Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is questioned by Voice of America Director Bob Riley following his remarks at Voice of America headquarters. (Jan. 11, 2021)
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at Voice of America headquarters in Washington, D.C., Monday (Jan. 11). Michael Pike, CEO of the U.S. General Accounting Office for Global Media, and Voice of America Director Bob Riley gave introductory remarks, and Pompeo took questions from Riley after his speech.
Following is a full translation of Pompeo’s remarks and his Q&A with Riley.
Remarks by Secretary of State Mike R. Pompeo to the Voice of America
The Voice of Freedom to Reclaim America
January 11, 2021
Secretary Pompeo: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the warm welcome.
Michael, thank you for your leadership of this critically important institution. Bob, congratulations on your return to the helm of Voice of America. I’m really glad to be here. I’m honored to be invited and it’s always a pleasure to be with a tanker comrade.
I wish to thank the head of the other network here today, Radio Free Asia’s Yip Wang-fai. Where are you? It’s good to see you.
I also want to thank the journalists, the staff and all the viewers and listeners of Voice of America. I have sat down for interviews with you from all the remote corners of the world. These interviews are always a pleasure.
Speaking of which, I understand that this speech is being broadcast on television, radio and your website, social media, in more than 40 languages.
Hats off to the translators. I really don’t know how I was able to get my speech translated into Uzbek so quickly? This man or woman should get a bonus. Bob.
It’s great to have this opportunity. I’ve been following the work of Voice of America for decades.
As Bob just mentioned, I started my career as an Army officer, patrolling the Iron Curtain – the frontier of freedom – in the 1980s.
I couldn’t get into East Germany. I was serving in a town called Bindra. West Germans were not allowed to enter East Germany either. But your broadcasts, the Voice of America broadcasts, could.
Millions of men and women, whose names we will never know, listened to your broadcasts, often at personal risk. Their government runs nothing but lies and propaganda. But Voice of America listeners want the truth, and that’s what you give them.
The first Voice of America broadcast in 1942 that Bob mentioned began with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” while making this assurance, originally, “There is good news and there is bad news, and we will tell you the real news.”
I love that phrase. I always said to my son – and I’ve told this story before – when he was growing up, I said, “Work hard, keep your faith, and tell the truth.” He basically heeded my advice, and I know that it has always served him and it has served many of you well.
Your role at Voice of America is unambiguous: to be “accurate, objective and comprehensive” and to “represent America.
The mission of the U.S. Global Media Directorate is to “promote interaction and connection among people around the world and to provide information in support of freedom and democracy.
This is because the expansion of freedom and democracy has always been the purpose of the United States. You are the voice of American exceptionalism. You should be proud of that. Now more than ever, the world needs the clarion call of freedom from the voice of America. I hear it everywhere I go. That’s what I want to talk about today.
I talk about American exceptionalism to my listeners anytime, anywhere, because it’s true, because it matters.
America is wonderful and great, and anyone who really understands what we were founded on understands that. Michael and Bob have made it their life’s work to study this history.
Many of you have made it your life’s work, too. That’s why you work here at Voice of America.
We are truly the first nation founded on the core belief that all people are born with certain inalienable rights and that government was created to guarantee those natural rights.
We have always strived to be a more perfect union. Of course we are not always right. So we need to be both proud and humbled by our past and our present. We need the truth.
Yet it is abundantly clear that when Americans united around our founding values, whether in Philadelphia, at Gettysburg, in Seneca Falls, or during Martin Luther King’s March on Washington, we delivered on our founding promises time and time again.
Now, our opponents are trying to make a different claim.
When the Chinese Communist Party tried to use the tragic death of George Floyd to claim that their authoritarian system seemed superior to ours, I issued a statement that included the following passage: “At its best, the People’s Republic of China was brutally communist. And in the midst of the most difficult challenges, the United States still guarantees freedom.”
There is no moral equivalence. It is self-evidently true.
It is not fake news that you broadcast this: this is the greatest nation in the history of the world, the greatest nation that human civilization has ever heard of.
