes way beyond thinking that it was the right thing to go to war with the United States.  That's a view that's prevalent also in Europe and all around the world, actually, but Europeans and people in other parts of the world who disagreed with our war also held the view, and perhaps continue to hold the view, that the Iraqi people will be better off as a consequence of Saddam Hussein [audio break] from power.  In the Mideast, that was not the case.  In every country in the survey in 2004, we found the Muslim public say, no, the Iraqi people will be worse off as a consequence of this war.

Muslims see the war on terrorism as insincere.  Whatever bases of support we found in 2002 [audio break] found some in mid-2002 have dissipated.  The motives that are directed on the United States is that Americans are attempting to control Mideast oil, that we are attempting to protect Israel, that we are targeting unfriendly countries, and we are trying to dominate the world. These are the objectives of the war on terrorism, not a legitimate war on terrorism [audio break] are responding.

Obviously, our policies, with respect to Israel, have been the 800-pound gorilla in shaping public attitudes toward the United States and the Mideast.  Every Muslim country, including Kuwait, where the United States, at least a year ago, was still very much appreciated and liked.  Our policies are seen as unfair by 70 or 80 percent of the public.

Seventh, the fact is that suicide attacks against Americans and other Westerners are not supported by a lunatic fringe among the Muslim population.  They have a broad base of support.  Thirty-one percent of the Turkish respondents that we surveyed said they're often justified--said they're justified.  Forty-six percent of the Pakistanis, seventy percent of the Jordanians and sixty-six percent of the Moroccans say that suicide attacks against the United States and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable, and that was in March.

Unlike in other parts of the world, dislike of the U.S. in the Mideast also extends to the American people.  Thirty-one percent of the Turks that we questioned, thirty-eight percent of the Pakistanis [audio break].  The good news is that there is strong, if there is any good news in our polling, is that there's strong support for Western-style democracy in Muslim countries.  Not only do people say this is what they aspire to, but when we ask them questions about how they define democracy and what they would like to see in their countries, they measure up [audio break] broad outlines to what we consider Western-style democracy.

The bad news is that most Muslims do not see the war in Iraq as increasing the chances of democracy in the Mideast, and in fact many Muslim publics, in places like Pakistan, for example, think the United States does not want to see democracy furthered in their country.

Finally, while the U.S. has low credibility in the Muslim--not low credibility--almost no credibility in the Muslim world, I think it's important to realize that that's true, to a lesser extent, but still an important way for all Western institutions [audio break] U.N.  It's true of many other Western nations, not to the degree of the United States, but there's great suspicion of Western institu-- [audio break] all throughout the Muslim world.

[Audio break.]

MR. GLASSMAN:  --view their own government?

MR. KOHUT:  Well, I'll tell you, Jim.  In many places, I can't tell you because we're not allowed to ask those [audio break].  Pakistan positively, and Jor-- [audio break].

I'm sorry.  In Pakistan, Musharraf gets good ratings.  In Jordan, we were not allowed to ask questions.  In Egypt, we're not allowed to ask the questions.  Let me try to think of other countries.  In Turkey, it depends.  Turkey is a democracy, and there's the ebb and flow of response to government, and I can't tell you what it is right now.  It's mixed.

MR. GLASSMAN:  When you--

[Audio break.]

MR. KOHUT:  In the Communist countries, in China and Vietnam, we have to submit lists of questions.  In Muslim countries, for example, in Egypt, our survey companies that we work with know better.  They know what questions they can ask and what they cannot.  We can cajole them and try to twist their arms, but there's certain places they won't go, and they won't [audio break].  We can't get survey companies in Cairo to ask questions about [audio break].

[Audio break.]

MR.          :  Is it possible, and have you ever done this [audio break].

MR. KOHUT:  No, we've never measured [audio break].

[Audio is cutting in and out.]

MR.          :  [Off microphone.] --talk about some of the other programs [inaudible] programs [audio break].

MR. GLASSMAN:  Judy Siegel.
* MS. SIEGEL:  Okay.  Thanks.  I'll try to make my comments brief.  They're not directly salient to the subject matter today.  I'm talking about measuring, as Jim asked me to, I'm talking about measuring success in the nonbroadcast elements of international public diplomacy at the State Department.  I'm putting a frame around that, what I'm talking about.  And I'm going to describe things as they are, set the stage for the discussion as they should be, and maybe I could do at lunch or something like that because there's a gap between them I think.

