Don, the reality is worse than the book indicates. As noted in the acknowledgements of the book (and citations), I spoke with Kate, as did you. However, there are statements, some relevant to your post, that are misleading or inaccurate in the book. My comments below focus on Section 2.5 "Transferring Authority to a Single Appointee". If the facts had been accurately conveyed, Don, your argument and concern would be amplified.
Let's look at this paragraph, for example:
"However, the nature of the appointment of the CEO, as well as the authority the CEO was able to wield, was radically changed by a last-minute amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (2017). This amendment was introduced by the Republican Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce (R-CA) in what appeared to be some last-minute political horse-trading (personal correspondence with M. Armstrong 2023). The amendment made the CEO a political appointee, nominated by the president and confirmed by Senate. It also transferred all the authority previously exercised by the bipartisan BBG to the CEO. Thus, a last-minute amendment to a law passed in the last month of the Obama administration transformed the governance of US-funded international media. (p.51)
"This was not a "last-minute" amendment. It had been in discussion for months, no one cared. As for the Governors of the BBG, like me, the then-current CEO and his staff lied and hid information about the amendment as they operated in a way that was directly contrary to our instructions regarding the well known attempt by the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Royce, to pass something in his last year as chair. The CEO mislead Senate staff who otherwise would have ejected the Royce amendment from the House version of the NDAA in the conference review. State was also told information that was contrary to the facts regarding the Board's official position regarding the legislation, a communication enabled by State's representative to the Board."
What actually happened was not merely "horse-trading." The Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) wanted to do something –– anything –– to dramatically alter the agency. I'll get to the 2014 attempt the authors also sanitize in a moment. The Chair of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) had an amendment to provide legislative authority for the Global Engagement Center, which then existed by Executive Order. (There were some that were concerned a possible Trump administration would abolish GEC and besides the statutory authority, GEC's stated mission was expanded to include Russia.) The horse-trade was Royce threatening to block Thornberry's GEC amendment as not germane (i.e., HASC putting forth a State Department-related bill when that's the domain of HFAC) if Thornberry, the Chair of HASC, didn't allow the BBG amendment. Thornberry acquiesced sicne he (reasonably) expected the BBG amendment would be stripped out by the Senate.
The BBG amendment to abolish the board and invest all of the board's authority into political CEO appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate was kept by the Senate through lies. This amounted to a coup. The CEO at the time, short-sighted as he was, intended to remove oversight and accountability. Presumably because he felt he could do a better job without the meddling.
Royce's bill, at least the broad outlines, were well known before the summer break. It came together during the summer break and in the start of the autumn. Despite clear instructions from the Board that the CEO and his staff were to oppose the bill, the CEO and his staff told the Senate the opposite. State's representative on the board also told State the board supported the Royce bill. The result was the amendment was not stripped out by the Senate and thus was in both versions when the NDAA went to conference.
The board was notified, to stretch the word, after the last minute. In materials the CEO and his staff provided to the board the morning of what would be our last meeting, there was a buried statement: "we have the latest on the proposed BBG amendment" (or words to that effect, I'd have to look it up). The text of the amendment was buried in an attachment. In hindsight, Royce's bill reflected what he could achieve with inside help of the CEO and a board member I haven't mentioned and the State Dept rep, who likely came helped because of the board member, who also wanted a "legacy."
I could go on, but that's a long enough comment. The reality was much worse than the book indicates. Too often, unfortunately, the book repeats statements without challenge or context. Statements on "propaganda" are some. (Sager's work, specifically his paper "Apple Pie Propaganda," is deplorable, which I've written about elsewhere.) For another example, they wrote "Pack has claimed that this delay was an attempt to 'block Trump from assuming authority of the agency.'" (p55) That's some revisionism. The incompetent Trump White House didn't push his packet to the Senate, not to mention Pack's own delay because of another project he wanted to complete during the delay.
I should add comments about Royce's 2014 attempt to private much of BBG, which the authors characterize incorrectly.