Admittedly, I do not say this to ignore our shortcomings. Rather, on the contrary, it is an acknowledgement of those flaws.
However, this is not the American evil, focusing on all the things that are wrong with our great nation. This is the voice of America. This is definitely not the place to give platforms to authoritarian regimes like Beijing or Tehran.
Your mission is to promote democracy, freedom and American values around the world. This is a U.S. taxpayer-funded institution that is designed to do exactly that.
Indeed, this is what sets Voice of America apart from platforms like MSNBC and Fox News.
You are able to give a voice to the voiceless in the dark corners of the world.
You are the voice of America’s struggle.
You are the voice of American exceptionalism.
You are the pointman of freedom.
Now, like many government agencies since the end of the Cold War, our international broadcasters have lost their way. Many of you know this well.
I’m sure there are many reasons for this.
The Soviet Union collapsed. The Berlin Wall came down. Names like bin Laden, Qaddawi and al-Baghdadi used to be unknown to the world.
In fact, many people wrote that history had ended. We have let security procedures slacken, and the Voice of America has lost its adherence to its founding mission.
Its broadcasts have become less and less about telling the truth about America and more and more about disparaging it.
In 2013, one of my predecessors called the Broadcasting Board of Governors “effectively dead in name only.
That’s why Congress created the position of CEO of the U.S. Global Media Authority on a bipartisan basis.
And that’s why I’m here today.
I’ve seen reports that Voice of America employees don’t want me to speak here today. I’m sure that’s a very small minority.
They don’t want the voices of American diplomats on Voice of America.
Think about that for a moment.
Think about the fact that we are all part of a government agency with obligations and responsibilities that are more noble, greater and more important than each of us individually. But this censorship instinct is dangerous and morally wrong. In fact, it is a violation of your legally mandated duties as the Voice of America.
Censorship, awakening and political correctness all point in one direction – authoritarianism cloaked in moral righteousness.
It’s similar to what we see today on Twitter and Facebook and Apple and too many college campuses.
This is not us. This is not us as Americans. It’s also not what the Voice of America should be.
It’s time to let the awakening slumber.
You can lead the way. You all know how to do it, and that’s why you’re here. The Voice of America has blossomed into a new dawn.
What the American public doesn’t know is that when Michael took over, some 1,500 employees – almost 40 percent of the entire workforce – were not properly cleared for security, including many with high-level security clearance.
The Voice of America rubber-stamped J-1 visas for foreign nationals, including some from communist China. We shouldn’t do that.
We have many Mandarin Chinese speakers in the U.S. We are building, training, teaching and educating more loyal patriots, some of whom are Chinese-Americans and very good.
The Trump administration’s team is working hard to address these national security threats. We want to properly vet employees. We want to return Voice of America to its mission of reporting the truth without bias. We want to depoliticize what’s happening here. It’s too important to the American people and to the world. Bringing this organization back to its charter and mission to spread the message of freedom, democracy and American exceptionalism.
It’s not about politicizing these institutions. We are trying to abstract away from politics.
This is a very good story for anyone who wants to write a news feature.
As Secretary of State, I tell you all this because I have the best wishes for the people here and for this organization, because you play a vital role in helping America shine a light on the darkest places with the power that only America can muster.
Governments like China, Iran, North Korea, they don’t respect the universal dignity of every human being like the United States does. Indeed, that is what America was founded on.
Those regimes hate everything our country stands for.
We, – we know that government exists to serve the people.
They, – they believe that the people exist to serve the government.
The work of the Voice of America is critical. As I said before, you are the pointman of freedom. Every week, 278 million people listen to the Voice of America in 47 languages.
There are Iranians who are tuning in to you, wondering if they will one day be free from the shackles of Islamism.
There are Moldovans and Ukrainians who want real reporting, not Russian disinformation and propaganda.
There are Chinese citizens who are fed up with a regime that has done nothing but inflict violence on them since 1949.
There are Venezuelans who want to know the truth about the corruption of the Maduro regime.
