A future of VOA and its sister networks

Letting the inner thoughts become public

Sometimes, one has thoughts about something that shouldn’t be aired publicly because it might give someone else ideas. Hopefully, this is not one of those times.

A recent Politico email opened with an extensive discussion about the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). I had missed (or ignored) that the White House had nominated someone to be the agency’s CEO, though I didn’t miss the administration’s intent to make Kari Lake the Director of Voice of America. I also didn’t miss the announcement of an acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy.¹

Here are my quick thoughts on what could be coming up for USAGM. Insert the usual disclaimer here that these are my own thoughts and I have zero idea whether these are being discussed, have been adopted or rejected, or if whoever has the authority “authority” to make suggest these changes even knows what USAGM is.

First, it is likely that the Voice of America will be moved into the State Department. There are all sorts of complaints—some valid, most not—about VOA’s operations. This would bring the operation closer to the foreign policy. There is precedent for this: it operated under the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from September 1945 through August 1953, when it and most of the department’s international information programs were eagerly ejected from the department. I have not looked into whether this can be done without legislation. Considering the International Broadcasting Act of 1994 and subsequent legislation, including altering the Broadcasting Board of Governors to become the USAGM, I suspect this cannot be done by executive order. However, I believe there is an easy way to work around this: make the USAGM the technical provider and the State Department the content provider.

The criticism that VOA has been too distant from foreign policy is partly the State Department’s fault. There has always been what you can call a carve-out in VOA’s programming to allow the State Department or other agencies to speak directly to foreign audiences through the network. Historically, the department’s use of this channel has been weak and substantially delayed, making the message meaningless, ineffective, or counterproductive. There have been various workaround by other agencies to do what VOA already does well but broken relationships, insular thinking, and poor leadership at VOA, coupled with an incredible lack of interagency awareness of VOA meant duplications of effort.²

Another relevant precedent is the now-obliterated and long-neglected Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP), which suffered under feckless and weak leadership. IIP had a working, efficient, and effective news and information operation. IIP had been the principal operational entity of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and it was the major remnant of USIA despite being ignored or forgotten as such. In a normal world, and that is far from what we have today, I could see the hold up on an actual nominee to this under secretary position be the result of negotiations between the nominee and the administration on this and other aspects of the long-neglected office (it has had an incumbent confirmed to the position only 55% of the time since it was established in 1999).

Second, it is possible that Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) will be consolidated into one organization. In a normal world, I’d rank this as likely, but today, I don’t see logic having a role in the government’s organizational and operational decisions. A plan to do this was finalized in 2011 (no, that’s not a typo). When I was a Governor on the Broadcasting Board of Governors from 2013 to 2017, we gave this serious consideration, and I had hoped we’d get there, but politics, including waged by one of the networks, slowed that effort. There was/is so much wasted duplication of back offices and leadership, and some of these people developed their constituents in Congress to protect their fiefdom to the detriment of the overall mission and effectiveness of the agency.

The networks are so-called “grantees” because they are independent non-profit organizations funded and directed through a grant they receive from USAGM. I’d love to see these consolidated under the RFE/RL banner. The individual network brands would continue as operational units under the expanded RFE/RL.³

Again, in a normal world, I would tag this as “likely” instead of “possible” since this is low-hanging fruit. It just isn’t hard, and it would save substantial money (this is relevant, of course, as all of this is incredibly cheap for the national security value it delivers, considering the cost of weapons systems). However, I suspect influential figures will resist this consolidation for personal reasons.

I haven’t mentioned the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), which I am sure (again, I’m not taking the time to look this up) is established by statute and not easily reconfigured. OCB is like VOA: a federal agency, not a grantee. Altering OCB’s operations has always been difficult. Back when we got rid of OCB’s ineffective, already grounded, and very expensive flying transmitter, there was a lot of disinformation, misinformation, and hand-wringing. Ideally, OCB should be integrated into VOA, and perhaps the same workaround would be available. Moving part of its operation to the consolidated grantee would be difficult because OCB’s employees are federal employees. This depends on Rubio’s view of OCB and willingness to support change.

Third, it is possible that USAGM’s internet freedom program will move to the grantee and the State Department, probably under or perhaps beside the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). Let’s be honest: DRL and USAID were often competitors rather than collaborators in this space. I’ve been in the closed-door hearings and meetings and seen their programs. In one instance, USAID implemented a program in Cuba that interfered with OCB’s pre-existing and highly effective effort by launching its own, which it did as a covert op before abandoning it when the money ran out. The result of that foray damaged OCB’s program with the Cuban public that used it. In the BBG, the program had been split between the government operation and the grantee (run by RFA), and that had substantial problems (though almost entirely due to RFA’s poor management, deceptions, and misuse of funds that I witnessed firsthand, called out, and caused new processes to be implemented to guard against). Dividing these again, which had an operational sensibility then, ignoring RFA’s past games, would not be terrible.

Again, I have no idea if any of this is being considered, is already in motion (I imagine we’d have heard by now if so), or has already been rejected.

Some final thoughts. I foresee concerns that moving VOA into the State Department will give credence to the argument it’s a government “propaganda” station. That’s a fair concern, but I have two counters. The VOA Charter remains, though I have long argued that it was never the actual firewall. The people are the firewall, and the people include the CEO. We, the board of governors I was a part of, created the CEO position to serve at the pleasure of the bipartisan board, not the President, to further this firewall. The VOA Director and USAGM CEO can dramatically affect the output, just as OMB can through the budget process. The second counter is VOA has been able to successfully defend itself against the “propaganda” charge by pointing at its product. Poor leadership over the years has damaged that product, and now the CEO and Director can further damage that regardless of whether it is in State or USAGM.

Lastly, I am not recommending moving VOA into the State Department, nor am I necessarily for breaking up the internet freedom program at USAGM (I haven’t given it much thought because I don’t know enough about its current operations), but I will go on the record that I recommend consolidating the grantees.

Your thoughts?

1. Apparently, someone is either under consideration or still being vetted—this administration does that?—to be nominated for this position. As I’ve noted elsewhere, this suggests that the outsider designated as the acting official couldn’t even pass this Senate, is willing to submit the financial disclosures, or, equally likely, the temporary appointment into a largely ignored post with vastly diminished responsibilities is a reward. The effects of this person on public diplomacy will be detrimental. Based on his past public statements, the negative impact on morale within the State Department, particularly in the public diplomacy area, will be hard to overstate. I won’t be surprised if we see a parade of horribles serving as acting under secretary before we ever see a nominee. In the first Trump administration, the position was filled by someone confirmed to the position for precisely 100 days.

2. I’m primarily referring to the old news sites established under Combatant Commanders’ theater security prerogative, such as the former SETimes dot com, Maghrebia dot com, and others. I worked with the Senate to trial run BBG’s running of these sites, after years earlier trying to get IIP to take these on (IIP’s leadership refused to speak to the Pentagon about it). But I can also reference witnessing a wargame conducted by AFRICOM where they created their own radio station in the wargame, unaware VOA was already established in the region the wargame was taking place and was already the (not “a”) dominant source of news to the region.

3. It’s worth noting that after 9/11, the Broadcasting Board of Governors could not get VOA to “fix” its Arabic service. That’s the story, but I don’t know how hard they tried, what they did beforehand, or how “broken” the service was. The chairman of the board, I’ve been told by people who were there, asked RFE/RL if they’d take it. RFE/RL said no. So, MBN was created. I’m sure that narrative is oversimplified, but the result was still crap, especially if you are aware of the self-inflicted wounds from the crash effort to build something from scratch.