Charles Z. Wick, 90; Reagan appointee led U.S. Information Agency
Charles Z. Wick, the controversial, long-serving director of the United States Information Agency, who raised the agency's profile, doubled its budget and extended its ability to reach foreign audiences through new technology such as satellite television, died of natural causes Sunday at his Los Angeles home. He was 90.
Wick, a close friend and advisor of President Reagan and his appointee, was the USIA's longest-serving director, filling the post from 1981 to '89. A venture capitalist, real estate investor and former movie producer, he brought Hollywood-style pizazz to an agency that had long been treated as a government backwater and made it a prominent part of Reagan's Cold War apparatus.
Among Wick's successes was WorldNet, a satellite television network that enabled the Reagan administration to quickly broadcast to other countries American viewpoints on sensitive international events, such as the Soviet crackdown in Poland against the Solidarity trade union movement in 1981 and the U.S invasion of Grenada in 1983.
He launched Radio Marti, a network that sent daily broadcasts to Cuba, in 1983. He also developed programs that brought U.S. news and features to Europeans in two-hour broadcasts five days a week, held news conferences for foreign journalists to question senior Washington officials and sent young American musicians to teach and perform in other countries
"Charlie Wick was magnificent in letting the world know about Ronald Reagan's America," former Secretary of State George P. Shultz said in a statement released Tuesday.
Wick also weathered numerous controversies, most notably the disclosure that he secretly tape-recorded phone calls to his office from government officials, celebrities and friends, including former President Carter, Reagan chief of staff James A. Baker III, veteran broadcaster Walter Cronkite and actor Kirk Douglas. After initially denying that he surreptitiously recorded conversations, he acknowledged the taping and apologized for it as "insensitive and dumb."
Born in Cleveland on Oct. 12, 1917, Wick earned a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Michigan in 1940 and a law degree from what is now Case Western Reserve University in 1943.
