Jeffrey Gedmin, a longtime supporter of neoconservative advocacy efforts aimed at pushing interventionist overseas foreign and military policies, was named the director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE) in early 2007. The radio station, which is funded by the U.S. government, gained fame during the Cold War for its anti-communist, pro-democracy broadcasts that were beamed into the Soviet Union. More recently, while under the watch of former director Thomas Dine, a past head of the pro-Israel lobby the American Israel Pubic Affairs Committee, RFE gained attention for its antiterror programming, which has been broadcast under the title Radio Farda into Iran and other Mideast countries targeted by the George W. Bush administration as part of its "war on terror."
In announcing Gedmin's hiring in early February 2007, Kenneth Tomlinson, an RFE board member, argued that Gedmin had a "blend of experience as a distinguished scholar, writer, administrator, and a career devoted to international work" ("Jeffrey Gedmin Named President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty," RFE Press release, February 2, 2007). (Tomlinson gained notoriety in 2004, when as head of the U.S. Corporation for Public Broadcasting he tried to eliminate what he saw as the liberal bias in public television. He was eventually forced to resign, reports the Arizona Republic, "after an inspector general's report found that he violated federal rules and ethics standards" while trying to purge PBS.)
Despite Tomlinson's vote of support for Gedmin, many observers and RFE staff members expressed concern that Gedmin's ideological stances in support of Bush administration policies could affect the station's general tenor. According to the Prague Post (RFE is based in Prague), in recent years the station has begun cutting its broadcasts to European countries while increasing the amount of its programming for Islamic countries. Of the 28 countries that receive RFE broadcasts, according to the Prague Post, 18 are mostly Muslim countries.
Reported the Prague Post (February 21, 2007): " Along with the development of programming for Muslim listeners, some RFE/RL staff members have voiced concern that a new, conservative president could alter the station's tone ... He currently directs the Aspen Institute in Berlin, a nonprofit organization with a mission 'to foster enlightened leadership and open-minded dialogue.' Before joining the institute in 2001, Gedmin was executive director of the right-leaning New Atlantic Initiative of the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a founder of Project for the New American Century, a major proponent of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Gedmin's editorial pieces in various newspapers leave little room for doubt as to his political leanings. In a Nov. 20, 2006, article in the neoconservative magazine the Weekly Standard, Gedmin asks, 'Will George W. Bush ever get his due?' and writes that the president 'has forever changed the conversation about democracy and the Middle East to the benefit of humankind.'"
Asked by the Prague Post (April 11, 2007) about the purpose of RFE broadcasts into Iran, Gedmin, who no longer directs the Aspen Institute but still publishes on its website, responded: "Imagine Iran was a democracy ... The fact that France has the bomb doesn't keep anybody up late at night ... They're not going to use it. They're a democracy ... [So] why doesn't the West have a more cogent strategy to support the democracy movement in Iran ... as a way of containing some of these issues? We're a small piece of that." Asked whether his connections to Bush administration figures could complicate his relations with RFE, Gedmin said: "I don't see any conflicts ... I don't care if someone supports Bush or Clinton or the deputy dogcatcher. I want serious people who believe in ideas and open, constructive debate."
Gedmin told Germany's Tagesspiegel: "I haven't the slightest doubt that such work is urgently needed" (Der Tagesspiegel, March 13, 2007.)
Gedmin's support of neoconservative-led advocacy efforts began long before the 9/11 terror attacks. In February 1998, for example, Gedmin joined an impressive list of hawkish foreign policy elites (including Richard Perle, Richard Allen, Stephen Bryen, Frank Gaffney, Douglas Feith, Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, and David Wurmser) in signing his name to an "open letter" to President Bill Clinton produced by the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf that advocated overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The letter, part of a broad neocon campaign that championed a new post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy aimed at overturning rogue regimes and aggressively pushing democracy, argued that "containment" of Iraq was not viable because of its purported weapons of mass destruction programs. "Only a determined program to change the regime in Baghdad will bring the Iraqi crisis to a satisfactory conclusion," the letter said.
In 1997, Gedmin joined a similar coterie of hardliners and elites in forming the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). PNAC's founding statement of principles, published in June 1997, called for a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" that would ensure "American global leadership." It added: "We need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."
Gedmin is a sometime-contributor to the Financial Times as well as to the neoconservative-run Weekly Standard.
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Affiliations
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Director (2007-)
Aspen Institute: Former Director
Georgetown University: Former Adjunct Lecturer
Council for a Community of Democracies: Former Member of the Board of Directors
Project for the New American Century: Founding Signatory
American Enterprise Institute: Former Resident Scholar and Executive Director of AEI's New Atlantic Initiative
Education
American University: B.A. and M.A. in German
Georgetown University: Ph.D.
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