[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 22 (Wednesday, February 5, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E167-E168]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    HONORING AMBASSADOR VICTOR ASHE

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR.

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 5, 2014

  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, Ambassador Victor Ashe retired 
in 2009 as the longest-serving U.S. Ambassador to Poland.
  Prior to his distinguished service abroad, Ambassador Ashe served 16 
years as Knoxville's longest-serving Mayor.
  Ambassador Ashe has held many other positions in service to Tennessee 
and our Nation, and he has had one of the most distinguished careers of 
anyone from my State.
  Even following his retirement, Ambassador Ashe is being cited for his 
expertise and continued devotion to our Nation. I call the following 
article from the website BBG Watch, in which Ambassador Ashe is quoted 
many times and is reprinted in part below, to the attention of my 
colleagues and other readers of the Record. I am glad to see my good 
friend is still working to protect the taxpayers of our Nation:

       BBG Watch has learned that officials of the International 
     Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) at a federal agency, Broadcasting 
     Board of Governors (BBG), are alleged to have violated IRS 
     tax rules by employing thousands of private contractors as 
     full-time, long-term employees but failing to withhold taxes 
     from their salaries as they were required to do, according to 
     IRS and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). . . .
       BBG Watch has also learned of allegations that some IBB 
     officials suspected of these irregularities may be trying to 
     cover up their alleged violations by refusing or delaying 
     release of information under the Freedom of Information Act 
     (FOIA) requests from private individuals, including news 
     reporters and NGO representatives. . . .
       Allegations have been made that some of IBB officials 
     responsible for employing thousands of poorly-paid full-time 
     contractors who have been denied by these officials basic 
     employment protections and benefits, such as vacations and 
     health insurance, may have also been involved in an attempt 
     to silence and remove from the BBG board a former member, 
     Victor Ashe, and to undermine reputation of some of the still 
     serving BBG members who have questioned their management 
     practices.
       Alleged retaliation against Ashe is strongly suspected 
     because he was most active among BBG members in trying to 
     expose and prevent waste of taxpayers' money at the agency, 
     but at least two other BBG members who are still serving may 
     have also been a target of a smear campaign. BBG Watch has 
     learned that FOIA requests for documents that may show 
     alleged efforts by IBB officials to silence BBG members and 
     to undermine their reputation are the ones which are not 
     being answered by IBB officials who have not yet produced any 
     documents several months after these FOIA requests were 
     submitted. BBG Watch also learned that there is still a 
     pending FOIA request for additional information about an 
     incident in which a senior Voice of America executive 
     allegedly tried to get officials at the United Nations to 
     revoke a press accreditation of an independent American 
     journalist. BBG's mission is to support media freedom. Some 
     of these officials are still employed by BBG.
       One of BBG Watch volunteer-reporters contacted Victor Ashe 
     by phone at his home at Knoxville, TN to get his perspective 
     on the developing scandal over violations of IRS tax rules by 
     agency officials where he was a board member until late last 
     year. Ashe is a former U.S. Ambassador to Poland and former 
     popular long-term mayor of Knoxville. He had served many U.S. 
     administrations of both parties in various federal positions. 
     This is how BBG Watch reporter summarized for BBG Watch the 
     phone conversation with Ashe:
       ``After years of neglect from prior management, 
     Broadcasting Board of Governors is now moving to remedy the 
     mistreatment from a pay standpoint for 35% of BBG's employees 
     who are on contract as opposed to being fulltime federal 
     employees,'' former BBG member Victor Ashe said.
       ``Of course this is due to the heavy pressure from the 
     Internal Revenue Service and the Office of Inspector 
     General,'' Ashe added.
       ``One reason BBG has ranked so poorly in Office of 
     Personnel Management (OPM) morale surveys is the way contract 
     employees are treated, as well as the fallout from the Office 
     of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) Radio and TV Marti lawsuit from 
     former Cuban American employees in Miami who were illegally 
     dismissed, according to findings by an impartial Federal 
     Arbitrator and legal panels. This lawsuit, which management 
     has lost at every step along the way, continues with costs 
     exceeding $3.5 million. While it may last two more years, 
     cost may exceed $5.3 million by the time it is over. No one 
     seems bothered by this use of tax dollars,'' Ashe added.
       ``Morale at the three entities, which are Radio Free Asia 
     (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Middle 
     East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), remains much higher,'' he 
     added.
       ``International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) has a terrible 
     history of mistreating contract employees,'' Ashe said.
       ``Congress needs to act swiftly to correct these problems 
     and monitor carefully how BBG is handling the IRS audit and 
     OIG findings. BBG owes the public an explanation on why this 
     has occurred and how they plan on finding $12 to $18 
     million,'' he added.
       ``This is all about righting a wrong. IBB past management 
     thought they could get

