Radio Hurriah

Radio Hurriah is a radio station that was established by the Iraqi National Congress and operated between January 1992 and 1996 from a U.S. government tower in Kuwait and broadcast into Iraq in Arabic for 14 hours daily.

ClandestineRadio.com, a website which monitors underground and anti-government radio stations in countries throughout the world, wrote that Radio Hurriah operated with "a US$4 million grant from the United States government. The INC was organized by the CIA in 1992 and received covert U.S. assistance support until 1996."

In 2004 the Government Accountability Office report into the U.S. Department of State's funding of the Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation (INCSF). The INCSF, it stated, "was established to provide an organizational structure for Department of State funding". Between March 2000 and September 2003, the Department of State provided funds including for "planning for the renewal of Radio Hurriah broadcasts" along with other media propaganda operations. The intention was that the station would broadcast "from inside Iraq and via satellite and the Internet".

The funding program followed the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which was based on the premise that "regime change in Iraq should be the policy of the United States."

"INCSF envisioned radio as a key medium for the dissemination of information to the Iraqi people. It planned to reestablish Radio Hurriah and have a signal receivable in Iraq by early 2001. To expand the area of coverage, INCSF also planned to purchase a high-power transmitter in Iraq. Radio broadcasting was to focus on news, current affairs, and programs dedicated to democracy and human rights," the GAO reported.

However, the plans encountered major hurdles. While the State Department provided $17 million to the INSCF between March 2000 and May 2002,"only limited funding was for Radio Hurriah, largely because an acceptable location for a transmitter could not be found."