Whenever you’re close to the president two things are true—you are at risk and you are inside the safest possible security perimeter.

Both those facts were in evidence Saturday night when an armed man ran toward the ballroom where President Trump was attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. I attended one of those dinners in that same room in the 1990s.

When sharp sounds penetrated the air and security officers shouted, “Shots fired! Get down!” photos show some guests in tuxedoes and ballgowns taking cover under tables, while others stay in their chairs or even stand up to see what’s going on. One man famously continues eating.

I suspect it’s the reporters with war zone experience who are under the tables. That’s one thing you learn in Hazardous Environments Training and covering conflict zones, as I did in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Pentagon correspondent in the late 2000s, in Manila during the Philippine revolution, and in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere. Much as you might want to see what’s going on, you’re smarter to take cover at least until you get an idea what the danger is and where it’s coming from.

As for the president’s location being the safest possible place to be, that’s a relative statement. You’re certainly safer in your home or office, or pretty much anywhere the average person goes. But if you’re going to put yourself in a potential danger zone, the area around a Secret Service protectee, especially the president, is the place to be. Most of the candidates in this year’s elections will not have such protection.

One reporter at a briefing Saturday night referred to the incident as a security “failure.” I can see where he’s coming from, and certainly no one wants an attacker to be even as close as this one was. But as far as we know, he breached only the ballroom’s outer-most security perimeter, which was in the process of being taken down because no one else was to be allowed in. He was stopped at the next level by closed doors and a phalanx of armed security officers.

Saturday night’s attack will no doubt be the focus of a significant review of presidential security, as is every such incident. But this is not a repetition of what happened in Butler, PA, when a man got to a location he shouldn’t have been allowed to reach and managed to fire several rounds, wounding the president. It’s more like the Palm Beach incident, when security officers noticed and stopped a potential attacker before he tried to breach their perimeter. Those two outdoor venues are much harder to secure than a hotel ballroom with limited entry and exit points.

This event does, however, raise the question of what might have happened if the man had not been acting alone—if several people with more sophisticated weapons had run down that hallway, and maybe several accomplices had attacked another entry point at the same time. In today’s America, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which an organized group does a better job of planning than this attacker did. Such a group could well get closer to accomplishing its mission or, perish the thought, even succeed.

Indeed, that is the premise of my new novel Body Man, based largely on my White House experience and set squarely in today’s divided America.

But does this argue, as President Trump did Saturday night, for building a secure facility like his White House ballroom? From a narrow security perspective, maybe. But we don’t want the President of the United States sheltered in that sort of steel-reinforced, bulletproof bubble. In our democracy, the president needs to be out among the people to the greatest extent possible, as has always been the case, and as Trump acknowledged Saturday night.

Rather than a hardened bunker, we need two things: the security review, which we will no doubt get, and a serious effort by American leaders of all stripes to lower the temperature of our political discourse, preach for civil debate and ostracize those who espouse or even suggest violence.

That we probably won’t get, except maybe for a few days, especially with politicians fighting hard for every seat the mid-term election campaign already in progress.

It is not President Trump’s responsibility alone, and he’s not famous for taking the high road, but he could do a lot to get a longer-term temperature-lowering started. Saturday night he praised the “unity” in the room during those tense moments. If he can sustain that approach, it could be a first step toward making it safe, indeed necessary, for other Republican leaders to do the same, and encourage all Democrats to follow suit.

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So where do I fit on that continuum, publishing an American political thriller at a time of, well, political thrills in America? And how did I do walking the political tightrope while delivering hyper-realistic action and plot twists grounded in my experience as a journalist covering the White House, the Pentagon, elections, and war zones?

Well, the great thing about books in general and Body Man in particular is that you get to be the judge.

I first got the idea for Body Man in 2017, and no, I’m not a painfully slow writer. Around that time, I was offered the contract to publish my first book, Sandblast, and two sequels. So, I put Body Man aside to write Blowback and Shock Wave.

By time I picked up Body Man again, it was even more relevant. Maybe, too relevant. America’s political divide was on full display and there was considerable reluctance to publish political fiction.

Rejecting my manuscript, agents and publishers called it, “rich and grounded,” “chilling,” “really admirable,” “truly fascinating” and “a can’t-look-away train wreck of a thriller.” One editor called it “too prescient.” In the end, they all passed.