Returning to 2014, we can see Royce was desparate for anything to change BBG as a legacy. The so-called Royce-Engel bill of 2014 was something you would probably have had a field day with considering your focus on governance. It was a nearly a nearly criminal effort to privatize BBG's operations to profit Royce's supporters and others. I'm amazed "Freedom News Network" didn't appear in the book's review of the 2014. Instead, the book has a wholly detached from reality sterilized view from afar description. One of the main sponsors of this 2014 effort was a Royce fundraiser, and he had bought that domain before the bill became public. Another major proponent was the Prague Freedom Foundation and its sister organization L88. (Inexplicably, the BBG, prior to my going onto the board, had sold the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague to L88 and then subsequently rented it back from L88.) PFF had quite the high profile in DC, before it disappeared almost overnight. L88, it was learned, was pocketing RFE/RL's tax payments to the Czech government rather than forwarding the payments the Czech treasury. L88 also stole many millions (in USD) from RFE/RL's accounts that were to be used for renovations of the building, failed to pay contractors, failed to do minimal maintenance, among other problems. And, L88 attempted to take over various infrastructure and similar services through heavy handed tactics to increase RFE/RL's payments to L88. As a result, RFE/RL was slow to make the switch to video, either at standard definition or high definition, after Russia invaded Ukraine because the funds to build out the television studio were pilfered by L88. I can go on with this, but I'll leave you with one last item regarding PFF/L88 in Prague. The head of PFF/L88 had contracted with a Prague architect to spec a hotel to be built on a part of the RFE/RL headquarters property, which, apparently, L88 was going to subdivide. That architect was also not paid. It seemed, based on the timing, the scam bet on Royce passing the Freedom News Network bill, which would have privatized the "grantees" (RFE/RL, RFA, and MBN) and placed control of FNN into PFF/L88's hands. The head of PFF/L88 had declared in several forums before the death of the 2014 "bipartisan" bill that the grantees were already his. And, no, that bill did not pass the House as the book incorrectly claims.
And then there's the misrepresentation of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, which I helped cause and helped write. It was not "designed to address the impossibility" of accessing USAGM content as the authors state. It had to fundament purposes: to explicitly tell the Defense Department that no, Title 22 legislation that specifically names State, USIA, and BBG does not apply to the DOD; and to remove some of the prohibitions on oversight and reuse by Americans imposed by Senator Fulbright in 1972 and further tightened by Senator Zorinsky in 1985. That's not as relevant to your post.
I should note here that the board was dysfunctional, but that dysfunction was primiarly the result of successive Presidents failing to appoint replacement governors. The design of the board was based on the three-year terms of governors. Governors could be reappointed, but ultimately served until replaced or they quit. One chairman of the board – during the Obama administration – quit suddenly without notice. As we learned later, this was to write a biography subsequently read by many. The replacement chairman served in that role begrudgingly. The president promised the chair would only be in that role a short time and be replaced. However, he ultimately ghosted by the White House and then later quit out of frustration since he never had the time or interest to be chairman. I should also note the chair the quit to write a book decided the best way for the governors to operate was that each one took on a network. This pit governors against each other, rather than having them work together. In my first budget meeting as governor, I witnessed the result first hand: networks operated independently and viewed the budget as a zero-sum game. The networks were not parts of a whole, but independent pieces chaffing against the other. Strategy was an unknown word. These weren't an "illogical patchwork" of media organizations, this was the result of leadership defects. The very creation of MBN is one such story. After 9/11, the BBG Chair asked RFE/RL if they'd take on Arabic. They said no. The BBG Chair then ripped VOA's Arabic service out and created a new network, the Middle East Broadcast Network (MBN). These are leadership issues amplified by a poor structure.
At the time the second Royce (it wasn't really the second, more like the third, but let's keep this simple) effort to remake the BBG in anyway he could, we, the board, were looking into different board structures. The CEO dragged his feet on the analysis and inquires we instructed him to make. We learned why. We were looking at the Millenium Challenge Corporation as a likely model since president's had proven they had no interest in making the necessary frequent appointments to the board. We insisted that there needed to be a board because that was the true protection against politicizing, or capturing, the agency by the White House, regardless of who was in office, but the current structure wasn't working.
