And I would hope that again-some people might call this censorship—well, it isn't censorship. You are not compromising the truth, but you are making sure that something we are paying for as taxpayers is being used to further our ideals, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Chairman HYDE. The gentleman's time has expired.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman HYDE. Thank you, sir. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Hoeffel.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think all of us understand the need to get the truth into Afghanistan to make sure that people understand what America is doing, what our coalition is doing, whether it is the food drops, whether it is fighting the Taliban. All of this is very important. And while I am very sympathetic with what Mr. Rohrabacher said, I am not sure it is always wrong to put the other side on the Voice of America. But I think it would always be necessary to counter it, to take issue with whatever misinformation their spokespeople might be offering, because, as he said, we are not for censorship. We want the truth to come out. We want a balance.

I am sure that the citizens of Afghanistan can smell propaganda or spin very easily, whether it is coming from us or coming from the Taliban. But certainly all they are getting from the Taliban is spin and a lack of balance and certainly not the truth and certainly not any representation of a tolerant society. What troubles me is there seems to be a turf war, I hope I am wrong, between the VOA and Radio Free Europe. I am a supporter of Mr. Royce's bill to restart Radio Free Afghanistan. That seems to have rubbed some people the wrong way. It shouldn't. We should be united on this. We all agree on what we want to accomplish, but there seems to be some backing and filling and disagreement on our side. And if we have that going on, how can we get the truth out to the rest of the world.

In your 8 brief days, what have you picked up? What can we do to deal with this? Everybody is well-intentioned, I don't challenge that. But I would hate to see us use up resources or energy disputing each other about the best way to go forward.

Mrs. BEERS. I think the better answer for the issue, if any, that exists between Voice of America and Radio Free Europe will be better answered by the next panel. My sense of our relationship with the BBG and Voice of America is that we are mightily dependent on one another. I am going to spend this afternoon taking my first seat at the board of the BBG. I am looking forward to that. I know that they, too, are undergoing a transition as they take in new officers who will be appointed by the Administration on President Bush's team.

I would just like to say that I am going to be very sensitive to our ability to create a sum larger than its parts, and that is what I would like to dedicate myself to doing. I can't imagine starting over and inventing any of these resources that we now have so successfully at play. So I intend to be a very constructive participant. And if there is other detail, I think the wisdom you have in calling for the other panel is a good place to ask that.

Mr. HOEFFEL. It certainly is. But clearly, the State Department is the major player here. And until, I guess, 2 or 3 years ago, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were directly within the State Department. I think there has got to be-we need a lot of guidance here to make sure that we have unity and that we are speaking with one voice. There is certainly a lot of institutional history with Radio Free Europe that used to do Radio Free Afghanistan, as Mr. Royce pointed out. I hope we can get this thing rolling quickly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman HYDE. Mr. Ed Royce of California.

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. I wanted to start, if I could, by thanking you, Secretary Beers, for your testimony and ask you about a particular problem that we are seeing that is growing exponentially, and that is the anti-American sentiment in the Middle Eastern media that we have seen over the last few years. Sometimes it is simply a request by government-sponsored media to boycott U.S. products. But sometimes it runs to anti-American statements that appear in the government-controlled media.

I just wanted to share a few of them with you because they should give us pause. The Egyptian government-sponsored newspaper, Al-Akhabr-this was 2 weeks before the World Trade Center bombing on August 28:

"the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor must be destroyed because of following the idiotic American policy that goes from disgrace to disgrace in the swamp of bias and blind fanaticism. The age of the American collapse has begun."

Then we have from the television station out of Qatar, AlJazeera, they quote the Mufti of the Palestinian Liberation Army:

"My blessings to those who carried out the USS Cole operation. And it should be known that Cole was the greatest product of the American mind and it was destroyed by two people only. The two prayed to Allah, penetrated this destroyer and sent all of its passengers to hell."

I am sure they broadcast that in the interest of balance.

My concern is that these repeated broadcasts by governmentsponsored radio and television in Saudi Arabia, certainly in Qatar, in Egypt, need to be countered. And I just wanted to say that that is why Congressman Howard Berman and myself and other Members here over the years have tried to organize support for a counterbalancing media program in the Middle East.

