The State Department has once again outflanked Congress, by getting a foreign service officer with a deep intelligence background appointed as the first director of Radio Free Iran, a "freedom radio" established by an act of Congress last year.
When Senator Alfonse D'Amato and Congressman Benjamin Gilman initially called for the creation of Radio Free Iran, their intent was to create a Farsi-language broadcasting service modeled after Radio Free Europe that would provide the type of news and opinion programs the clerical regime in Iran currently forbids. Frequently called "surrogate radios," because they are meant to provide a forum for opposition views outlawed in the target country, freedom radios sponsored by the United States Congress and managed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty were a vital link to opposition movements beyond the Iron Curtain in Europe during the dark days of the Cold War. In today's Iran, such a radio could help galvanize the growing opposition to the hard-line clerics currently ruling Iran.
But RFE/RL President Thomas A. Dine rejected candidates to run the new radio who sought to help Iranians find new voices for their democratic aspirations. Instead, he bowed to the wishes of the State Department, appointing a long-time intelligence officer, Dr. Stephen C. Fairbanks, to run the new Farsi-language service.
Fairbanks is an advocate of closer U.S.-Iran relations, and opposes U.S. actions that would anger the clerical regime or challenge its legitimacy. This is precisely the wrong point of view to have at the head of Radio Free Iran.
Fairbanks came to these views after serving in Iran for nearly eight years in the 1960s and 1970s, first as a Peace Corps volunteer, and later, as a history teacher at the Tehran International School. After the Iranian Revolution, which like many leftist academics Fairbanks supported, he did a two year stint with the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which is run by the Central Intelligence Agency to monitor open source broadcasts from around the world. He joined the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research in 1986, becoming the Senior analyst in charge of interpreting domestic Iranian politics for U.S. policy-makers. Fairbanks has consistently argued in background papers and briefing documents that today's Iran is far more democratic than the Arab states in the Persian Gulf, and that the U.S. should therefore take a more benevolent approach toward the Islamic Republic. Until recently, U.S. policy-makers have rejected his advice.
Despite Fairbanks's intelligence background, and his status as a State Department employee, RFE/RL President Tom Dine insisted that Radio Free Iran would be free of U.S. government influence.
"We do not and will not broadcast 'U.S. government propaganda,' as some have suggested," Dine said on July 30, when he announced Fairbanks's appointment. "Nor will this service be allowed to become a mouthpiece for one or another part of the significant Iranian emigration. Instead, our news and our commentaries will seek to reflect the broadest range of freely expressed responsible opinions of a free people."
Fairbanks will be responsible for hiring Iranian and American journalists, and setting up programming aimed to "reaching out to elements in the elite and in the population who appear to be seeking to move their country forward," Dine said. "Our broadcasts can encourage these forces for change to move Iran away from authoritarianism and isolationism toward democracy and integration with the broader international community."
But Fairbanks has no broadcasting experience, and as an intelligence analyst has gone out of his way to mitigate negative information on the Islamic Republic's overseas terrorist activities and its human rights violations at home.
At a conference sponsored by the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom on Oct. 22, 1996, Fairbanks downplayed reports on Iranian government involvement in the assassination of dissidents overseas. "I seem to remember that during the Shah's time similar things were going on," Fairbanks opined, "so I don't really see where the current regime has innovated in this regard."
While Fairbanks paints himself as a scholar, and has just completed a year-long sabbatical at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC, his State Department affiliation will be sharply criticized in Tehran - and more importantly, on Capitol Hill. Instead of Radio Free Iran, the new venture will be seen as the Voice of the U.S. Department of State.
Fairbanks won out over the other top candidate, the former head of Voice of America's Farsi Service, Bill Royce, because he had the backing of Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering. RFE/RL President Tom Dine met several times with Pickering to discuss possible candidates, but Dine insisted that he was not influenced by the State Department in making his choice. "This radio will not be a State Department lap dog," Dine insisted.
But sources say Dine and others at RFE/RL were well aware that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was "dead against" the creation of a freedom radio for Iran, and tried repeatedly to prevent Congress from appropriating funds for it. When that failed, State Department officers and Congressional insiders who tracked the radio say, Pickering intervened to ensure that a Director was named who would take his cue from Foggy Bottom, not from human rights activists or members of Congress who are concerned with Iran's development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
"Steve Fairbanks is a loyal administration soldier who happens to know Iran fairly well," said one source. "But his attitude toward the regime is soft. Clearly the administration did not want this radio to be set up and now hopes to make it as anodyne as possible."
Dine has said he intends to work closely with members of Congress who created the legislation authorizing Radio Free Iran, but a top aide to Senator Alfonse D'Amato says they were kept totally in the dark. When asked whether he knew that Fairbanks had been appointed, the aide said "that's news to me. I didn't even know Fairbanks was under consideration."
Members of Congress will be closely monitoring the programming Fairbanks selects over the next few months, and could be tempted to "micro-manage" the radio if they feel it has become a tool of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, instead of a tool for promoting democracy and human rights in Iran, as Congress intended.
One touchstone will be the treatment Fairbanks gives to stories that have angered the Tehran regime in the past, such as its support for international terrorism, its human rights abuses, or the treatment of Iranian women, and whether he gives air time to Iranian opposition leaders, especially to opposition clerics. Many observers of Iranian politics believe the real Achilles heel of the clerical regime is what many Iranians perceive as its betrayal of Islam. The regime has consistently stiffled opposition clerics, placing them under house arrest and even establishing a Special Court for the Clergy to ensure they can attract no mass following. Radio Free Iran should provide a forum for such clerics to reach a domestic audience inside Iran.
Radio Free Iran was created to become the champion of the growing pro-democracy movement inside Iran, not the tool of U.S.-Iran rapprochement, or of U.S. business interests. Congress and human rights advocates will judge Fairbanks - and his boss, Tom Dine - on how well the new radio meets the high standards established by Radio Free Europe in the past, when it held high the beacon of freedom in a dark world of tyranny and repression.
Kenneth Timmerman is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI). FDI is a private, non-profit corporation registered in the State of Maryland. FDI materials, including the FDI News Update, are available free-of-charge via the Internet at http://www.iran.org/.