Whistleblower Investigation Into USAGM Reveals Unchecked Dysfunction and Misconduct

The United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) formerly, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), is a US government agency with just under a 1-billion-dollar budget which overseas two government broadcasting networks: namely the Voice of America (VOA) and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB). USAGM also oversees the funding of 100% of the grant funding for several “independent” grantee organizations which include the Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and the newly formed Open Technology Fund (OTF).

USGAM, which oversees the operations of the U.S. Government’s official broadcasting networks, was once characterized to former USAGM Vice President for Strategy, Operations & Research and WHIPP Executive Director Frank Wuco as, “Pound for pound, the most corrupt agency in all of Washington DC.” This characterization was made by a senior career USAGM whistleblower and was, and remains, disturbingly accurate.

We at WHIPP have created a safe place where Whistleblowers have the ability to shine a light on the issues that require accountability for this U.S. taxpayer-funded agency.  Below you will find details of disclosures by Whistleblowers that the public has a right to know about and a link for more Whistleblowers to come forward.

While many of these issues have been buried for years, upon the entry of new senior leadership in July of 2020 under the Trump Administration, dozens of Whistleblowers from within the agency and its affiliated networks came forward with reports of security failures, malfeasance, corruption, and appearances of common graft. These issues were immediately placed under investigation. The number of non-partisan and credible Whistleblowers that began coming forward was overwhelming.

As noted by many whistleblowers, despite the fact that none of these whistleblower-flagged issues were partisan or political in nature, but were of public and national interest to all of the American public, when the Biden Administration came in only 7 months later, these investigations were buried and corruption was brought back to the agency. Things quickly went back to the way they had been; an agency run with brazen license, with little oversight or judgement of propriety or stewardship of the public charge and taxpayer money.

These issues still persist, including but not limited to:

  • Security Failures:
    • Investigation found Whistleblowers were correct, as shown on Pages 26-28 of Congressionally released USAGM documents, “SECURITY ISSUES.”
      • Whistleblowers corroborated the severe security failures flagged by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI) with personnel and former agency leadership ignoring these issues and willfully allowing them to persist.

 

  • Over a 10-year period and four separate investigations, each, by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), USAGM was found to have grossly ignored and flouted many of the Federal Government’s most long-standing, important, and established information and personnel security protocols, regulations, and practices. Over the ten-year investigative period, the findings which were largely ignored by agency senior leadership, the following damages and results of countless practices dangerous to national security had already occurred:
  • Over 1,500 USAGM personnel, nearly 40% of its total workforce were performing their jobs, all classified as Tier 3 and Tier 5 National Security Sensitive positions, with falsified and/or unauthorized suitability-for-employment determinations and access to sensitive Federal buildings and information systems. In many cases records, to include social security numbers, were falsified or replaced with notional placeholders, and fingerprints (in many dozens of cases) were never submitted to the FBI for basic background investigations. By the time the issues were addressed by members of the Trump Administration, over 500 of the personnel with unauthorized access and clearances had left USAGM and either rolled into other Federal agencies with reciprocal clearance authorizations. Many others disappeared into U.S. society. As of January, 2021, USAGM had not yet determined the whereabouts of these individuals.

 

  • Whistleblowers noted that the safety of American journalists both on and off American soil were in danger and their superiors did little to protect them. Whistleblowers and newly appointed political officials found that actions to protect endangered American and foreign national journalists employed by USAGM’s networks and grantee organizations was abysmal and minimally caring.

    Against often significant resistance, political appointees had to force action to enable broadcasters under verified threats to their lives to broadcast from remote locations while they were being protected by Federal Law Enforcement Officers. Likewise, political leadership met resistance from comfortable senior career officials when insisting that foreign based journalists in high-risk countries make their locations known in the event they required rescue, extraction, or safe-housing. Such safety measures, argued senior agency career officials would somehow represent a violation of journalistic independence. Resistance, even to the most basic insistence on safety-of-life by the political team, seemed to be the overarching priority of senior career agency officials, with only rare exceptions.

 

  • Due to these Whistleblower accounts and the reports by OPM and ODNI, a full scale investigation was launched with independent law firm McGuire-Woods.

