207. Memorandum From the Acting Director of the International Communication Agency (Bray) to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski)1
SUBJECT
- Publicizing the Cuban Refugee Problem (C)
I am responding to your memo of May 30.2
We continue to play the Cuban refugee issue heavily in all our media and through our posts abroad. Since April 4 our press service has provided posts with over 200 texts of policy statements, stories, interviews with refugees, background on Cuba and the like. VOA remains heavily on the case, and all of its Cuban coverage has also been placed on its correspondent feed which services over 2,500 indigenous radio stations throughout Latin America.
We are using the themes developed by the inter-agency group and are actively working with other agencies to develop supporting factual material for our media.
To assist these efforts, and to capitalize on the refugees, we are now producing a film which will tell the story of life in Cuba as the refugees themselves experienced it. We have filmed interviews with Cubans in the Florida camps. I’m told it is powerful material. The film itself will be ready for distribution by mid-June.
We have given considerable thought to your staff’s proposal that VOA produce a daily one-hour program on Cuba for broadcast simultaneously to Cuba and other countries. The question of costs aside, we conclude: (1) Cubans know more than we can tell them about Cuba; (2) both commercial radios and VOA are already getting a heavy message into Cuba about refugee reception here and their views as to why they left; (3) audiences elsewhere will quickly conclude that a packaged program on Cuba is propaganda and tune it out; (4) that our best hope [Page 610] of keeping Cuba in the minds of VOA audiences is to insert the story into programs to which they are drawn for other reasons.
VOA has been working with elements of the Department of Defense to assure that it is technically feasible to use DOD-furnished mediumwave transmitters to get an effective VOA signal into the eastern Caribbean. I am told that they have almost concluded their technical studies, which look like being positive. Cost estimates are being developed. If the project appears practicable (and we should know next week), the next step will be to survey the U.S. Navy base on Antigua which appears to be the only feasible site, then consult with the UK and the Antiguans.
Finally, I would like to flag one matter for NSC attention. Your staff will recall that well before the refugee issue arose, we were instructed by the NSC to develop a cultural exchange attraction to tour Cuba. Alvin Ailey’s dance troupe was selected and is currently scheduled to spend one week in Cuba in September. USICA and the Cuban Government are splitting the costs 50/50 (our share is approximately $130,000).3
We will need to know by approximately July 15 whether to proceed.4
- Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, North/South Pastor Files, Country Files, Box 16, Cuba: Broadcasting (Cuba and Caribbean), 12/79–12/80. Confidential. Cohen initialed for Bray. A copy was sent to Muskie. Gates initialed the top right-hand corner of the memorandum. Brzezinski wrote “RP need your recomm. ZB.” Attached as Tab II to a June 13 memorandum from Pastor to Brzezinski, in which Pastor recommended that Brzezinski sign a memorandum to Bray regarding the recommendations made in Bray’s June 6 memorandum. The memorandum from Brzezinski to Bray is attached to Pastor’s June 13 memorandum as Tab I and is printed as Document 208. The memorandum printed here is also scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. XXIII, Mexico, Cuba, and the Caribbean.↩
- See Document 206.↩
- Brzezinski placed a vertical line in the left-hand margin next to this paragraph and next to the sentence below it.↩
- Brzezinski underlined “July 15 whether” and drew a right-pointing arrow in the left-hand margin next to this sentence.↩