Page 126 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

DBS and the Structure of US Policy Making 115

from the State Department- the result instead was a continuance of
past problems stemming from confused responsibilities and conflict-
ing interests. 26
Examples of these took place in 1978. Chairman Robinson limited
FCC participation in W ARC-79 preparations to the coordination of
US private sector interests. Robinson also limited the role of the NTIA
to coordinating various federal government radio-spectrum demands.
In this action, the Chair sought to limit the practice of competing
corporate and public sector interests pitting the FCC against the
Commerce Department and Commerce against the Commission. But
despite this attempt, powerful and well-organized corporate and state
interests tended to dominate the preparatory activities of the US
delegation. The Department of Defense, for instance, successfully
compelled Robinson to accept its assertion that DoD frequency
needs transcended those of other public and private sector interests
by denying the Chair's requests for substantiating evidence, due,
according to Defense officials, to the 'classified' status of such informa-
tion. Following the FCC's and the NTIA's joint rejection of a USIA
request for increased frequency allocations for Voice of America ser-
vices, USIA officials responded by recruiting Carter's national security
advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to convince the President that VoA
activities constituted yet another radio-spectrum priority. Despite the
added opposition of the State' Department (whose officials anticipated
that the WARC ultimately would reject the request and, as such, the
VoA 'priority' would be both a diplomatic miscalculation and a waste
of time), Robinson was ordered by the President to override his three
vice-chairs. The US delegation thus was committed to the inclusion of
the VoA request as part of its many other demands at the WARC? 7
In the end, the United States sent a sixty-seven-person brigade to the
1,600-delegate, 142-country WARC. State Department, FCC and
Commerce Department officials constituted nearly one-half of the
American contingent. The US private sector also participated in
the American detachment, and these were dominated by telesatellite
service providers and manufacturers. Comsat, for instance, sent three
representatives to Geneva and Hughes Aircraft was represented by
one. This US delegation was both the largest and the most resourceful
28
at the conference. Not only was it assisted in Geneva by a forty-
person support staff, but the delegation also maintained a computer-
satellite link to Washington where a database provided pre-planned
back-up proposals for instantaneous use in situations in which compro-
mise arrangements needed to be made. This kind of expertise and