The programs that I'm talking about are administered into bureaus at the State Department.  I'll describe them broadly as exchange programs and information programs.  These programs came to the State Department in 1999, when USIA consolidated into the State Department.  At that time, we had a tenuous connection with broadcasting, but at that time it was, for all practical purposes, severed, although I believe our Under Secretary, currently Margaret Tutwiler, sits on the board.

The programs now, as I said, are administered in two bureaus: A bureau called ECA, Educational and Cultural Affairs, that does the exchanges, and International Information Programs, where I work.  The exchange programs are Fulbright students and scholars, they're international visitors, they're citizen-to-citizen programs, cultural programs, English-teaching programs, essentially, people programs.

The information programs are targeted, as someone mentioned earlier, under the Smith-Mundt Act, to foreign audiences only.  They include a daily transmission to embassies and on the web for the public of U.S. foreign affairs documents.  It's called now the Washington File--people used to know it as the Wireless File--traveling speakers, electronic speakers, print and electronic publications and something we kind of weirdly call Information Resource Centers.  These are the successors to libraries, libraries went out of favor in the '90s.

The programs--and I think this is kind of important to know--the programs are authorized by two pieces of legislation: the exchange programs, the Fulbright-Hays Act; the information programs, the Smith-Mundt Act.

What's important to know or important to me to talk about is that these were crafted immediately after World War II, maybe in 1948, approximately, where the major amendment to the Fulbright-Hays Act in the 1980s, the act was amended to ensure that the programs be, in the words of the amendment, "nonpolitical."  The context is legislation that was passed immediately after World War II.

As I reflected on Jim's assignment to talk about measuring success, in terms of what works, that was the assignment, I was drawn back really to what the purposes of the two pieces of legislation, the really elegant purposes.

For exchanges, the purpose is to promote better mutual understanding.  For information, the purpose is to disseminate abroad information about the U.S., its people and its policies.  That's it.  That's what it tells us to do.  No move the needle, no influence public opinion.  I'm reading you the most important parts of the legislation that we work under.

And the more I thought about all of this, having looked at it, the more I really focused on the world of 1948 and, in those days, the U.S. Embassy was the information broker.  This stuff was brokered by the embassy, if it was an exchange program, or sent to the embassy, in most cases a ship, and disseminated by the embassy.  The Wireless File had a technology that delivered it to the embassy in close to real time.

So, basically, day-to-day--and I've worked on these programs for more than 20 years--we understand our goal, our own definition of success, to provide experiences and information to make the U.S. accurately and better understood.  While many of us are personally passionate cheerleaders about U.S. society and values, at the end of the day, what we aim for, historically, is to be understood and appreciated not necessarily loved.

In terms of how we measure our success, the GAO report's findings and recommendations, particularly about what we don't do, hold up very well even after seven months, which is frequently a lifetime in Washington.  The report describes a formal evaluation program for exchanges and the hopes for an evaluation program in information and just that.  Resources are really a critical issue.   We calculated recently, for a budget presentation that we're doing in the Information Bureau, that our resources were cut by 60 percent in the '90s.  We really have not come back.  There's intermittent influxes of funds.  The GAO report talked about the Shared Values Program, but in a way that's sort of artificial because this stuff is not in our base.  In terms of what we operate on day-to-day, it's cut approximately 60 percent.

Getting back to what we do, ECA measures knowledge about the U.S.  They speak to their grantees, I think largely the foreign grantees.  They measure knowledge about the U.S. and specific knowledge about the focus of the grants.  So, if someone came here to study public health, they'll ask a participant how much more do you know about public health.

In Andy Kohut's terms, they do try now--I interviewed my colleague in ECA to get ready for the panel--they do try to measure change, but the change that they try to measure is in terms of the legislation, understanding broadly the U.S. in sort of nonpolitical, nonmedia terms.