Don, the reality is worse than the book indicates. As noted in the acknowledgements of the book (and citations), I spoke with Kate, as did you. However, there are statements, some relevant to your post, that are misleading or inaccurate in the book. My comments below focus on Section 2.5 "Transferring Authority to a Single Appointee". If the facts had been accurately conveyed, Don, your argument and concern would be amplified.
Let's look at this paragraph, for example:
"However, the nature of the appointment of the CEO, as well as the authority the CEO was able to wield, was radically changed by a last-minute amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (2017). This amendment was introduced by the Republican Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce (R-CA) in what appeared to be some last-minute political horse-trading (personal correspondence with M. Armstrong 2023). The amendment made the CEO a political appointee, nominated by the president and confirmed by Senate. It also transferred all the authority previously exercised by the bipartisan BBG to the CEO. Thus, a last-minute amendment to a law passed in the last month of the Obama administration transformed the governance of US-funded international media. (p.51)
"This was not a "last-minute" amendment. It had been in discussion for months, no one cared. As for the Governors of the BBG, like me, the then-current CEO and his staff lied and hid information about the amendment as they operated in a way that was directly contrary to our instructions regarding the well known attempt by the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Royce, to pass something in his last year as chair. The CEO mislead Senate staff who otherwise would have ejected the Royce amendment from the House version of the NDAA in the conference review. State was also told information that was contrary to the facts regarding the Board's official position regarding the legislation, a communication enabled by State's representative to the Board."
What actually happened was not merely "horse-trading." The Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) wanted to do something –– anything –– to dramatically alter the agency. I'll get to the 2014 attempt the authors also sanitize in a moment. The Chair of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) had an amendment to provide legislative authority for the Global Engagement Center, which then existed by Executive Order. (There were some that were concerned a possible Trump administration would abolish GEC and besides the statutory authority, GEC's stated mission was expanded to include Russia.) The horse-trade was Royce threatening to block Thornberry's GEC amendment as not germane (i.e., HASC putting forth a State Department-related bill when that's the domain of HFAC) if Thornberry, the Chair of HASC, didn't allow the BBG amendment. Thornberry acquiesced sicne he (reasonably) expected the BBG amendment would be stripped out by the Senate.
The BBG amendment to abolish the board and invest all of the board's authority into political CEO appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate was kept by the Senate through lies. This amounted to a coup. The CEO at the time, short-sighted as he was, intended to remove oversight and accountability. Presumably because he felt he could do a better job without the meddling.
Royce's bill, at least the broad outlines, were well known before the summer break. It came together during the summer break and in the start of the autumn. Despite clear instructions from the Board that the CEO and his staff were to oppose the bill, the CEO and his staff told the Senate the opposite. State's representative on the board also told State the board supported the Royce bill. The result was the amendment was not stripped out by the Senate and thus was in both versions when the NDAA went to conference.
The board was notified, to stretch the word, after the last minute. In materials the CEO and his staff provided to the board the morning of what would be our last meeting, there was a buried statement: "we have the latest on the proposed BBG amendment" (or words to that effect, I'd have to look it up). The text of the amendment was buried in an attachment. In hindsight, Royce's bill reflected what he could achieve with inside help of the CEO and a board member I haven't mentioned and the State Dept rep, who likely came helped because of the board member, who also wanted a "legacy."
I could go on, but that's a long enough comment. The reality was much worse than the book indicates. Too often, unfortunately, the book repeats statements without challenge or context. Statements on "propaganda" are some. (Sager's work, specifically his paper "Apple Pie Propaganda," is deplorable, which I've written about elsewhere.) For another example, they wrote "Pack has claimed that this delay was an attempt to 'block Trump from assuming authority of the agency.'" (p55) That's some revisionism. The incompetent Trump White House didn't push his packet to the Senate, not to mention Pack's own delay because of another project he wanted to complete during the delay.
I should add comments about Royce's 2014 attempt to private much of BBG, which the authors characterize incorrectly.
