Biden Administration Moves to Protect Voice of America Boss before Election

T he Biden administration is quietly moving to protect the heads of Voice of America and other U.S.-funded global news services from what it terms “political pressure” ahead of the 2024 election, National Review has learned.

It’s a change that could make it more difficult for Donald Trump to overhaul the controversial agency, whose outlets have an audience in the hundreds of millions worldwide, during a potential second term.

While VOA’s official mandate is to produce objective news that represents a comprehensive cross-section of American thought, the outlet has been dogged by a series of controversies over the years, as critics across the political spectrum have accused it of making journalistic and management missteps.

Officials revealed their plan to insulate the leadership of VOA from future shakeups during an all-hands meeting with staff from the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other U.S.-funded global broadcasters. They announced that the heads of those outlets — who have been chosen by the agency’s politically appointed CEO for decades — would instead become civil-service posts.

That change follows the enactment of a 2020 law that created a new International Broadcasting Advisory Board, which can vote to approve such personnel decisions.

“The intention here and the purpose is to ensure that these positions are a) insulated from political pressure, and b) ultimately are not subject just to the removal or appointment by one single political person, but rather by a bipartisan board who will look at a number of factors and work, as boards are wont to do, together to make sure that the rules are followed with respect to naming and removing network heads,” David Kligerman, USAGM’s general counsel, said during the March 7 meeting, the audio of which was obtained by NR.

Kligerman also said that there’s nothing that would prevent the USAGM CEO from moving against an outlet director, but that the new process requires board agreement to do so.

USAGM chief management officer David Kotz said that the next VOA director would be hired within “the next couple of months.” VOA’s current director, John Lippman, is serving in an acting capacity.

As a civil servant with senior-executive-service (SES) status, a future VOA director without prior SES status selected before November would enjoy a year-long probationary period stretching into a hypothetical second Trump administration in which it would be more difficult to remove him from the job, said Daniel Robinson, a former White House correspondent for VOA. While Robinson had initially said that it would be impossible to remove a VOA director under this probationary period, after publication, he clarified that in fact, it would still be possible, but more difficult, to terminate someone after the probationary period had ended.

He added that during that year-long period, this person could continue to make hiring decisions.

“If the VOA director is relocated/reassigned within the agency, he/she can become in essence part of the embedded opposition to a new Trump-appointed CEO,” Robinson, a longtime advocate for reform of VOA and other U.S.-funded outlets, said in an email. He linked the move to intense political fights that occurred within the agency under the Trump administration.

After the Senate confirmed his nomination to the post in 2020, then-USAGM CEO Michael Pack fired the heads of outlets under his control, triggering massive internal pushback from their staffs and numerous legal battles. Upon taking office in 2021, President Biden fired Pack and subsequently nominated Amanda Bennett, who had resigned from the VOA director’s post days ahead of Pack’s arrival at the agency, to be USAGM’s CEO.

“As we saw with Pack, who faced a rebellion by VOA federal employees and managers, the new CEO would essentially be paralyzed by this as well as by any opposition from the new IBAB board,” Robinson said.

A USAGM spokesperson defended the change, saying that there’s no legal requirement that the VOA director post be politically appointed.

“A VOA director may be a career or non-career appointee. Nothing in the International Broadcasting Act or other law requires that a VOA director must be a non-career appointee. By posting the VOA director job on USAJobs and through other job search services, the agency desired to attract the broadest pool of candidates possible,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson confirmed that USAGM is currently evaluating applications for the role and that Bennett will present candidates to the board for a vote.

While Trump has not said how he would handle USAGM during a potential second term, the little-known-but-influential agency could become a flashpoint.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 initiative — an effort to lay the groundwork for a future conservative presidency that operates independently of the Trump campaign — describes USAGM’s current performance as “lacking.”

“To fulfill its mission, USAGM should also aim to present the truth about America and American policy — not parrot American adversaries’ propaganda and talking points,” the Project 2025 policy-playbook document states.

VOA’s coverage of the war in Gaza has come under heightened scrutiny from members of Congress, who are concerned that the outlet’s leadership initially directed staff not to refer directly to Hamas members as “terrorists.” In an appropriations measure enacted last month that sets the agency’s budget for this fiscal year, Congress cut USAGM’s annual budget by $16 million.

In an email to VOA staff this month, Lippman said that his team is “looking to find cuts in areas that are not central to our mission.”