DECONSTRUCTING GOVERNMENT
The Office of Cuba Broadcasting has become collateral damage in a struggle between Congress and its new boss.
The Office of Cuba Broadcasting in Miami, pictured in 2007, is responsible for beaming radio and television broadcasts into communist-run Cuba. | Alan Diaz/AP Photo
By DANIEL LIPPMAN
07/09/2020
The U.S. government’s Cuba broadcasting office is quickly running out of money and could be forced to furlough some of its employees and fire contractors, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The office, which is responsible for beaming radio and television broadcasts into communist-run Cuba, falls under the umbrella of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. That agency is in turmoil over the recent arrival of Michael Pack, a Steve Bannon ally who pushed out the heads of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other outlets as he started as CEO of the taxpayer-funded media group.
The budget crisis is due to the uproar Pack’s moves provoked on Capitol Hill, where senators in both parties fear the Trump administration is seeking to lean on coverage that is meant to be independent. Lawmakers are upset that Pack has yet to schedule a time to testify on the matter and are holding up funds until he agrees to explain his actions.
The impasse is having its most immediate impact on the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which operates Radio and TV MartÃ. The Cuba office was already struggling to digest roughly $8 million in budget cuts in the most recent appropriations bill.
Officials at the media agency told Congress they couldn’t cut funding so quickly, and obtained a temporary reprieve: Lawmakers allowed them to reallocate up to $7 million from another of its accounts, sparing the Cuba office some unpalatable choices.
But Pack’s mass firing of top agency leaders, known internally as “the Wednesday night massacre,” has irritated powerful members of Congress, particularly within the Senate Appropriations Committee.
On June 18, staffers of Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the top members of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the State Department and related issues, placed a hold on the transfer of the Cuba funds. They were concerned about Pack’s actions, a staffer said, and wanted to hear from him directly, according to two people familiar with the exchange.
“The staffers and their bosses wanted to know: What’s happening? Why are you doing this and creating all of this turmoil?” said one of the people.
“Those funds are on hold until we have a better understanding of what Mr. Pack’s intentions are,” a Senate Democratic aide said. “We want these funds to be used, but Congress also has responsibility as overseer of the funds to know what is going on down there, given that every week there’s a new revelation of someone being fired or something being eliminated and we have no idea what the basis for it is.”
Pack, a veteran documentary filmmaker whose films have appeared on PBS, told the Washington Examiner that it was necessary to fire some of his new colleagues because it would better help him reform the organization to align more clearly with its original mission. He said he wanted to “clean house and start fresh. Far from being a witch hunt of Democrats, it is a very fair, let’s-start-over process.”
Pack’s problems with the Hill compounded on July 1, when a bipartisan group of seven U.S. senators, led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), wrote a letter informing him they were planning on doing a “thorough review” of the agency’s funding to ensure that its journalism wasn’t politicized and that the agency could carry out its core mission. It also said that the firings of the agency’s various components raised “serious questions” about the future of the agency under Pack’s leadership.
Notable among the ousted leaders was Jamie Fly, a Republican and respected former foreign policy aide to Rubio who headed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, based in Prague.
In a reply this week, Pack said he was “eager to meet and work with you to discuss the strategic direction of the agency so that U.S. international broadcasting efforts advance human rights and the American national interest.” But he hasn’t agreed to any specific dates to testify.
With the agency projecting that the Cuba office is going to run out of cash in mid-July, officials there have to move money around next week to ensure that they have enough cash for their next payroll and to pay contractors, according to one of the people. If they don’t do that, they would have to lay off most or all of the agency’s 70-odd contractors, furlough some of the office’s roughly 100 federal employees or dramatically reduce or stop shortwave radio broadcasts to Cuba — or some combination of all three.
Loss of the contractors, many of whom have digital and social media skills the permanent employees lack, would hurt the office’s efforts to reach young audiences in Cuba, a person familiar with the matter said. It’s not just payroll that is at risk: the office also has to pay for costs like electricity for a radio transmitting station in Greenville, N.C. USAGM didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In a move that’s known among budget wonks in Washington as “blowing through the hold,” USAGM is planning to shuffle around $1.5 million to forestall such drastic steps, according to one of the people. But the agency is worried about provoking “wrath” on Capitol Hill by ignoring the hold, this person said — with a response that could include ratcheting up reporting requirements and “a lot of invasive things that would lower the effectiveness of the agency.”
The Cuba office is now led by Jeffrey Shapiro, another Bannon ally who spread conspiracy theories about the former director of the office being a secret agent for the Castro regime, according to The Daily Beast. Conservative critics of the editorial direction under the former director, Maria “Malule” Gonzalez, had complained that the coverage had veered too far from its traditional tone of strident anti-communism.
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Radio and TV Martà got into hot water after it aired what USAGM described in a statement as an “egregiously false and anti-Semitic story” about billionaire financier George Soros in 2018, an incident that led the agency to order a third-party independent review of its Cuba programs. An internal human resources investigation led to the agency firing or disciplining employees and contractors involved in the story, and USAGM said the reviews “highlight some urgent needs at OCB — particularly in shoring up journalistic principles and practices.”
The Cuba office isn’t the only wing of USAGM affected by budget issues: The Open Technology Fund, a grantee of USAGM, is still awaiting its July tranche of funding of about $1.5 million. Some of OTF’s money every year goes to support critical tools like encrypted messaging app Signal that help people around the world communicate securely. OTF’s Rapid Response fund has been used to help protesters in Hong Kong fend off digital attacks and surveillance.
OTF had sued Pack and USAGM late last month, arguing he was legally barred from replacing its staff, but on Tuesday, a federal court upheld the administration's right to revamp the leadership.
Earlier this week, Pack selected former South Carolina secretary of state James Miles to lead OTF in an acting capacity; the official announcement didn’t list any technological expertise for Miles, but Pack cited Miles’ “wealth of knowledge from extensive professional experience involving business, the law, management of non-profits, and major public office.”
“The new CEO has been starving lots of the broadcasting entities and grantees for funds,” the person said. “The ‘freeze’ he instituted largely continues.”
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