Chosen Instrument

Unlike most other nations, the U.S. has no stated policy governing international communications; it has been content to let anyone set up a radio, telephone or cable company, let free competition determine the outcome. Last week, Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal told Congress that this way of doing things was sadly out of date.

In place of competition Jimmie Forrestal advocated a monopolistic chosen instrument. Congress, said he, should require all U.S. companies engaged in international communications to merge into one big government-backed corporation.

Before the Senate's Interstate Commerce Subcommittee, now busily mulling over monopoly v. free competition, Secretary Forrestal unfolded the Navy's plan in clipped words. He wants the Federal Government to form a new corporation, financed by private stock sales, to buy and operate the facilities of the 13 U.S. companies engaged in international radio, telephone and cable communications.

A Limited Marriage. In any such lumping of facilities, the Army & Navy, which are spending some $3 billion on their global network communications this year, will contribute more than all the other companies combined.

The corporation, if the Forrestal plan is adopted, would be run by 20 directors. Five, appointed by the government, would represent the Departments of War, State, Navy, Commerce and the Post Office. But in any question of national policy, the five Government directors could overrule the 15 from private business.

When Secretary Forrestal sprang his proposal on Congress, he argued that only by such a government-backed corporation could the U.S. hold its own against similar foreign companies. In the past, he said, U.S. companies have been played against each other, have often had to make costly contracts. Also, the U.S. must be able to ' send diplomatic and commercial messages free of prying foreign eyes.

Promptly, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Paul A. Porter dubbed the plan unworkable, "a limited marriage between government and private business." But, he told the committee, the FCC itself does favor one big communications company, wholly owned and operated either by private interests or the government. The FCC has no company in mind.

Unwanted Children. All this was only one side of the argument. Before the committee makes up its mind and perhaps a new U.S. policy, it plans to hear from all sides, particularly from the 13 companies concerned. Some of them, notably International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. and Radio Corp. of America, which generally favor the merger, have had nothing to say so far on Forrestal's proposal.

Their best argument for monopoly operation is Britain's Cable & Wireless Co., Ltd., into which Britain's four communications companies merged 16 years ago with the blessing of the government. Cable & Wireless carries messages within the empire more cheaply if sometimes more slowly than U.S. companies.

Lined up against the one big company are American Telephone & Telegraph Co., which does not want anyone to cut into its telephone monopoly, and lusty, young Press Wireless Inc., which now carries over half of all press dispatches in & out of the U.S. Its owners (four press associations and seven newspapers) frankly fear that one big company will 1) slow transmission by favoring cables over radio, 2) make it easy for the government to censor radio and cables in peacetime.

On this question of censorship, more than any other, the question of a chosen instrument will probably be decided.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.