But I pressed ahead, believing that a novel that cuts to the bone of the divide was more important than ever. I was fortunate to find two brave women to take it on, my agent Mira Perrizo at WordLink and my publisher Lisa Miller at Amphorae/Blank Slate.

There is no shortage of nonfiction books exploring America’s 21st century politics, but I could find none that did so in a way anywhere close to what fiction can provide—sympathetic characters on both sides, with stories, problems, loves, hates, and motivations anyone can understand in an engaging, fast-paced story.

Carl: I’m an American patriot and don’t you forget it.

Spencer: I’m the best person to tell you this story.

But can you believe either one of them?

That’s the goal I set out with in 2017. And I believe that’s why early readers are proving the doubters wrong, describing Body Man with words like “relatable,” “riveting,” “unforgettable,” and “important.” It’s also the reason that the tag line on the cover is “Patriot or traitor? You decide.”

At a writers conference a few years ago, I asked a bestselling author whether it was a problem that some test readers liked my ostensible villain, Carl, more than my apparent hero, Spencer. He said, “Yes,” and laughed.

But I disagree.

I think the more you like Carl, the more invested you’ll be in the story and the more Body Man will achieve what I want it to. That’s not to say Carl is a hero. But it is to say he’s a human being. And you’ll find that Spencer is human and imperfect, too. Some readers may even see him as a villain of sorts.

So, perhaps Body Man reflects America in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Just like in today’s society, readers will see different realities in the same set of facts—who is good and who is evil, what is right and what is wrong, what is patriotism and what is treason.

And if I’ve done a good job, they’ll also at least have some understanding of why others see the opposite.

If you read Body Man, I can’t wait to hear what you think.

It’s available on all bookselling websites or ask for it at your local bookstore.

More about Body Man and more reviews on my website.

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President Trump announced a new tranche of military sales to NATO allies today, with the weaponry to be passed on to Ukraine. At the same time, he gave Russian President Vladimir Putin fifty days (fifty!) to reach a peace deal. That seemingly arbitrary deadline is an eternity if bombs are raining on you every night, as they are for many Ukrainians.

And Trump’s threat if there’s no deal?

“Very severe tariffs.”

In fifty days or so. Maybe.

If you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, rest assured Putin is laughing. Russia sells very little to the United States. And, as we should all know by now, tariffs are paid by importers and consumers, not by foreign governments, though tariffs might reduce the volume of goods a country ends up selling to the United States. Again, in Russia’s case, not much anyway.

Trump has also threatened to impose sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil, so called “secondary sanctions” like the U.S. and many allies imposed on Iran and its trading partners. Those could be more effective. But Trump has not followed through such threats in the past.

Signaling Monday’s announcement on Sunday, Trump used one of his favorite phrases, saying “Putin really surprised a lot of people” with his duplicity—the mysterious ‘lot of people’ being the president’s favorite source of information and analysis.

In this case, as in many others, the ‘lot of people’ are likely just Trump himself and a few people who tell him what he wants to hear.

Certainly, no one should actually be surprised that Putin will say one thing in the morning and do the opposite that same night, as Trump accused him of doing. “He talks nice and then he bombs everybody in the evening,” Trump told reporters. “So, there’s a little bit of a problem there.”

‘A little bit,’ indeed.

Putin has been saying one thing and doing another in Ukraine at least since I covered the early months of the war eleven years ago, when Ukrainian journalist Maria Zavialova and I traveled to the frontlines in eastern Ukraine. A taste of our reporting is here, here and here.

At that time, Putin was busy denying that the un-uniformed “militia” attacking Ukrainian border towns were acting on their own. Soon after, he claimed the people of Crimea were crying out to be liberated from Ukraine and he took the peninsula by force. Then, he sent regular troops to “free” Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the eastern border areas and carve out an occupied zone. (In fact, many loyal Ukrainians speak Russian as their first language, and many native Ukrainian-speakers also speak Russian.)

And then in 2022 came Putin’s biggest lie, the one he continues to stand on today. He said Ukraine was committing genocide against its Russian speakers and he had to take the whole country. He called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a Nazi and indicated Russia would take all of Ukraine within a week or so. The ensuing years of war have sent Ukrainians like my former colleague running for bomb shelters on a regular basis.

