President Biden’s nomination of Amanda Bennett to run the U.S. Agency on Global Media that oversees U.S.-funded media outlets including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe has come under fire on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Michael T. McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Ms. Bennett’s background has not been thoroughly vetted and he called on her to answer more questions about her previous stint at Voice of America.
Mr. McCaul said that several issues were not addressed at Ms. Bennett’s confirmation hearing Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and asked to submit questions for the record before the confirmation proceeds.
Ms. Bennett, who ran VOA from 2016 to 2020, has faced criticism from Republicans over her coverage of China during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and for scandals and mismanagement that rattled the agency during her tenure.
During her tenure, she had several high-profile clashes with then-President Trump over the direction of the agency.
Mr. Trump once called the network the “Voice of the Soviet Union” during Ms. Bennett’s tenure. “VOA too often speaks for America’s adversaries — not its citizens. Journalists should report the facts, but VOA has instead amplified Beijing’s propaganda,” he said in response to a VOA story that republished statements from Chines state-media.
Ms. Bennett resigned from VOA in 2020 after Michael Pack, a conservative documentary filmmaker, was confirmed as USAGM’s CEO. Mr. Pack was later fired by President Biden.
Before taking the helm at VOA, Ms. Bennett worked as a journalist at The Wall Street Journal for two decades and then was the editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, managing editor of The Oregonian and executive editor of Bloomberg News.
In a letter Thursday to Sen. James E. Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. McCaul asked for a probe of potential mismanagement of VOA funds, security lapses, low morale and biased news coverage during Ms. Bennett’s time at the agency.
Specifically, Mr. McCaul said there should be more scrutiny of the rollout of a content management system at VOA known as Voltron, which he said was linked to Ms. Bennett’s husband, Don Graham.
Mr. Graham was the publisher of The Washington Post from 1979 to 2000 and later served as the lead independent director of Facebook’s board of directors. He is currently the majority owner and chairman of Graham Holdings Company, which controls the digital marketing company SocialCode and the online magazine Slate.
While at VOA, Ms. Bennett authored opinion pieces for The Washington Post, and some employees raised concerns about her willingness to use outside media to speak about her own agency.
Mr. McCaul said the Voltron system was ultimately scrapped “resulting in a waste of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds.”
He also pointed his Senate colleagues to a 2020 analysis by McGuire Woods, a private law firm, that found several security lapses occurred at USAGM under Ms. Bennett’s tenure.
“Bennett should be asked why she did nothing to prevent the lapses, what her general views of the McGuire Woods report are, and why lawmakers should not expect that additional lapses will not continue to happen if she is confirmed,” Mr. McCaul wrote.
He said the USAGM’s security vetting capacity was ultimately transferred to a separate federal agency after the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Director of National Intelligence for “serious failings in the agency’s security clearance and classified access procedures.”
Mr. McCaul also called on the Senate to look further into Ms. Bennett’s inaction in the face of employee complaints of political bias and low morale at the agency, her commitment to standing up for a congressionally mandated oversight mechanism within the agency, and whether she supports the issuance of J-1 cultural exchange visas to foreign journalists, which Mr. McCaul said allows foreigners to fill jobs American citizens could fill.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Ms. Bennett assured lawmakers that she is committed to ensuring USAGM entities adhere to high journalistic standards and “emphasize the strong nonpartisan nature” of the agency.
“I also commit to being accessible and transparent and to work collaboratively within government, with external stakeholders, with this Committee and all of Congress in a bipartisan fashion, to ensure USAGM has the support and resources necessary to fulfill its mission and that the agency is held accountable to its obligations,” she said in her opening remarks.
Still, Mr. McCaul said the Senate panel fell short in pressing her further.
“As I understand, there was not a robust round of questioning at the hearing due to various time conflicts, and that is understandable given the nature of legislative duties,” he wrote. “Regardless, I believe that Bennett warrants closer scrutiny and appreciate your attention to this letter.”
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
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