Returning to 2014, we can see Royce was desparate for anything to change BBG as a legacy. The so-called Royce-Engel bill of 2014 was something you would probably have had a field day with considering your focus on governance. It was a nearly a nearly criminal effort to privatize BBG's operations to profit Royce's supporters and others. I'm amazed "Freedom News Network" didn't appear in the book's review of the 2014. Instead, the book has a wholly detached from reality sterilized view from afar description. One of the main sponsors of this 2014 effort was a Royce fundraiser, and he had bought that domain before the bill became public. Another major proponent was the Prague Freedom Foundation and its sister organization L88. (Inexplicably, the BBG, prior to my going onto the board, had sold the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague to L88 and then subsequently rented it back from L88.) PFF had quite the high profile in DC, before it disappeared almost overnight. L88, it was learned, was pocketing RFE/RL's tax payments to the Czech government rather than forwarding the payments the Czech treasury. L88 also stole many millions (in USD) from RFE/RL's accounts that were to be used for renovations of the building, failed to pay contractors, failed to do minimal maintenance, among other problems. And, L88 attempted to take over various infrastructure and similar services through heavy handed tactics to increase RFE/RL's payments to L88. As a result, RFE/RL was slow to make the switch to video, either at standard definition or high definition, after Russia invaded Ukraine because the funds to build out the television studio were pilfered by L88. I can go on with this, but I'll leave you with one last item regarding PFF/L88 in Prague. The head of PFF/L88 had contracted with a Prague architect to spec a hotel to be built on a part of the RFE/RL headquarters property, which, apparently, L88 was going to subdivide. That architect was also not paid. It seemed, based on the timing, the scam bet on Royce passing the Freedom News Network bill, which would have privatized the "grantees" (RFE/RL, RFA, and MBN) and placed control of FNN into PFF/L88's hands. The head of PFF/L88 had declared in several forums before the death of the 2014 "bipartisan" bill that the grantees were already his. And, no, that bill did not pass the House as the book incorrectly claims.
(For some additional details on "Freedom News Network", see this 2015 reporting by Tim Mak, now reporting from Ukraine and on substack: https://www.thedailybeast.com/did-this-congressional-powerhouse-write-a-bill-to-help-his-donor-make-a-quick-buck)
And then there's the misrepresentation of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, which I helped cause and helped write. It was not "designed to address the impossibility" of accessing USAGM content as the authors state. It had to fundament purposes: to explicitly tell the Defense Department that no, Title 22 legislation that specifically names State, USIA, and BBG does not apply to the DOD; and to remove some of the prohibitions on oversight and reuse by Americans imposed by Senator Fulbright in 1972 and further tightened by Senator Zorinsky in 1985. That's not as relevant to your post.
I should note here that the board was dysfunctional, but that dysfunction was primiarly the result of successive Presidents failing to appoint replacement governors. The design of the board was based on the three-year terms of governors. Governors could be reappointed, but ultimately served until replaced or they quit. One chairman of the board – during the Obama administration – quit suddenly without notice. As we learned later, this was to write a biography subsequently read by many. The replacement chairman served in that role begrudgingly. The president promised the chair would only be in that role a short time and be replaced. However, he ultimately ghosted by the White House and then later quit out of frustration since he never had the time or interest to be chairman. I should also note the chair the quit to write a book decided the best way for the governors to operate was that each one took on a network. This pit governors against each other, rather than having them work together. In my first budget meeting as governor, I witnessed the result first hand: networks operated independently and viewed the budget as a zero-sum game. The networks were not parts of a whole, but independent pieces chaffing against the other. Strategy was an unknown word. These weren't an "illogical patchwork" of media organizations, this was the result of leadership defects. The very creation of MBN is one such story. After 9/11, the BBG Chair asked RFE/RL if they'd take on Arabic. They said no. The BBG Chair then ripped VOA's Arabic service out and created a new network, the Middle East Broadcast Network (MBN). These are leadership issues amplified by a poor structure.
At the time the second Royce (it wasn't really the second, more like the third, but let's keep this simple) effort to remake the BBG in anyway he could, we, the board, were looking into different board structures. The CEO dragged his feet on the analysis and inquires we instructed him to make. We learned why. We were looking at the Millenium Challenge Corporation as a likely model since president's had proven they had no interest in making the necessary frequent appointments to the board. We insisted that there needed to be a board because that was the true protection against politicizing, or capturing, the agency by the White House, regardless of who was in office, but the current structure wasn't working.