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DBS and the Structure of US Policy Making 113

official charged with the responsibility of coordinating and administer-
ing US trade policy. This has involved the USTR in an extraordinarily
23
broad range of activities, including the negotiation of new international
services, telecommunications and intellectual property rights agree-
ments. However, in mandating the USTR to take the lead in these
and otht:r issues, Executive Order 12188 (see note 23) did not formally
modify FCC, Commerce Department or State Department responsibil-
ities in related foreign policy matters.
These agencies constitute only the most prevalent policy particip-
ants. Others of note include the Department of Defense, NASA, the
CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Senior Inter-
agency Group for International Communications and Information
Policy (SIG). The latter is a Cabinet-level committee on which repres-
entatives from a range of federal agencies sit. In 1984, this SIG
delivered a fifty-page report to the National Security Council (NSC)
on foreign communication policy - the first inter-agency attempt to
define, in a comprehensive manner, the problems facing American
foreign communication policy. 24
In 1983 and 1984- the two years leading up to the US withdrawal
from UNESCO - the emerging crisis facing free flow of information
interests in the face of defiant LDCs stimulated a significant execut-
ive-led effort to coordinate American policy. However, given the
presence of established policy interests (such as the State Depart-
ment's responsibility for diplomacy, the Commerce Department's
responsibility for trade, and the FCC's responsibility for domestic
policy), the reforms introduced by the Reagan administration gener-
ated little more than intra-state conflict. In retrospect, as explained
below, this period (and failure) constituted a watershed in US foreign
communication policy. From this time forward, the free flow of
information as an approach to international reform was transcended
by the funneling of communication issues onto America's interna-
tional trade agenda.

5.2 THE US POLICY PROCESS AND WARC-79

In the 1979 the World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC)
held in Geneva, for the first time since the 1950s, the ITU sought a
comprehensive revision of international Radio Regulations. Given
that the 1970s had been a· period of mounting anti-US obstinacy in
one-country-one-vote international institutions, and that a widening