There are oppressed people around the globe who still look to the United States for hope.
Now, I know that many of you, especially those of you overseas, continue and complete the heroic work. Thank you.
I want to commend the Voice of America’s Hong Kong reporting team for getting the job done despite the political intimidation, harassment and attacks. I give you my highest praise. Well done!
You stood behind the barricades with the freedom fighters and told their stories. You have upheld the finest traditions of the Voice of America and continue to be the voice of American exceptionalism.
I would also like to pay tribute to the other members of the broadcast community who are here today and listening to me.
The only Uighur-language news service in the world is provided by Radio Free Asia.
To everyone who will listen – indeed, some who won’t – you tell the truth about the atrocities that the Chinese Communist Party has inflicted on its own people in Xinjiang. Such atrocities are the stain of this century.
You have done so, even though the CCP has put at least six relatives of Radio Free Asia journalists in internment camps in Xinjiang and continues to threaten you and your families, simply because you did your job.
Your work takes courage.
Please continue to tell everyone who will listen what is happening in the toughest places in the world. The world looks forward to this, and America will be better for it.
Finally, before I answer some of Bob’s questions, I’d like to quote a phrase that shows why the mission of Voice of America is so critical. This quote comes from a long time ago. It was said by George Washington. His original quote said, “The truth will eventually prevail if it works tirelessly to bring it out into the open.”
When America brings the truth to the world, we bring the light.
Don’t forget that. That’s what you are doing.
May God bless you all.
May God bless the Voice of America.
May God bless the United States of America. Thank you all. (Applause)
Question and answer session.
VOA Director Bob Riley: Thank you, Mr. Secretary of State. Some of the questions that I asked you came from our division directors who wanted to express their views –
Secretary Pompeo: I believe.
Riley: – and to ask you to answer some questions. Let me start with this question: “This is not a commercial media. We are able to tell the full truth about America, about the colorful life of America and every aspect of it. In your foreign trips in recent years, in your opinion, what aspects of the United States are the least understood by foreign audiences and what do we need to tell them about?”
Pompeo: Yes, that’s a very good question. If I get a moment, when we’re not on official business, they usually ask the ambassador or the foreign minister, “When was the last time you were in the United States? What did you do? Where did you go to see?” The answer is always – almost always, “I went to New York. I went to Washington. I went to San Francisco.” Or “I went to Los Angeles.” Some adventurous ones might travel all the way to Boston. Gosh, that doesn’t mean all of America. I’m from Kansas. It’s a different place in many ways, doing different things, with a different government. People there see the world differently than other places, too.
It’s important to have stories from these places, not just from the coast. That also extends to rural South Carolina, the Appalachians, Minnesota and our northern border with Canada. The United States has a variety of faces, and I think if you ask people around the world, they may only know Washington, D.C., where we are currently located, or New York, the financial center. I hope that all of you will have the opportunity to tell those other stories.
I want to add one last point. It’s not geographic, it’s not just geographical. You can find dozens of stories of all kinds in Washington alone, stories about the organizational structures that make America so unique and special, what our founding fathers called the Little Division, our civic organizations. How many of you are members of Parent-Teacher Associations, doing your part to make your children’s schools better? How many of you attend a church organization every Wednesday night to eat together or just get together? These are all important parts of American life that make us so unique and special. And I hope that people around the world can see that, because these institutions form the bedrock of our country and can be helpful to other countries as well.
Riley: Thank you, Mr. Secretary of State. You’ve given some very eloquent speeches about the relationship between America’s founding principles and American foreign policy. How would you prioritize those fundamental rights? You mentioned some of them in your speech, so how would you prioritize and send a clear message to foreign heads of state when you have a limited amount of time to meet with them? You’ve always been outspoken on religious freedom, freedom of the press, how do you prioritize them? Or is that country dependent?
