The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Information Series HENRY LOOMIS Interviewed by: —Cliff“ Groce Initial interview date: March, 1987 Copyright 010 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Loomis oad to VOA Director The Early Problems at USIA Exclusion from access to NSC papers Soviet Propaganda Loomis goes to )hite House 195, Loomis as-ed to return to USIA as Director 195. eorgani/ation of engineering department )or-ings of Voice Transmitter upgrading Spot transmitter conditions Congressman ooney eorgani/ation of language service 0ajor crises dealt 1ith during Loomis era The Lebanese landing 2roadcasts to Latin America a1ay from )alter Lemmon 2ay of Pigs Invasion 1931 Cuban 0issile Confrontation Emphasis on broadcasting in English Changing 0unich radio center to 0unich program Origin on VOA charter elationship 1ith Ed 0urro1 elations bet1een VOA and Policy offices, Dept. of State and USIA 1 The 7Pajama Parties8 Stanton Commission eport Safari Hungarian Uprising 1953 etrospective INTERVIEW HENRY LOOMIS: DIRECTOR OF VOICE OF AMERICA Loomis‘ Road To VOA Director &: How did you get to be named VOA Director, LOO0IS9 I 1as assigned to be one of the t1o CIA staff members to the President:s Committee on International Information Activities -- called the Jac-son Committee. Abbott )ashburn 1as the deputy director. I 1ent there for an entirely different subject for CIA, and 1hen the committee made the policy decision that they didn:t 1ant to get involved in that issue, I said, 7Fine, I:ll go bac- to the CIA,8 but they said, 7)ait a minute. There:s a thing called IIA,8 and I said, 7)hat in the 1orld is that?8 and they said, 7It:s the propaganda part of the State Department, and 1e have to loo- at that. The t1o people from the State Department aren:t much help because one is a policy planner and one is a Soviet expert, and not from IIA. So I 1as assigned to that full-time for the next six months, 1ith free access to all papers and all individuals in and out of government -- and had the a1ful experience of 1atching the Voice disintegrate under 0cCarthy. I also had to 1or- 1ith the Fulbright Committee, particularly Carl 0arcy, 1ho 1as the staff director. So I ended up by 1riting the first draft of the chapter of their report dealing 1ith broadcasting, the Voice of America. That draft 1as pretty 1ell accepted; there 1ere no substantive changes. So at the end of that I 1ent bac- to CIA. Shortly thereafter, I got a call from Ted Streibert, 1ho had just been appointed the director (of USIA). He as-ed me to come see him, and I 1ent, assuming he:d as- me about my vie1s of that chapter, and so forth and so on. Instead of that, he said he had read the chapter and 1as in complete agreement, and 1ould I come as his special assistant to help do it. )hen I had finished 1ith the Jac-son Committee I 1ould have given you a thousand to one I 1ould never have anything to do 1ith IIA, but I had some vie1s that I thought 1ere correct, and this 1as certainly an opportunity, so I agreed to do it and 1ent on a leave of absence from CIA. I thin- it 1as September of A53. Abbott )ashburn probably had something to do 1ith that, because he 1as deputy director (of USIA) and he had been staff director of the Jac-son Committee, and 1e 1or-ed very 2 closely together during that period. So I 1as his special assistant for four or five, maybe six months. T e Early Problems At USIA: To give you an idea of 1hat the situation 1as, at one point the Cuestion 1as, 7Ho1 are 1e going to broadcast to some country?8 and I said, 7)ell, let me ta-e a loo- at the NIE, the National Intelligence Estimate, and get an idea.8 So I as-ed my secretary to get the NIE or other NSC papers, and she said, 7Oh, 1e don:t have any NSC papers in the Agency.8 I said, 7)hat?D8 7That:s right; no NSC papers at all.8 Luc-ily, 2obby Cutler, 1ho 1as there at the NSC as assistant to the President, had also been on the Jac-son Committee, and also I had -no1n him at 0IT 1hen I 1or-ed there as assistant to the president. So I called 2obby and said, 7)hat the hell goes here? Ho1 can you possibly expect the Information Agency to -no1 1hat your policy is if it can:t get the papers?8 He said, 7Oh, they:re a bunch of commies, you can:t trust them.8 I said, 7The hell they are, and if they