By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 1, 1998; Page A17

Establishing Radio Free Iraq, one of the simpler undertakings associated with overt and covert efforts to force Iraqi President Saddam Hussein out of power, is beginning to move forward on Capitol Hill and within the Clinton administration.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has endorsed the Radio Free Iraq idea. And the House Republican Policy executive committee last week discussed providing new money for the program, which could be broadcast from a U.S. government-owned transmitter in Kuwait that once was used for clandestine broadcasts by CIA-aided anti-Hussein groups.

"What we are talking about now is an open broadcast policy that supports the political opposition in Iraq," Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) said yesterday. "Broadcasting has proved to be a cheap means of promoting freedom."

The Kuwait transmitter has had only limited daily use since agency support of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and Iraqi National Accord (INA) exile groups has all but ended, Cox said.

Cox said he already discussed the idea with Achmed Chalabi, president of the INC. Chalabi received about $15 million from the CIA in the early 1990s to create the INC as a political organization of various Iraqi groups.

The INC, which was located in northern Iraq, had its own transmitters there as well as time on the CIA's Kuwait facility. When Hussein moved north in 1995, the INC lost its transmitters there, and when CIA support for the INC ended in 1996, it lost time on the Kuwait facility, according to former intelligence officials.

Now, Cox said, Chalabi would like the INC to resume broadcasts into Iraq. The Kuwait facility has recently been broadcasting programs produced by the INA -- which had become competitive with Chalabi's INC -- just seven hours a day or less, according to intelligence sources.

Cox said Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, took part in the discussion, which has "significant support" in that group.

"Since Iraq is a front-burner topic," Cox said, the Radio Free Iraq movement "has its own momentum."

Meanwhile, some administration officials are considering using $4 million earmarked in this year's United States Information Agency authorization bill to create a Radio Free Iran for Radio Free Iraq instead, according to sources. That money, which is limited to $2 million for each of the next two years, could pay for increased Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts in Arabic, English and Kurdish from VOA's transmitter, which also is in Kuwait, according to administration officials.

Since the House-Senate conference report on the fiscal 1998 authorization bill containing that language was held up by Congress last year, administration officials have not yet implemented the Radio Free Iran proposal.

At a House Appropriation subcommittee meeting Thursday, David W. Burke, chairman of the Board of Governors for the International Broadcast Bureau, which has supervision over VOA, said foreign policy agencies were discussing using the money earmarked for Iran differently -- without specifically mentioning Iraq.

Some State Department officials want to block the Radio Free Iran idea, which was sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, and approved by the Senate at the urging of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the full committee, and Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-N.Y.).

A spokesman for D'Amato said the senator had not heard of any attempt to use the money for Iraq, but added that "if that was suggested, it would not be approved" by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The Radio Free Iraq idea is scheduled to be discussed Monday. Brownback's subcommittee has planned a hearing on "Can Saddam Hussein be overthrown?" Chalabi is scheduled to attend as one of the witnesses.

"Every time there is some frustration with foreign policy, someone in Congress suggests a 'Radio Free' something," said one administration official familiar with the situation. This source pointed out that U.S. government-sponsored broadcasts into a country where destabilization of that regime is a goal frequently run into operational problems. "Who are the on-air broadcasters? What are their views?" said the source, describing some of the issues officials must decide.

A recent CIA inspector general report on the Bay of Pigs operation 36 years ago noted that an anti-Fidel Castro radio station set up on Swan Island was hampered because there was no bilingual agency employee suitable to be an announcer. In addition, one member of the Cuban provisional government group, made up of competing exile political groups, began unauthorized broadcasts without clearing them with the agency. U.S.-financed Radio Marti, currently broadcast into Cuba, has had similar problems, primarily concerning who controls the political content of the programming.