Pompeo: Bob, it does vary depending on the country you’re in, the government, the traditions of that country. The State Department’s Commission on Giftedness, led by Professor Mary Ann Glendon and Peter Bolkowitz, was great. They wrote a great report that is 50 pages long. I invite you to read it as well. Some of it you will agree with, some of it maybe not. But what it tries to do is to save this human rights program from falling apart from the 20th century. It has lost its ability to understand the ideas that shaped human rights at the time of our founding, and it has even strayed from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What I’m trying to do is to re-establish the foundation of American foreign policy and the idea of human rights, and I think that report captures that very well.
You mentioned freedom of religion and the ability to express oneself freely, which are two core rights, and if a country doesn’t get that right, security and prosperity are compromised and the integrity of its citizens is diminished. So we’ve spent a lot of time talking about these topics around the world. We’ve made progress in some places and not in others. But it’s important that American leadership, not just the Secretary of State, but all of us, when we meet with foreign leaders mention those shortcomings and urge them to move forward in that better direction for the sake of their people.
And in that regard, I’m proud of what we’ve done. These principles are very important. The implementation and enforcement of those principles is complicated, as foreign policy always is. There are competing priorities. But the United States can never deviate from these core principles and ideas. We are clear about the difference between countries that respect rights and countries that don’t, and we have a responsibility to call each of those countries what they are.
Riley: As you know, we are at the juncture of an impending change in the administration. There seems to be a bipartisan consensus on certain foreign policy issues. For example, perhaps both parties now see China as the primary challenge to the United States. On issues such as North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran, on which do you expect the new administration to maintain some continuity? Where do you think the biggest changes are likely to occur?
Pompeo: That’s an important question. Leaders always want to know that when you make a commitment to them, it will last. We have elections – federal elections – every two years. We have presidential elections every four years. I think the point you mentioned about the threat of the Chinese Communist Party is correct.
President Trump rightly identified this as a unique threat in the world to the core Western notion when he also began his campaign in 2015, the notion that we would have a rules-based system that respects property rights and human dignity. China is a unique threat to those notions. I do think there’s a consensus on that. I’ve worked with Democrats on a lot of important issues, the Hong Kong issue, and what I call the Uighur and Xinjiang issue and the atrocities that have occurred there. So I hope that will remain the same.
I also hope that even in the Middle East, even though the previous administration had a different approach to the Islamic Republic of Iran, it’s not 2015 anymore. What has happened in the Middle East over the last four years, whether it’s our efforts to contain the theocracy that runs Iran, the thieves, the work that we did for the Abrahamic Accords, the work that was done to recognize the basic understanding that Israel has a right to exist as a state and that its capital is in Jerusalem, that it’s the home of the Jewish people, now, I believe that those things will be enduring because I think that the people want them to continue, and I hope that the next administration will continue to build on them and continue to build peace and prosperity among all the nations of the Middle East. And I’m hopeful that that will happen.
Riley: I note that last weekend, in response to the recent arrests in Hong Kong, you signed a joint statement with the foreign ministers of four countries, including Australia, Britain and New Zealand. You also lifted restrictions on high-level diplomatic contacts between the United States and Taiwan. Apparently, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations will be in Taiwan soon. What do you expect to achieve with these bursts of action?
Pompeo: Well, a gust of wind, which I find interesting.
Riley: I should have chosen a different word. (Laughter)
Pompeo: Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be, I understand. You know, I wish these things had been done a long time ago. These are not actions that were made in haste.
They are considered efforts that we have made, and they are an important part of this strategy that we have articulated of how to protect and maintain the freedom of the American people in the face of the challenge posed by the Chinese Communist Party. This is one of the core issues. I made a number of speeches. When I talked about China, I said, whatever they say, we have to distrust and verify it. You mentioned about 50 or so people being arrested in Hong Kong. The Chinese Communist Party made a promise to the people of Hong Kong, but they broke it. The Chinese Communist Party has a commitment, a series of understandings that we have reached on Taiwan affairs. We also need to hold the parties accountable to those promises. The Chinese Communist Party promised President Obama that they would not arm the islands in the South China Sea, but they turned around and did so, and it cost them almost nothing.