Absent an Evaluation Unit--we're trying to get one.  We don't have it yet--in the information programs, we do things, as the report describes, we analyze embassy reports.  We now have a great tool because we have web trends, and so many of our products are electronic.  We could look at page views.  We don't necessarily know what to do with what we learn.  If there are 35,000 page views of a foreign policy site and 3,000 page views of a trade site, we're just getting this data now, we're trying to figure out what should we do with that in terms of who we're targeting, but we really don't have a broad strategy, as the report described, for how we would target these things.  We do things like measure book orders, et cetera, et cetera.

For shared values, as you saw in the GAO Study, there were additional studies of the number of viewers of the ads, but really nothing is going on with that any more.  That was an historical moment, and certainly I know of no plans to do more ads.

I guess, day-to-day, we find what we do valid and useful.  We use it to plan our programs, but we don't have the means to develop an overall strategy from the data we get because we don't get sufficient data to do it.

To respond to Jim's request completely, I'd like to talk, just for a minute, before I conclude about what we do less formally and maybe more usefully.  For these programs, when we talk among ourselves about success of the program, we might talk about a press office being established in a democratizing country.  We might talk about court reform.  For the exchange program, someone could get excited about a new curriculum that's been introduced, but these are really kind of, we might talk about a spike in Web usage, as I just did.  We talk about friendships.  We talk about personal relationships.

And as Danielle Pletka said in the panel earlier, these are the things really that are hard to measure, but day-to-day we view these things as successes.  Having said that, I know it does not speak to the larger point in the Djerejian report, in terms of strategy and moving the needle.

I guess what I'd like to say, as I conclude, is to reinforce the point I made that this legislation was established during a time when it was the U.S. Embassy abroad that was the information broker.  As empirical social science developed in the 55 years that followed--that's a long time--and as global mass communication revolutionized during that time, the U.S. Government programs are now engaging audiences who have been learning about the U.S. since early childhood from sources like sitcom reruns abroad.  So we're facing an audience that has knowledge--correct or incorrect, we can decide--about the U.S.   And I guess as I reflect on our programs, this is a circumstance that does suggest, as both the Djerejian report and the GAO report recommends, a change in strategy, both programmatic and evaluative.  We discuss these things in the State Department.  I guess I would say we're not there yet.

[Audio break.]

MR.          :  --quote from the Djerejian report, which is quoting the GAO report on this very issue.  The GAO report says the State Department "is not systematically and comprehensively measuring progress towards its public diplomacy goals.  Its overseas performance measurement efforts focus on anecdotal evidence rather than gauging progress toward changing foreign publics' understanding and attitudes about  the United States."

This, I would emphasize, is not a criticism, at least not on my part, of the State Department.  The State Department doesn't have the funding to do this nor does it have the strategic direction.  And as Judy says, it's [audio break] off legislation that is 55 years old.

I guess my question, though, is, just to sort of hone in on it, you were talking about the measurement of dissemination of information programs; that is to say, what are people getting?  What are the [audio break] knowledge have they gleaned?

Have you ever done any research, to your knowledge, about attitudes toward the United States?

MS. SIEGEL:  INR does that, the Intelligence Bureau.  But if you're asking do we--

MR.          :  [Off microphone.] [Inaudible.]

MS. SIEGEL:  Yes, right.  We don't in my program, where I've worked for eight years.  As I said, I spoke to someone in the Exchange Bureau, who runs the Evaluation Unit.  He tells me that they are now going to--they are now inching into asking those questions.  There's a sensitivity there, and that's why I raised the point about the amendment to the Fulbright-Hays Act about the programs being nonpolitical.

The exchange program has a domestic constituency which the information program doesn't.  The Fulbright programs are understood, in terms of long-term broad purposes, and there's been, historically, a sensitivity about asking the kinds of questions that Andy Kohut asks.  I mean, I think we would have no problem asking those in the information program.  It would be great to work with INR to see the impact that our products have, but let me say the products themselves are largely designed with the mind-set, the Smith-Mundt mind-set, of providing information.

When the people in my office put together an electronic journal on trade or national security policy, what they're trying to do is include information.  They're really not, you know, implicitly they hope that attitudes will change as a result of getting this persuasive information, but it's not something that day-to-day guides the design of our program.

