Radio Marti June Interview of Reagan Called a ‘Sham’

Last June, Cubans tuning into Radio Marti, the new U.S. government station broadcasting to their island, heard an apparently spontaneous interview with President Reagan on U.S. policy toward the Fidel Castro regime.

What the listeners did not know is that Radio Marti officials submitted their questions in advance to the White House, that those questions were changed in part by the National Security Council staff and that the White House also provided the script for Reagan’s answers.

Moreover, Reagan read only the first sentence or two of each answer, then allowed a Spanish translator to dub in the full answers as scripted by the White House.

Tells Senate Panel

The unusual arrangement was disclosed Tuesday at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing by Norman Painter, president of the American Federation of Government Employees local at the U.S. Information Agency.

Radio Marti is part of the agency’s Voice of America and, according to its charter, follows journalistic standards and should not be a propaganda vehicle for the government.

Richard W. Carlson, director of Voice of America, defended the arrangement Tuesday. “There was no intent to deceive anyone in our audience with the interview,” he said. “We thought it was a perfectly valid way to bring to a Cuban audience statements from the President about what he believed.”

Calls Changes Minor

Carlson said the White House changes in Radio Marti’s questions were “minor.”

But Painter told committee Chairman Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) that “Radio Marti’s interview with President Reagan was a journalistic sham. Radio Marti’s director, who is not himself a journalist, pulled rank and took over the reading of the doctored questions. . . . The President put in a token presence on the microphone . . . and then the whole thing was played for Cuban audiences as if it had been a legitimate news interview.”

The June interview with Reagan was conducted by Radio Marti Director Ernesto Betancourt, a political appointee with no journalistic background. He canceled plans to have then-White House correspondent Annette Lopez-Munoz and two other staffers participate.

Lopez-Munoz was removed from the White House beat last fall after asking Reagan a question at a news conference, which her superiors said violated a policy against government-employed reporters asking questions at such sessions.