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 on Sunday at his Los Angeles home. He was 90. Wick, a close friend and advisor of President Reagan, 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.