MR. GLASSMAN:  Just one little piece of information, for example, that I would like to have is have graduates of the Fulbright program or do graduates of the Fulbright program have more favorable attitudes toward U.S. policies in the Middle East than similarly situated people who did not graduate from the Fulbright program?  And that's obviously a question that's never been asked, and I think it's an important question.

Judy Milestone?
* MS. MILESTONE:  I wanted to talk a little bit about what you've heard referred to a few times as the "move the needle" standard, and we talked about this a lot with the Advisory Commission.  And that's rather than look at ratings or page views, which I believe are concepts from an advertising model, or how many times they say you're name, no matter what they say about you, which is [audio break] our model.  We think a new standard of measurement, one that actually shows influence on attitudes and actions is [audio break] all kinds of public diplomacy efforts.  The goal is not how many, but how much.

It's not a simple task, but there are other government programs, ones designed to reduce teen tobacco use or raise education standards or define how well we're doing with disease.  We've struggled and successfully devised some outcome measures that have meaning, and we believe that public diplomacy efforts in State and elsewhere could benefit from a parallel effort.  We think this will get us beyond the anecdotal that Judy just [audio break].  So we made three recommendations, and I'm going to repeat them.  I know you've all read this report, but [audio break].

One, that there be sufficient funding to do this; that outside contractors be--can you all hear me?

[Audio break.]

MS. MILESTONE:  That outside contractors be consulted to devise the most creative and effective measures, as there's lots of experience with studies like this in the [audio break] sector and with indirect indicators that estimate changed behavior, and that the State Department immediately receive support for an exchange program alumni database so that recent experiences, like Fulbright kinds of things, can be measured and assessed.  So far we've acted as if money for hearts and minds is something we can spend tomorrow, but given the current world mood, that may be risky thinking.

How does this standard apply to Al-Hurra and broadcasting?  I want to kind of slide back to what we talked about earlier this morning.  And I'm sure many of you know that the Advisory Group thought Al-Hurra should be reconsidered was the recommendation, and I'd like to sort of run over some of the reasons why we thought that and then come to what I think are some new questions we need to ask.

This was the thinking of the Broadcast Subcommittee:

That to be credible, a message should be in sync with its means;

That you can't export the message of democracy by state-run television;

In a democratic system, the press should be a check on the government and not its cheerleader.  You especially can't do that in places which have a long history of state-run media and a bad taste from it;

That the distribution of the message must never seem colonial or one-sided because that compromises the credibility of the democracy message and goes one step further saying we not only know what is best for you, but how you should get there;

And most of all, public U.S.-run government broadcasting [audio break] mistake that control of the message is everything, when a shared distribution system, while offering less control, might offer more delivery.

We also thought those most in need of our message, the Islamists, are wary not only of the democracy message, but a lot of the cultural content, and I think Salameh referred to that very interestingly in the first panel.  And so we give them fuel by this broadcast operation rather than isolating them.

And perhaps most of all, we fear that a bricks-and-mortar, U.S.-based broadcasting system, as well-intentioned as it might be, will consume all of the resources that we might want to spread around for a variety of public diplomacy efforts.

As you know, Al-Hurra was not reconsidered--I'm glad for you about that.

[Laughter.]

MS. MILESTONE:  And so now we think we have a new question to ask, and that's how will we know, after a year or after two years, whether Al-Hurra really works?  And I sort of played around with some ideas about what those measures might look like, so I would hope people more professional than I might take a peak at that.

Will critical reviews in the Arab press be a guide?  The reviews are not good.  The early reviews, in fact, I collected some of them, were really not helpful.  And so I wonder whether or not we can say, well, it's okay if they just say our name or whether we should pay attention to the substance of those reviews.  Will polling tell us something?  And where will the polling matter?  Should we pay a lot of attention to what they're saying in Turkey, in Senegal, in Egypt, in Syria?  Should we look at the differences, one state to another?  Will that tell us something that we really need to know?

Should we focus on focus groups?  We actually watched a focus group when we were in Cairo last summer, in which young, sort of up-and-coming executives, many of whom did business apparently with American companies, talked among themselves about their attitudes toward America.   It was pretty devastating.

Will the sales or the boycotts of U.S. products?  So far we read there's little impact from the New York Times.  But maybe that's something we might want to monitor.

Will the number of Fulbright applicants be the indicator?