Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government
If Frank Shakespeare Jr., who died on Dec. 14 at age 97, had not so long outlived most of his contemporaries, far more encomiums would be flowing for this onetime conservative luminary, ambassador, and apostle of freedom.
Shakespeare, who in the private sector served in major executive roles at CBS, RKO, and Westinghouse, did yeoman’s work as head of the U.S. Information Agency under President Richard Nixon and as President Ronald Reagan’s chairman of the Board for International Broadcasting, overseeing Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, spreading freedom’s truth to those enslaved by Communism. He also served as the board chairman of the conservative Heritage Foundation and later as this nation’s second-ever official ambassador to the Vatican , where he facilitated Reagan’s famous alliance with Pope John Paul II to dismantle the Soviet empire.
Shakespeare was a man of integrity. Retrospective congressional testimony from 1974 about a 1971 Middle East flap is instructive. When appeasers tried to pressure the Voice of America to scrub from its news accounts the conclusive evidence that the Soviets were helping Egypt move surface-to-air missiles to the Suez Canal in violation of a ceasefire agreement, VOA director Kenneth Giddens insisted on reporting the truth. Against pressure even from Secretary of State William Rogers, Shakespeare backed Giddens to the hilt and reminded Rogers that the USIA reports directly to the president, not to the bureaucrats at Foggy Bottom.
During the Cold War, Frank Shakespeare was a bard for liberty (washingtonexaminer.com)
