Abbott McConnell Washburn, 88, a former public relations official who became deputy director of the U.S. Information Agency and a Federal Communications Commission member, died Dec. 11 at the Washington Home hospice after a stroke. He was a Washington resident.

As an FCC commissioner from 1974 to 1982, he advocated creating bandwidth for cellular telephone development and more educational programming on television. He also contributed to an opinion about what constituted indecent or obscene material for broadcast outlets.

The last was the basis for the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, which found that the government could punish speech deemed indecent. In the high court case, the FCC was able to penalize a daytime radio broadcast of comedian George Carlin's "seven dirty words" monologue.

Mr. Washburn was a native of Duluth, Minn., and a 1937 cum laude graduate of Harvard University. He served in the Navy during World War II and was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services in Europe.

He was head of public relations for General Mills Inc. in Minneapolis and then executive vice chairman of Crusade for Freedom, which raised money for Radio Free Europe. He also did presidential campaign work for Dwight D. Eisenhower.

He was deputy director of the USIA from 1953 to 1961, acting as liaison between the broadcast agency and the White House and National Security Council during a peak period of the Cold War. He helped oversee the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959 and received the USIA distinguished service award in 1960.

From 1962 to 1968, he co-owned a public relations firm, Washburn, Stringer Associates Inc. in Washington.

In 1968, he was public relations director for Citizens for Nixon. He spent the next three years as chairman with rank of ambassador of the U.S. delegation to a conference on the global satellite communications system (Intelsat). In the early 1980s, he was chairman with the rank of ambassador to a conference about access to satellites for worldwide radio transmissions.

His board memberships included the Eisenhower Institute in Washington.

He was a former president of People-to-People Inc., a private, nonprofit organization that encourages personal exchanges between U.S. citizens and others.

His marriage to Mary Brennan Washburn ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 40 years, Wanda Allender Washburn of Washington; two sons from his first marriage, Abbott Michael Washburn of New York and Daniel N. Washburn of Gaithersburg; a daughter from his second marriage, Julia Washburn of Takoma Park; and four grandchildren.

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