I'm Marissa Wong, Intern at Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare

for March 29, 2006.

On March 7th, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that Carrie Lake's appointment to run the U.S.

agency for global media, which oversees international broadcaster, Voice of America, was unlawful.

And that Lake's actions in that role, including the firing of thousands of employees, were

illegitimate. As of the week of March 23,

Voice of America employees are now returning to their jobs, a year after their unlawful

firings. For today's archive, I chose an episode from March 25, 2025, in which Thomas Kent

joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss President Trump's executive order

attempting to dismantle Voice of America in Radio Free Europe.

It's The Lawfare podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, with Tom Kent, former head of Radio Free Europe.

If the U.S. government comes up with some alternative way to address the world's people in a way that is credible and not just a blast of propaganda that turns listeners off, then, you know, I suppose there's some future to the whole

concept of international communication. Today we're talking about the administration's executive order dismantling US AGM, the parent company of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and a bunch of other U.S. information broadcasters.

All right, so let's start with your history with Voice of America and its

related organizations. How did you come to be involved in it? And what was your role?

Well, I had a long history in Russian Affairs. That was my specialty at university. And then I joined the

Associated Press and worked in a number of overseas assignments, including as Moscow bureau chief.

Then I came back from Moscow to become head of international news at AP, an ethics editor of the

AP, and remained sort of the AP's Russianist going back to Russia constantly through the end of the AP and remains sort of the AP's Russianist going back to to Russia constantly

through the, through the end of the Soviet Union, the Gorbachev period, and a little, little

bit into the Yeltsin period. And when I left the Associated Press in 2016, I became president and CEO of Radio for Europe,

Radio Liberty, which focuses heavily on the former Soviet Union countries, although its coverage

...