I just would like to know of your commitment-not just in concept for the program, but for the resources to go forward and see that this is done effectively so that people in the Middle East and people in south Asia begin to hear a coherent explanation from us on a full-time basis, or actually from their own people, from people in the Middle East, from people in south Asia, who will explain and put things in context.

Secondly, I wanted to ask you about Radio Free Iraq, how things are going there, who is running that program and if you have any observations on that.

Mrs. BEERS. We see these headlines ourselves every day. The one you just referred to is devastating. And it was, as you pointed out,

before the attack. Even before the attack, we too had been trying to work with Al-Jazeera on balance, and we had Secretary Powell on and we have had a number of Administration officials. After the bin Laden tape, we waged a furious response with them and did get them, I think, to move toward balancing by having a number of previous officers of the Administration on, including, as I think someone mentioned, Tony Blair.

Those are balancing acts. Under the circumstances, I think our job is to constantly weigh in against that powerful network to give us balanced time.

I certainly would consider buying time on Al-Jazeera to run advertising that we are trying to put together with the Ad Council. So we are not done with trying to get equal voices in there. None of us are in a position to deny the opportunity for something like Radio Free Afghanistan. I am just concerned that I must deal now with the resources and the allocations that we have toward Voice of America. It has a very important role in our present diplomacy effort, and I am just anxious that that not be diluted. I think you understand that yourself in your dialogue. In that case, we can only support that effort.

Mr. ROYCE. Let me lastly explain what Mr. Rohrabacher was trying to share with you with respect to the issue of some of the broadcasts over the last 5 years. We hear it more than you do, because we in southern California have a large Afghan population there.

The reason that they have been so concerned—and I will just tell you the word on the street among Afghans in the United States, they call it "voice of the Taliban," or had in the past-and let me tell you why. The feeling has been that the recruitment of the particular Pashtun speakers that were chosen was not balanced. And I understand your internal evaluation.

Let me just read briefly from Peter Thompson's-from the University of Nebraska-from his sort of rebuttal to that as maybe something that you should take into consideration. He says,

"I would like to differ with the IBB evaluation. In my July message to you, I sought to indicate the importance of ensuring that the Pashtun-speaking evaluators you chose are objective and fair. Unfortunately, in my personal judgment, the Pashtuns who played key roles in the evaluation cannot be considered fair and objective. Here is why. One is the former head of the ultranationalist Afghan Milli party. Afghan Milli members almost always support the Taliban because of the Taliban's Pashtun's nature and its attempt to dominate the Tajiks and other Afghan minorities inside Afghanistan, even though Afghan Milli members may not subscribe to the religious views of the Taliban. This intense Pashtun nationalism translates into Afghan Milli support for the Taliban and opposition to the mostly non-Pashtun opposition to the Taliban.

"Further, there is no doubt that there is a great lack of balance in the VOA Pashtun Service reporting. Interviews with members of the anti-Taliban opposition inside Afghanistan are as rare as hen's teeth,"

he says. No knowledge of Pashtun is not an excuse. Then he goes on to explain

Chairman HYDE. The gentleman's time has long expired.

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman HYDE. I would suggest a private conference.

Mrs. BEERS. I will look into this.

Mr. GILMAN. I would submit my opening statement for the record. I am being called to another meeting.

Chairman HYDE. Certainly. Without objection.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gilman follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

I appreciate the Chairman's holding of this hearing. I welcome Under Secretary Beers and Assistant Secretary Coucher and the others who will be testifying here. We are obviously doing something wrong to be disliked so intensely by so many people in the Arab world-to have so few people willing to believe us. But it is not only what sort of public information program we have, although we certainly have to do a better job. We simply cannot do it all by ourselves.

Most importantly, we are not making it clear to governments in the Middle East that blaming the United States and Israel for all the ills of the Arab world is inappropriate, to say the least. The atmosphere of anti-Americanism that pervades the region is fostered by most of the governments which cannot seem to find anything good to say about the United States, no matter how much we do to secure their borders or their economies.

