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Michael_Novakhov shared this story . |
OPINION:
Few things could be more embarrassing for the U.S. government than having to ask Poland to release from prison, a former Voice of America (VOA) freelance reporter, Pablo Rubtsov González, an alleged Russian spy.
In February 2022, the Polish security service arrested this dual Russian-Spanish citizen working as a journalist for VOA and other media outlets and accused him of spying for Russia – charges he still denies.
After lengthy detention, he was traded with other Russians to secure the release of a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) American journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, and other Westerners imprisoned in Russia on made-up charges and held as hostages by the Russians for precisely this kind of exchange: Russian spies caught in the West for innocent Westerners seized by Russian spy agencies.
VOA and RFE/RL are both under the management oversight of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, now run by Amanda Bennett, who was appointed CEO by President Biden. She previously served as VOA Director selected during the Obama administration. Her job is to protect the agency from foreign influence and keep its employees safe. Mr. Rubtsov González should have never been contracted by VOA, and RFE/RL journalists should have stayed out of Russia. It’s hard to imagine how this debacle could have been allowed to happen. My theory is that partisan hatred was the primary cause.
USAGM bureaucrats and many VOA managers, editors, and reporters hated President Donald Trump with great passion. One senior editor praised and promoted under Amanda Bennett called Trump “f— Cheeto with hair” on his private Facebook page listing his VOA affiliation.
They also hated Michael Pack, who served briefly in 2020-2021 as a Trump-appointed USAGM CEO.
Fearful that Mr. Pack would expose their failure to protect the security of the Voice of America, they focused all their attention on efforts to discredit him. They were more afraid of him than of Mr. Putin and more interested in using VOA to defeat Mr. Trump in 2020 than to support democracy and human rights in Russia or any other foreign country.
Mr. Pack warned that the Voice of America was hiring questionable journalists, but he had to be wrong because he was a conservative Trump appointee. Voice of America editors were so bent on proving Mr. Rubtsov González’s innocence that they failed to notice and mention in several news reports about his detention that his lawyer, whom they frequently quoted, also represented Edward Snowden and separatist nationalists in Spain supported by Russian intelligence services.
Last week, the same group of partisan VOA managers and editors made yet another astonishing move. Without allowing the new Voice of America Director, Michael Abramowitz, to be fully briefed and review Mr. Rubtsov González’s news reports for VOA, they declared them “journalistically sound and balanced.”
In making their mind-boggling statement after Vladimir Putin warmly greeted their former freelance reporter in Moscow, they embarrassed themselves and their new boss, who came to VOA with an impressive record at Freedom House and the Holocaust Museum.
As they were defending the soundness of Mr. Rubtsov Gonzalez’s reporting, independent Russian, Polish, and other European investigative media outlets were presenting new allegations that the VOA freelancer spied on Russian dissident journalists living in exile and expressed support for Putin’s imperial ambitions. Polish media reports suggest that he may have duped his partner, a Polish woman journalist, to assist him in his alleged spying activities. Even though the Polish government released him in the prisoner swap, prosecutors in Warsaw have now formally charged him with spying for Russia.
I had only a few conversations with Michael Pack, whose critics at USAGM and VOA portrayed as a right-wing radical bent on turning the agency into Mr. Trump’s propaganda outlet. He never said a word to me about what should go into RFE/RL programs. The critics also distorted my political background and long experience as a journalist and manager promoted and given multiple awards by Democrats and Republicans in charge of VOA and the agency. I have been registered as an independent voter, which did not bother Mr. Pack, and he approved my plan to hire a prominent anti-Putin Russia expert, who happened to be a Democrat.
I sought an opportunity to publicize this information because the attacks on whom I saw as decent and honorable were undeserved and horribly vicious. In volunteering to take the RFE/RL job, I hoped that even in a brief period, I could initiate steps to protect its journalists by removing them from Mr. Putin’s Russia to neighboring NATO countries and perhaps negotiate the release of a contributor to Radio Liberty programs arrested by the Lukashenko regime in Belarus. I immediately consulted with the State Department and contacted Polish diplomats with experience in Belarus. They were not optimistic, but the Poles said they would try to help. However, the Biden administration did not want me to remain in my job at RFE/RL.
Had I stayed, I would have continued to work for the release of imprisoned reporters and warned others in no uncertain terms not to travel to Russia as long as Vladimir Putin or his allies are in power. I would have also tried to get all of the RFE/RL staff from Afghanistan, which the current USAGM leadership left stranded in great danger when the Taliban captured Kabul. Seeing how his reporting endorsed Vladimir Putin’s empire-building, I would have tried to prevent the Voice of America from hiring Pablo Rubtsov González.
It is disturbing that VOA newsroom editors and reporters have shown much greater willingness to listen and repeat Russia-inspired propaganda about their freelancer than to believe the governments in Poland and Ukraine or independent Russian journalists in exile opposed to Mr. Putin. Knowing that subsequently, some VOA editors and reporters refused to call Hamas “terrorists,” and one posted “death to Israel” memes, I would not be surprised if Pack’s Jewish background also clouded their minds. My advice to them is that they should leave the worrying about who will be the next U.S. president to the American voters and follow the VOA Charter mandate of accurate, balanced, and nonpartisan news reporting.
• Ted Lipien was chief of Voice of America’s Polish Service during Poland’s successful struggle for democracy. He later served as VOA’s acting associate director and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty president.