Of course, Putin’s obsession with Ukraine has nothing to do with that and everything to do with his megalomaniacal desire to, well, Make Russia Great Again, by reoccupying as much of the old USSR’s territory as possible. He also wants to limit the growth of NATO (shrink it, if possible) and distract his people from the repression and economic woes they endure every day.

During the campaign and transition, Trump repeatedly said he would settle the Ukraine war on the first day of his new administration. (Sounds like Putin’s boast about a one-week war.) For some politicians, Trump’s promise might have been a lie built on bravado. For him, it may have been self-delusion built on ego. In other words, he might really have believed it.

Henry Kissinger warned about that in a 2015 speech. He said, “Since no one without a well-developed ego reaches the highest office, compromise is difficult and deadlocks are dangerous.” Kissinger recognized the importance of the leaders’ “personalities” in addressing international conflicts, but he preferred diplomacy by professionals, rooted in history and current power dynamics.

His message was that leaders should not delude themselves into thinking the power of their egos will achieve in diplomacy what it achieved in politics, that like Superman they have “powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal” diplomats to leap tall issues in a single bound.

That sounds a lot like Donald Trump. See also, Gaza, tariffs, relations with China, and other issues.

Trump will never admit he was wrong. He blames Putin for lying, rather than himself for being taken in. Indeed, Trump claimed, “He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden — he didn’t fool me.” In fact, those presidents had much more clear-eyed policies toward Putin and his avarice. And, not having ended the war as promised, Trump was quick to distance himself from the issue. “This is not Trump’s war,” he said. Therefore, it seems, if he fails to end it, it’s not really a failure at all.

The good news is that Trump is allowing U.S. weapons to be sold for use by Ukraine. And he has changed his public attitude toward Ukraine from claiming it started the war and humiliating its president in the Oval Office, to now saying Ukraine has “fought with tremendous courage.”

The change in tone, renewal of the weapons flow and threats of more sanctions won’t turn the tide of the war immediately. Putin is as egotistical as Trump and has demonstrated great tolerance for the suffering of others, including Ukrainians and his own people. But Trump’s moves will at least keep the pressure on Putin, further testing his tolerance for embarrassment on the battlefield and potentially his ability to survive additional economic strain on his people, and more importantly, on the cronies who keep him in power.

It may also provide some relief to Ukrainians like my former colleague Maria, who may have fewer runs to the bomb shelters and the hospitals, at least until the next policy change.

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There was a great line in the New York Times on Saturday from famed filmmaker Ken Burns.

In her July Fourth Weekend column, Maureen Dowd, quotes Burns as saying, "The best arguments in the world won't change a single person's point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”

That’s music to a writer’s ears. And that is a mixed metaphor.

I once moderated a session at a writers’ conference and asked people to tell me, in one word, why they write. Most people talked about wanting to share a “story.” But my own one-word answer is “theme,” the message that will be behind the story. I need to have something to say before I sit down to write fiction.

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My first three novels—Sandblast, Blowback and Shock Wave—are military spy thrillers whose heroes are the son of immigrant parents and a woman veteran turned Pentagon spymaster. I wanted to write about the diverse community of brave, selfless Americans I met during the five-and-a-half years that I covered the Pentagon, when the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were both at high intensity. I also wanted to bust some myths about our enemies, so I created terrorist characters with as much depth as the heroes.

Of course, you also need a plot and, in a thriller, plenty of action. And the books have all that. But at their core are the themes I wanted to illuminate. That’s what holds them together.

As Burns goes on to say in the Times article, “Good stories are a kind of benevolent Trojan horse. You let them in, and they add complication, allowing you to understand that sometimes a thing and its opposite are true at the same time."

That’s also a good description of my new book, Body Man. It’s a political thriller set in a divided America, where remaining norms are shattered, familiar lines are blurred, and more than ever, heroes and villains are defined in the eye of the beholder. It’s a story about how much worse things could get if we let them, written in the hope that we don’t.

I started writing it six years ago, a process that was interrupted by the contract to write the other books. It’s kind of amazing that the theme is as relevant today as it was then. Maybe more.

In Body Man, the two main characters are young men, close in age, from neighboring towns, who embark on very different pathways to an inevitable and horrific collision. They narrate alternating chapters, taking us deep inside each of their stories. There’s no perfect hero or irredeemable villain here.

As the tagline on the cover says: Hero or Traitor? You decide.