 

  • Congress recently released the full contents of the McGuire-Woods Investigation Report (begins Page 19 of document at link), which revealed that several former senior leaders at the agency had been willfully allowing these security failures to persist at the agency for over a decade. These reports detail the cause for dismissal of several employees including, but not limited to:
    • David Kligerman
      • Investigation found Whistleblowers were correct. (Pages 78-131 of the McGuire-Woods investigation released recently by the U.S. House demonstrate and linked here back whistleblower allegations of systemic malfeasance by Mr. Kligerman and his colleagues)
      • Kligerman was the General Counsel of USAGM and resigned from his position during the middle of the investigation as he feared he would be dismissed. Despite the damning content of Congressionally–released documents containing the McGuire-Woods Investigative Report, Kligerman was rehired during the start of the Biden administration by his friend Kelu Chao, and treated to wholly biased and unbalanced sympathetic reporting by his close friends elsewhere in public media, such as National Public Radio’s David Folkenflik, whose boss is former USAGM CEO John Lansing. Lansing also failed to address long-standing practices dangerous to national security revealed by four investigations spanning a 10-year period at USAGM.
      • Despite these reports being released showing the complete inaccuracy of the Washington Post and NPR accounts, these two faithful surrogates of Washington DC’s entrenched left-wing permanent bureaucracy have not retracted the false stories of Kligerman being “cleared.” What Kligerman did, he did, as the McGuire-Woods Investigation Report shows clearly on Pages 78- 131 on the linked Congressionally-released document).
    • Grant Turner
      • Investigation found Whistleblowers were correct, as clearly demonstrated on Pages 132-157 of the Congressionally-released documents containing the McGuire-Woods Investigation Report.
      • Turner was former CFO, was fired following his gross performance failures as exposed in the McGuire-Woods report and despite the damning McGuire-Woods Investigative Report, recently released by Congress, was immediately rehired by his friend Kelu Chao during the start of the Biden administration.
      • Whistleblowers came forward and accurately pointed out that Amanda Bennet, former head of VOA, who was implicated in the J-1 Visa abuse and security issues, had every motivation to help Kligerman, Turner, Shawn Powers (below), and others and to influence the placement of stories in the Washington Post (which, uncoincidentally, was owned by her husband Donald Graham until 2013) in order to obfuscate and distract from her own failures, which read as superb triumphs in documents to support budget requests from the U.S. Congress as late as 2020. In reality, the network was Gordion Knot of waste, graft, security failures, and reporting agendas that rivaled the most anti-American journalistic venues on the globe, with Turner proudly overseeing the budget for all of it.
    • Shawn Powers
    • Marie Lennon
    • Matt Walsh
    • Amanda Bennet
      • Whistleblowers came forward and accurately pointed out that Amanda Bennet, former head of VOA, who was implicated in the J-1 Visa and the security issue, had every motivation to help Kligerman, Turner, Powers, and others place stories in the Washington Post (which her husband owned until recently) in order to cover her own failures.
    • John Lansing
      • Whistleblowers also noted that the other publication which heavily ran false stories both attacking Trump officials and attempting to cover up the failures was National Public Radio (NPR). NPR is currently run by John Lansing and the network’s online news service became storied for its ugly and highly personal attacks against Trump appointees assigned to USAGM, written by the grossly biased reporter, David Folkenflik. The obfuscating and irrelevant attacks on USAGM by NPR served Lansing and his former colleagues at USAGM well. Lansing was the former head of USAGM and was directly responsible for allowing the security failures to persist in a manner unsuitable for the leader of a U.S. Government agency. Under Lansing’s leadership, ODNI revoked USAGM’s delegated authority to process and adjudicate security clearances; a first for ODNI. In the aftermath of the revocation, and under Lansing’s leadership, USAGM continued adjudicating clearances, willfully ignoring lawful directives from the DNI.
    • Improper employment practices:

 

  • Corruption at OTF and Detriment to Internet Freedom Projects
    • A reading of the summary found on Pages 16-19 of document release by Congress “USAGM Internet Freedom Summary.”
    • Whistleblowers came forward and claimed OTF was actually harming internet freedom projects because OTF’s lackluster performance in combatting the “firewalls” of China, Iran and Russia was due to OTF’s rigid selection of technology organizations that use only open-source technology which is easily hackable by foreign adversaries. Rather than funding a variety of open and closed source technology that had a much higher probability of effectively surpassing firewalls, OTF lobbied to hoard all the funding for widely ineffective pet projects that were already receiving duplicative funding from other government agencies.
      • Whistleblowers also came forward with information that OTF was improperly formed and usurped the function of a government office – The Office of Internet Freedom, Instead of consolidating unaccountable grantee organizations, USAGM created more bloat with no meaningful visibility into what this organization is spending millions of tax payer funded money on. In fact, OIG investigations showed “noncompliance with Office of Management and Budget conflict-of-interest requirements”.
    • Ignoring the Congressionally mandated mission of the Agency and creating anti-American propaganda.
      • As shown in the USAGM “Journalistic Independence Summary” (Page 23 of the Congressionally release documents), Whistleblowers were correct.
      • Whistleblowers came forward and flagged the establishment and maintenance of a new Hungarian language service at the request of George Soror backed lobbyists which directly undermines former East Bloc European nations and allies in defiance and direct contrast to VOA’s stated mission.
      • Whistleblowers came forward with information about support to and maintenance of language services that are seen as easy on governments that are openly hostile and adversarial to the United States, to include Iran and China, and others.