Senate subcommittee hearings into charges that the acting administrator of the U.S. International Information Administration had attempted to halt the beaming of Hebrew language broadcasts to Israel last December when the Communist anti-Jewish propaganda first began in Eastern Europe,will be resumed here Tuesday morning.
At televised hearings of a Senate subcommittee headed by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin this week-end, Dr. Sidney Glazer, chief of the Hebrew service of the Voice of America, and his superior, Gerald Dooher, testified that administrator Reed Harris had issued instructions early in December to end the Voice’s Hebrew programs as an economy measure. Both men testified that they protested Mr. Harris’ decision to Wilson S. Compton, then the administrator, who was in Europe, and secured a suspension of the Harris order.
Mr. Dooher told Sen. McCarthy that in his opinion “the cessation of Hebrew broadcasts was a well-struck blow in the Communist cause. I considered that the argument that it would save money was ridiculous, for we would not have saved $15,000 if we had used the transcriptions suggested as a substitute.”
Reached by newsmen in his Chevy Chase home, Mr. Harris said yesterday that the question of suspending the Hebrew language broadcasts came to the State Department’s attention over a year ago, on Nov. 30, 1951, and that several recommendations for economy retrenchments necessitated by cuts in the information services’ budget had all listed elimination of Hebrew programs. He added that Foreign Service officials in Tel Aviv had twice suggested that funds used on the broadcasts could more effectively be used by the U. S. Information Service in Israel and that a feeling was prevalent that the Hebrew broadcasts were a “marginal operation.”
The reason for the decision to end the Hebrew programs, Mr. Harris said, was largely the comparative smallness of the target audience in relation to the costs of regular language service, and that only 14 percent of Israelis are native born, and the large majority have another native language, which they use in their families. He added that there was good press service, and the Voice of America signal to Israel was weak, a condition since corrected to some extent.
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