are, go ahead and fire them but at least put somebody in there that 1ill do it. And besides, they:re not commies.8 So 1e then had an arrangement 1here the papers 1ere sent to me personally, not to the Agency. So I had to have a 1hole special safe and a special secretary, and people had to come there to read them. That lasted for three or four months, before I got it turned over to Policy, 1here it belonged. It soon became evident that the Information Agency had no information about 1hat the competition 1as doing. )e didn:t -no1 ho1 boo-s 1ere distributed; 1e didn:t -no1 ho1 movies suddenly popped up; 1e didn:t -no1 1ho 1as broadcasting ho1 much to 1here. And there 1as no intelligence organi/ation in the government that gave a damn, because they 1ere all speciali/ed. I suggested to Streibert that 1e establish our o1n office of intelligence and research. )e didn:t mean covert; just finding out 1hat information you could find, 1hich could be reported from the field, and organi/ing it. F2IS listened to foreign broadcasts, but that 1as for the policy part, political information that 1ent to the appropriate parts of the government, the military. 2ut ho1 1as that broadcast made? Ho1 1as the information gotten out? )hat radio 1as subservient to 1hom? And 1hich ne1spaper in the 0iddle East had been bought by 1hom recently -- and you can tell that from the content -- and ho1 did the boo-s get to 0ontevideo by the ton? )here did they go from there? That office EUSIA Office of Intelligence and esearchF 1as set up in A54 and I became the director of that. I -ne1 Streibert and I -ne1 )ashburn and I -ne1 Heorge Allen, because he had come in at that point, 1hile I 1as still director of research. Loomis Goes To W ite House: 1957 )hen the Sputni- 1as launched in A5,, Jim Iillian, the president of 0IT (0assachusetts Institute of Technology), 1as pic-ed by Eisenho1er to be his special assistant for science, a ne1 position. So the day he 1as given that assignment he called me up, because I had been one of his assistants at 0IT, and as-ed me to come 1ith him to the )hite House. And I said, 7Oh, Jim, I:m very happy here8 -- at that point 1e 1ere really 3 getting it going, the first public opinion surveys in Europe, that sort of stuff, pretty exciting stuff -- I:ll obviously do 1hat I:m ordered to do, but you:d better chec- 1ith Heorge Allen, and I:ll do 1hatever you t1o decide. Allen and Iillian had been classmates at North Carolina, and Allen 1ouldn:t let me go. So Iillian 1ent to 2obby Cutler, and 2obby Cutler said I 1as going, and that afternoon I 1ent. It 1as that fast. A year later, 1e:d finally got our little grapefruit in the air and things 1ere settled do1n, and so Heorge Allen as-ed me to come bac- and be director of the Voice. 195,: Return To USIA As Director o. VOA &: -hat did you do to put your stamp on the Voice, when you too/ over, LOO0IS9 (At the time I too- over) 2arry Jorthian 1as running the Voice. He 1as efficient, and smart, 1or-ed hard, and 1as very ambitious, and he 1as running it. If he hadn:t been, nothing 1ould have happened, the thing 1as such a total mess. It 1as so torn apart by the pro-0cCarthy and anti-0cCarthy (forces). It had been off by itself up in Ne1 Yor-; no one in )ashington -ne1 1hat it 1as doing. There 1as the antipathy of 7them8 and 7us8. 7They:re8 all a bunch of mad people, all 2road1ay types, uncontrollable. And engineering had never had any priority since the ing Plan had been blo1n up by 0cCarthy; they 1ere just being Cuiet, sitting do1n there saying nothing to nobody. The engineering 1as in total collapse; the signal 1as lousy. Everything 1as such a mess. I felt several things had to happen, and happen Cuic-ly. )e had to put major emphasis on engineering, and get ne1 transmitters around the 1orld. I thin- that the main thing 1as that none of the previous directors in recent times had really cared, had really 1or-ed at the job, and none of them seemed particularly interested in all the aspects of it. To me the fascination of the Voice 1as that it had so many different aspects. Half the problem 1as engineering. Half the problem 1as content, ho1ever you 1ant to describe that -- part of that is political, part of that is journalistic, part of that is -no1ing your audience, the cross-cultural -- it:s all that mix.