What it doesn’t say is that we’re talking about both of them. Even the title, Body Man, refers to both of them in different ways.

But the book is not preachy. It’s not an “argument,” to use Burns’s word. It’s a story about people nearly as real as you and me, struggling as we do, caught up in something bigger than themselves, fighting to save America from each other.

So Burns’s quote was inspirational for me as we go through the final steps to bring Body Man to publication. It’s a story that might change your mind, but more importantly might make you think differently about what we’re all thinking about so much these days, especially on the Independence Day Holiday.

The quote was also timely. Body Man came up on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads and other sites last week, months earlier than I expected.

If this were a sales pitch, it would be the worst one ever, coming to the point after six hundred words. But since the book is up online, if you’re inclined pop in a pre-order. By the time Body Man arrives on your device or doorstep next April 21^st, it’ll feel like a surprise gift from a secret admirer.

And, unfortunately, I’m not the least bit worried about the theme holding up until then. I have no doubt that we’ll all still need, as Ken Burns said, some “complication” to our world views and perhaps a “good story” to help us “understand that sometimes a thing and its opposite are true at the same time."

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July 3, 2025—A few days after the Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup for the second consecutive year, they invited a select group to party with them.

Among the invitees was Martina Navratilova, South Florida resident and no stranger to repeat championship victories. I covered her first U.S. Open victory in 1983, which she would repeat in ’84. She did it again in ’86-’87. She also had back-to-back wins at Wimbledon, in addition to six in a row. Six!

I interacted with Martina many times in the early 80s when I was a correspondent at the Voice of America’s New York Bureau. I covered four major tennis tournaments in the city every year, as well as track and field, and the occasional international hockey or soccer match, and one World Series.

You might wonder why VOA was spending time and resources to cover sports. The boilerplate reasons are that, like music, sports is a kind of universal language, something people follow with enthusiasm regardless of borders or political ideologies. The sports coverage drew listeners to our broadcasts, and many stayed for the news and editorials.

But there was another reason, and there was no greater example of that than Martina Navratilova.

At the time, Martina was a young Czechoslovak pushing the boundaries of the communist system. Her government, and its neighbors in the Soviet sphere, reveled in the reflected glory of her accomplishments, while also striving to keep her in the fold. Communist bloc athletes always knew they had to watch what they said or the authorities could revoke their travel permission and/or make life difficult for their families back home.

Still, Martina was always happy to do an interview with me, even after a long match followed by a press conference and other interviews. And it wasn’t because of my irresistible charm.

I needed her for what I called a “bilingual interview” and it turns out she sort of needed me, too. I asked in English. She answered in Czech for our Czechoslovak Service. I would feed the recording by phone to Washington for broadcast to her home country.

For me, it was my job, but I now know the interviews were much more meaningful to her, thanks to a tremendous piece Sally Jenkins wrote for the Washington Post in March. Jenkins reported that Martina’s family would gather around “a red plastic radio” to hear news of her exploits and, if they were lucky, a snippet of her voice on VOA, perhaps recorded by me.

Jenkins reports it was the same radio that brought young Martina VOA broadcasts, through static and jamming, where she learned about the outside world that she would one day take by storm, the same radio where she first heard the names of exotic foreign places (like Florida), the same radio where she learned about the Soviet tanks rolling through Prague in 1968.

And in 1975, although they knew it was coming, Jenkins reports VOA and the red plastic radio confirmed for Martina’s parents that she had defected to the United States. For years after that, Czechoslovak State Radio refused to say her name, even when she went there to play for the U.S. Davis Cup team. It was through VOA that her family and her nation could keep up with Martina’s rise to the top of the tennis world.

I also conducted bi-lingual interviews with other tennis stars at the time, including Martina’s fellow-Czechoslovaks Hana Mandlikova and Ivan Lendl.

After speaking Czech for me a couple of times, Lendl stopped doing it. "I know your station," he once said to me in an ominous tone. I took it as a negative at the time, but soon realized that he saw speaking in Czech on VOA as too great a risk for himself and his family. Or perhaps he was warned. I believe Lendl was still in the Czech Army at the time and he could have easily been recalled to service.

It was a valuable lesson for me.

As my career advanced and I reported from dozens of countries, VOA expanded into television and internet. And our efforts evolved to focus more on places like China, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Arab World, while still broadcasting to Russia and the fragile democracies that were once part of its sphere of influence, and which it would like to control again.