We tried to give them a clear understanding of what we expect of the Chinese Communist Party in terms of how they should behave, which frankly is no different than what we expect of any country when it comes to dealing with the United States. We do so because we have a responsibility to maintain and protect the security and prosperity of the American people.
Our policies regarding the Chinese Communist Party further this point, and it will be a long-term challenge. The Communist Party of China has clear intentions of hegemonic domination, and we have an obligation and a responsibility to the American people and, frankly, to freedom-loving people around the world to make sure that that is not the world in which our children and grandchildren will live.
Riley: It’s interesting that in meetings with the directors of the Voice of America division, the word China comes up frequently in those meetings. When I asked them what’s going to happen in the future and what you’re noticing, the answer was China. What about Latin America? China. What about East Africa? China. It’s not just the Belt and Road Initiative, it’s their information strategy, how they’re setting up branches in these parts of the world, how they’re offering them free stuff and so forth – you know, an all-government approach. Now, the U.S. is not an all-government approach, but Voice of America is doing our part here through our correspondents’ stations and our reporting. How do you think we can do a better job of helping to highlight the dangers that these things represent when you look at them in a unified way, rather than a series of one-sided approaches?
Pompeo: Bob, the fact is that the challenge is comprehensive. Our administration started with the economic side of this. The president has imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in an effort to stop the intellectual property theft that’s costing the United States tens of millions of jobs because they’ll steal information, take it back to China, manufacture it, and then bring it back to the United States to dump it. That’s information. You talked about that. This is still ongoing.
Take the Wuhan virus as an example. I understand that the Chinese Communist Party will now approve the World health Organization to find out where this started, but it took months of work to do that. It’s now been over a year and we still can’t get the most important information about the origin of the virus. This is important for health and safety, and to make sure that something like this doesn’t come from China again.
Your team can report on these things and report on these facts. You mentioned that this is a global phenomenon, and we have a bureau, I have a China Affairs Section, I have an East Asia Pacific Bureau, we have an Indo-Pacific strategy. But every one of my ambassadors, every one of my heads of mission understands that wherever they are, China poses a challenge to the countries where they are, in Africa, in Latin America, and certainly in Southeast Asia. Our teams on the ground are working to protect U.S. security from the Chinese Communist Party in the countries where they are posted.
And I want your reporters, wherever they are, whether it’s in South Africa or Morocco or wherever, to pay attention to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party in the countries where they are and how it affects the people in those countries.
Riley: Let me ask one last question, and this one is more relevant to Russia. The U.S. footprint in Africa seems to be diminishing. France is as well. Russia, on the other hand, is increasing. Is this the result of a judgment made by the United States? That is, that the chaos on the African continent is relatively not that big a problem or relatively less of a threat to our interests? Or how would you –
POMPEO: The deployments that these forces, the Department of Defense have made are really about the broader fight against terrorism. How do we allocate U.S. resources to keep the homeland safe? So the decisions that the president has made about Afghanistan and the broader Middle East, Syria – you talked about North Africa as well – are allocating U.S. capabilities to preserve and defend the homeland.
I fully understand that it’s easy to write a story like that, and if you just favor troop numbers, if you say the United States used to have a thousand and now they only have 800, or they used to have 800 and now they only have 400, you may be ignoring the ability of the United States to preserve and defend itself. I used to be the director of the CIA. I know the other tools and capabilities that are available to us. They are invisible. They don’t get coverage from the podium at the Department of Defense.
But the American people should know that President Trump has been unambiguous about getting things right, about making sure that we put fewer young men and women in uniform to risk, but never abdicating our responsibility to make sure that terrorism, or at least people who commit acts of terror and harm the United States things don’t happen, whether they’re here in the United States or elsewhere in the world.
Riley: Great, Mr. Secretary of State. I thank you very much for being here today. It’s very nice of you to come all the way out here, and I and everyone here is deeply grateful.
Pompeo: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Riley: Please join me in applauding the secretary of state.
POMPEO: Thank you all very much. (Applause)
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