Charles Z. Wick

Charles Z. Wick: From 1981 through 1988, Wick was director of the United States Information Agency (USIA) under President Reagan. As USIA director, Wick launched the first live global satellite television network.

Wick also established the Voice of America's Radio Marti broadcasting to Cuba; created RIAS TV in Berlin; headed the International Youth Exchange Initiative; established an office within USIA to implement the General Exchanges Agreement between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union; and created the Artistic Ambassador Program with its international young artists' exchanges. Wick has been an independent businessman involved in the financing and operation of motion picture, television, radio, music, health care, and mortgage industries in the United States and abroad. He was previously president and chief executive officer of Wick Financial Corp., and Mapleton Enterprises, which he founded in the early 1960's. He was co-chairman of the 1981 Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Project democracy

Max Holland in a 1984 Nation article Wick's last tapes asserts that:

"Aside from Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan, the Administration official who has caused President Reagan the greatest embarrassment is Charles Z. Wick, director of the United States Information Agency. In Reagan's first term, the press reported that Wick had given jobs to the children of Cabinet members [the Senate investigation into the hiring dubbed it "kiddiegate"], had secretly tape-recorded his telephone conversations and had ordered the U.S.I.A. to maintain a blacklist of liberals who would not be sent abraad under the agency's auspices (among those banned, Senator Gary Hart and Walter Cronkite).

The Reagan administration also rewarded its friends by pumping money into the conservative infrastructure. Inside the National Security Council, former CIA propagandist Walter Raymond Jr. coordinated plans for enlisting private organizations into wide-ranging "public diplomacy" operations. Raymond's operation — initially called "Project Truth" and later “Project Democracy”— enlisted foundations in a novel public-private strategy.

Consortium News states:

"Dated June 14, 1982, and entitled "Project Democracy: Proposals for Action," a draft proposal spelled out plans for drawing non-governmental organizations into the process. The plan also called for harnessing financial resources from a "coalition of wealthy individuals"; U.S. defense contractors; and private foundations, such as the Twentieth Century Fund."

Affiliations

• USC Center on Public Diplomacy