But the mission was the same as required by our Charter, which is a federal law—to provide objective news, accurate explanations of U.S. policy and a variety of opinions on that policy. We also reported on all aspects of American life, especially how we solve our problems. VOA provided news, analysis, culture, music and, yes, sports.

And I continued to do bi-lingual interviews in languages ranging from Chinese to Arabic to Ukrainian, always dutifully feeding the sound to Washington for VOA’s foreign language services, and (thanks in part to Lendl) always making sure people knew exactly which station I was from so they didn’t take unintended risks.

The Jenkins article was particularly poignant because it was written in March, when the Trump Administration abruptly shut down nearly all VOA broadcasts and websites. Most of VOA was pulled off the air and the internet immediately, while legal challenges and the mechanics of firing nearly all its employees plays out. That includes sending many of our foreign language broadcasters home to hostile countries, where their work at VOA will be viewed as traitorous.

The opportunity to connect with our audience in their own languages, as we did through the bi-ligual interviews, always inspired me as VOA English-language correspondent. And while my colleagues and I took great pride and sense of purpose from providing a service to our listeners (and later, viewers and web audience), our raison d'etre was always to serve Americans—to present the truth about America and the world, whether the United States was welcoming international athletes or working to solve world problems or, indeed, taking controversial political or military actions.

We always believed the truth would benefit our country, even if people disagreed with us. And we were able to broadcast our leaders’ explanations of their actions to hundreds of millions of people in their own voices and translated into, during some periods, more than fifty languages.

Few people are listening on red plastic radios these days. But even in the era of widespread instant communications on handheld devices, there is tremendous value to reaching people directly, in their own language, with America’s story. Indeed, as we all know, the instant “information” of the internet and social media is often wrong, making solid, reliable sources more valuable than ever to their audiences and to those who benefit from the truth.

Silencing America's voice is not only a tragedy for our audience, it is a disservice to the American people and a gift to our adversaries, whose broadcasts and websites are already surging to fill the void.

It’s a shame that the Martina Navratilovas of today, wherever they live, won’t have an honest, reliable, trustworthy Voice speaking to them from America.

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On Thursday, discussing the airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gratuitously and unjustifiably criticized Fox News Pentagon Correspondent Jennifer Griffin, saying “You’ve been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most, intentionally, what the president says.”

Griffin, Hegseth’s former Fox News colleague and the network’s Pentagon Correspondent since 2007, responded “I don’t think that’s fair, sir. I take issue with that.”

To say the least.

I’ve known Jennifer since she arrived at the Pentagon, when I was two years into my five-year assignment as Voice of America’s correspondent there. She is one of the best, dogged about facts and insistent on accuracy and objectivity at a network where that is not often the standard. That’s why she is highly respected by her colleagues, the military leaders and troops she covers, and a succession of political appointees from both parties.

Hegseth’s public criticism at a news conference says nothing about Jennifer and everything about his and his boss’s well-earned insecurity. Think Signal chat, and promises to end the Ukraine war and get the Israeli hostages freed. Any fact that counters their narrative is to be denigrated, along with its bearer. They’ve already taken pre-emptive action, including the expulsion of several credible news outlets from their Pentagon workspace, restricting all reporters’ movements through the building, and barring the Associated Press from the White House media pool.

It's worth noting that while Hegseth’s words were harsh, he spoke almost as if he was reluctant to recite a required mantra. As he should have been.

Griffin shot back, listing her scoops about the Iran strikes, including an outline of the mission, the mid-air refueling that was required, and the secrecy that was maintained—reports made, as she said, “with great accuracy.”

Hegseth had to acknowledge that, and seemed appreciative that Griffin had said “this was the most successful mission, based on operational security, that this department has done” in her eighteen years covering the Pentagon. In the wake of the Signal debacle, he wanted to bask in her praise that he and his team had done the minimum (maintain secrecy) almost in the same breath as he tried to discredit her.

It's a rough road to the truth for my former journalism colleagues in Washington these days. We should all be glad to have people like Jennifer Griffin leading the way.

That’s especially true with the retirement last week of another Pentagon press corps icon, Lolita Baldor of the Associated Press, after a twenty-two-year career—twenty of them spent covering defense, terrorism, and national security. She and I arrived at the Pentagon around the same time in 2005.

