VOA’s Russian influence crisis calls for congressional intervention

Pablo González, a Spanish-Russian freelance journalist, is in a Polish prison, under investigation for spying for Russia. This would be unremarkable, except that Gonzalez had done news reporting work, including providing video from Ukraine, for Voice of America (VOA), the U.S. government’s overseas news outlet.

The same lawyer who defended Edward Snowden has now taken González’s case. It is difficult to imagine how this could get worse or be more embarrassing to the federal agency that oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and other news outlets established by the United States during World War II and the Cold War to support freedom, democracy and the free press abroad. 

When I worked at VOA, we reported on the Solidarity trade union activists jailed in communist-ruled Poland and Soviet dissidents kept in forced labor camps in Siberia. Our efforts helped to win the Cold War. 

Today, VOA finds itself defending one of its freelance video news producers who, according to an independent Russian news outlet, allegedly spied on anti-Putin, pro-democracy opposition leaders and journalists. Although González denies the charges, VOA management’s handling of the situation — and indeed, the very idea that a VOA journalist would be accused of such a thing — strikes a sharp contrast with the Voice of America I remember from the 1980s.

González, who carries both Spanish and Russian passports, is also known under his Russian name Pavel Rubtsov. When he was arrested in February 2022 on suspicion of espionage, VOA did not immediately acknowledge that he was their freelancer. And when presented with evidence, VOA editors immediately made his expulsion from Ukraine and arrest in Poland a “press freedom” issue. 

In their response to an editorial crisis of their own making, VOA editors have taken two seemingly contradictory actions. They placed González and his arrest in Poland in the same “PRESS FREEDOM” category as the recent arrest in Russia of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gerschkovich on what independent experts see as transparently bogus espionage charges.

At the same time, while presenting González as a victim of persecution by Ukraine and Poland, VOA executives and editors repeatedly tried to obscure the nature of his work for their organization. 

VOA reports claim that he merely “provided some camerawork.” In fact, the VOA website showed seven video news reports in 2020-2021 “produced by Pablo González,” some attributed only to him, others co-authored and one video from Ukraine in February 2022. After his arrest, the management removed seven of his video news reports from VOA websites and social media pages to conduct an internal review. It never made the findings of that review public.

More than a year later,  new allegations have emerged that the Russian military intelligence GRU may have employed the future VOA freelancer to spy on Russian journalists and activists living in exile.

According to an independent news website, Agentstvo, González is suspected of informing on a Russian journalist, Zhanna Nemtsova, formerly with the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. A highly-respected human rights defender, Nemtsova is the daughter of the assassinated anti-Putin Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

A VOA report about these new allegations included vehement denials from González’s supporters but did not identify Nemtsova, the alleged target of spying, specifically as a journalist. 

But the mess gets even stranger from there. González’s lawyer, often quoted defending his client but not further identified in VOA reports, is reportedly Gonzalo Boye, known for his conviction in Spain in connection with a 1996 kidnapping by the Basque Marxist-Leninist separatist group ETA.

Boye maintained his innocence in the kidnapping case and other ETA activities. He is also known for attempting to charge George W. Bush administration officials with war crimes under the Spanish legal system.  

In 2014, Boye, who studied law remotely while serving his prison sentence, joined the defense team of the American leaker of U.S. government secrets, Edward Snowden, after U.S. federal prosecutors charged him with theft of government property and violations of the Espionage Act. Snowden praised Boye in one of his tweets.

I realize that lawyers have clients who are not saints, and everybody deserves a legal defense. But I have not found any reports showing that the VOA freelancer’s lawyer has tried to charge Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine or defended Russian dissidents imprisoned by Putin’s regime. 

The VOA freelancer arrested in Poland also deserves the presumption of innocence. Perhaps everyone who suspects him of espionage is just supremely incompetent. But if VOA and USAGM senior executives knew what they were doing, they would have never found themselves in a situation where they must choose whether to defend their contract reporter or believe what Ukraine, Poland, and an independent Russian press outlet, opposed to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, are saying about him. 

Acting VOA director Yolanda López, the program managers and editors who used his Russia-related news reports, and the senior leadership of USAGM, led by CEO and former VOA director Amanda Bennett and her deputy Kelu Chao, need to explain why Pablo González was selected to be a Voice of America freelancer, and whom else they may have employed without checking their backgrounds and previous work? They also need to explain what was in his reports that they now don’t want anybody to see.

This is one of many cases in which USAGM’s pre-employment checks apparently failed or were simply not conducted. Another Spanish reporter who openly bragged about his earlier reporting in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine for Putin’s RT propaganda channel was also employed by VOA under the watch of the current executives. The Washington Post reported earlier this year that the VOA Russian Service had hired two Russian journalists who had worked for Putin’s state media.

USAGM management cannot claim ignorance. In March 2019, I warned Bennett that VOA had hired Russian journalists who had produced anti-U.S. propaganda.

This is possibly the worst possible time to have a management crisis at the USAGM, just as Putin is waging his unrelenting propaganda war against the U.S. and his murderous hot war against Ukraine. And these management failures threaten the work and reputation of many excellent VOA broadcasters.

I can’t predict what else could go wrong at USAGM. But this crisis-prone U.S. government-media conglomerate desperately needs Congress to intervene with bipartisan personnel and management reforms.

Ted Lipien is a journalist, writer and media freedom advocate. He was Voice of America’s Polish service chief during Poland’s struggle for democracy and VOA’s acting associate director. He served briefly in 2020-2021 as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.