If the Arab governments talk about "Israeli terrorism" when discussing Israeli policies, they cheapen the language; they are left with nothing to say when real terrorism hits. The Arab governments put themselves into a vicious cycle:

• In an effort to retain power, the leaders focus the attention of their people on America and Israel, rather than to their own needs.

• Anyone who complains is labeled a Westernizer or Zionist. This leads to more unrest, and that unrest can only be dealt with by more and harsher rhetoric. And, eventually, that rhetoric will boil over.

• When we ask for help, the Arab governments claim that they cannot do so because of public opinion-the very same public opinion they have created. The fact is that our diplomats do not seem ready to take an "in your face" attitude toward anti-Americanism and toward promoting our values, even if it makes them unpopular. A senior American official in an Arab country told a member of our staff, before September 11th, that we "talk to host country people about things we can agree on." That is not good enough, certainly not today. We need to engage the Arab public at all levels about things we and they will be uncomfortable talking about, if we are to get anywhere.

We need to focus more on results. What results exactly do we want, especially in terms of "outputs?" Do we want the credibility of our spokesman to increase as measured by polls? How exactly are we going to get from here to there? Who is willing to be held responsible for achieving our goals? I hope we can get clear answers to these questions from today's witnesses and I look forward to hearing from them. Chairman HYDE. Mr. Faleomavaega.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be the last person to try to raise any questions with you, Madam Secretary, given the fact that you have only been in office 8 days. I think that there is tremendous relevance and concern, as expressed earlier from my good friend from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, in terms of how do you define truth.

We always are wondering what is truth. I have heard it said that truth is knowledge of things as they were, as they are, and as they are to come. I knew when I was an elementary student it was the absolute truth that Columbus discovered America, only to find out later he got lost. I learned in my youth that the truth was Captain

Cook discovered all these islands in the South Pacific. And I learned later, how could he possibly discover these islands when people have been living there for thousands of years?

So what is truth? I think this is always a constant problem when we talk about public diplomacy. As you had mentioned earlier, you said dialogue can never be one-sided. I think at the same time, I do express a very serious concern. How do you measure the truth of the opposition or people expressing at least in their opinions, very biased, to say then that should be permissible on our airwaves, paid by the American taxpayers?

Let me give you an example, and maybe it is not a good example, but I think most Americans have heard recently on television Osama bin Laden making the claim that one million children were murdered by the Americans, or something to that effect, and his appeal to the whole Muslim world that this is jihad. These are opinions. And I suppose that you might say that they are intangible, because he claims to be a very religious man.

How do you sift through the process saying that Osama bin Laden's statement was just as truthful as some of the things we have claimed? The question I want to ask concerns the reports that the Committee has here, and the seriousness of having people who are very biased against America-for what we stand. I think what Mr. Rohrabacher and I agree with is as long as what we say through our airwaves, paid by the American taxpayer, should be the truth.

What disturbs me is that if we allow the same opportunity for the Taliban to express their opinions that are not necessarily truthful, at least in terms of maybe the evidence or facts that are given to the contrary, how do you measure this? What process do you follow to say that this is the truth and we stand by it, especially if you give opposition people like the Taliban, the opportunity to say what credibility are we going to give them-to say whatever they say publicly to the world. Should that be acceptable at the American taxpayers' expense? I don't know.

Mrs. BEERS. That is a pretty far-reaching philosophical question: How do we communicate the truth? But I will say in the communication disciplines that I have had to practice all my life, that it is possible to communicate to another person, with respect, your beliefs. And since an individual's beliefs are borne of a number of experiences in an interior landscape that they have, there is no one that can deny you the right to your own belief set, your value system.

I think we are on very good ground when we speak about the beliefs and the value system of the United States. We are very fortunate in that our country can actually speak with one voice about such things and we have a common vocabulary. When it comes to understanding what the fanatics' view as their truths, I think all we can do is weigh the consequences and point out the end results of such a belief system.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. The problem, Madam Secretary, is that in our country, there is always a constant process of reviewing, analyzing, even among the journalists. Even the journalists disagree. Even the journalists are very opinionated. Some conservatives, some liberals, and all of that.