Lolita is what’s called a “shoe-leather reporter.” Every morning, she would do what reporters can no longer do freely—walk the halls of the Pentagon, visiting the many public affairs offices handling information about the military services, combatant commands and other aspects of the Defense Department. She would often come rushing back to the press room to file a scoop.

She also traveled extensively with senior officials, including to the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones, reporting to thousands of outlets around the world through the AP network.

Lolita’s deep knowledge of our national security issues and the people responsible for protecting us will be sorely missed. I wish her all the best in her next chapters.

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Al Pessin is a former journalist turned author of award-winning fiction. His next book, the political thriller BODY MAN, will be published in April 2026 by Amphorae Publishing. Al was a reporter, editor and manager at the Voice of America for 39 years, including assignments as White House and Pentagon Correspondent and foreign postings in Beijing, Jerusalem, Islamabad, Hong Kong and London. More at www.AlPessin.com.

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Originally Published: March 18, 2025

The suspension of nearly all Voice of America employees on Saturday, ordered by President Donald Trump’s appointees in response to an executive order he signed Friday, largely pulled the network off the air and the internet, surrendering the global information battlefield to Russia, China and Islamic militants. The network’s team of reporters, editors and managers working on behalf of America to speak directly to the people of the world in English and in their own languages may never return to the air.

While many Americans may associate VOA with Cold War shortwave broadcasts and wonder why it’s still functioning, the truth is that VOA and its sister networks (Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Network and Radio/TV Martí) have evolved with the times to serve information-starved people in the Middle East, Asia and, yes, still Eastern Europe and Russia. The agency estimates it has a weekly audience of more than 400 million people.

But it’s not a charity service. The on-air and online programs on the networks of what is now called the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) exist for the benefit of Americans, to ensure that the truth is available to people whose individual political decisions can have a direct impact on the United States.

From its first broadcast in the months after Pearl Harbor, VOA promised to tell the truth, including American setbacks and criticism of U.S. policies and actions. Without that, there could be no credibility. That is no less true today.

USAGM’s official news release on the suspensions is replete with errors, including calling newswire services like AP “fake news,” blaming VOA for an expensive headquarters move being imposed on it by the government’s property managers and claiming the agency is a “giant rot” with only a handful of talented staffers.

Until Saturday, it appeared that Trump’s choice to head VOA, Kari Lake, wanted to turn it into Trump Media, and that is no doubt what any surviving nub will be. But people in countries where all they have is government propaganda have no reason to tune in or log on to foreign news organizations for more of the same, especially if they do so at some risk. VOA also served as an example of what a free press is.

As my successor at the VOA Pentagon Bureau, Carla Babb, posted Saturday after receiving her administrative leave notice, “A silencing of VOA will be celebrated by communists, autocrats and ayatollahs whose lies we shed light on. What a mission I’ve been lucky enough to embark on — a mission to grow American influence around the world, not by sharing slanted American propaganda, but by giving them the TRUTH! Why? Because America has the truth on its side.”

Sadly, truth appears to be passé in Washington these days.

Critics point out that VOA has not always lived up to its own standards. Over 83 years, well over 50 language services and countless reporters, editors and broadcasters over radio, television and the internet, it’s not hard for anyone paying attention to find something they don’t like. Particularly in recent years, there has been much criticism of bias in some language services and poor editorial standards in some instances. But that is a call for “thoughtful reform,” as VOA director Michael Abramowitz said Saturday, not surrender in the war of ideas. Abramowitz was appointed by the broadcast agency’s board during the Biden administration; he was also put on leave.

The ostensible reason for shuttering VOA, according to last Friday’s executive order, is to reduce bureaucracy, as if all government workers are pushing papers back and forth without purpose. Instead, most are providing vital services to the American people through agencies like Social Security, Veterans Affairs and countless others, including VOA and the other USAGM networks. Are there savings to be had? Sure. But that is no reason for the wholesale elimination of important services. And even if all the USAGM broadcasters were shut down, the savings would be about a billion dollars, a small fraction of 1% of the federal budget.

The VOA charter states it plainly. “The long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly with the peoples of the world.”

To stop doing so is a gift to our adversaries and a disservice to our people.

Al Pessin was a reporter, editor and manager at VOA for 39 years, including assignments as White House and Pentagon correspondent and five foreign postings. He is now an award-winning novelist.

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