[[Page E168]]

     away with this violation of federal practices and law. Now 
     this seems to be at an end.''
       ``Now the BBG board should review the Radio and TV Marti 
     lawsuit by Cuban Americans laid off wrongly over 4 years ago 
     and attempt to settle it. Otherwise, BBG may face $5 million 
     in legal expenses,'' Ashe added.
       ``I commend Jeff Shell, the new chair, for his efforts to 
     correct the problems he inherited,'' Victor Ashe stated.
       Jeff Shell and the renewed BBG board have already announced 
     several key personnel and management changes at the IBB and 
     further management reforms are expected. Former IBB director 
     retired at the end of November 2013. But some remaining IBB 
     officials are alleged to be engaged in an attempt to cover up 
     their previous mistakes by unnecessarily prolonging the FOIA 
     process, sources told BBG Watch.
       Ashe and some of his colleagues on the BBG board have been 
     vindicated in a number of cases where their initial concerns 
     were first strongly resisted by agency officials and later 
     turned out to be correct and their proposed solutions 
     embraced by other BBG members.
       Among three BBG members who seem to have most annoyed IBB 
     senior staff with demands for accountability, Ashe is 
     credited along with Susan McCue and Michael Meehan with 
     saving Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) from a major 
     management and journalistic crisis last year. Ashe received 
     the Glasnost Award for these efforts from a Russian human 
     rights organization. He is also believed to have helped new 
     RFE/RL CEO Kevin Klose rehire Radio Liberty journalists who 
     had been fired by the previous management--an incident which 
     produced a major public relations and public diplomacy crisis 
     for the United States in Russia.
       In a phone conversation about his previous difficult 
     dealings with IBB officials, Ashe recalled discovering that 
     flu shots were being denied to contract employees at the 
     agency because of their status. IBB officials declined to 
     correct the problem until he went public with the issue and 
     shamed them into recognizing it was a health risk for the 
     entire workforce, since contract employees and federal 
     employees work daily side by side. ``Today I am glad to say 
     all can receive flu shots,'' Ashe was quoted as saying.
       Alleged attempts to silence inconvenient BBG members and 
     alleged attempts by IBB senior executives to remove Ashe from 
     the BBG board with unfounded accusations to the OIG were 
     described in recent editorials published by the American 
     Federation of Government Employees, AFGE Local 1812, a union 
     representing BBG's federal workforce. One OIG team sided with 
     IBB officials against Ashe and incredibly accused him of 
     being too aggressive in pursuing his oversight 
     responsibilities, although it did not mention him by name. 
     That particular OIG team repeated assurances received from 
     IBB executives and, also incredibly, did not discover any 
     substantial waste or irregularities in the agency, which has 
     a budget of over $700 million. It took another, different OIG 
     team to find widespread irregularities in the work of IBB 
     officials, including nonpayment of IRS required taxes.
       Ashe is widely admired by rank and file agency employees 
     and contractors, as are Governors McCue and Meehan. Chairman 
     Shell has also developed a good reputation among BBG 
     employees for his energy, willingness to listen to critics 
     and some of the initial reforms he has proposed.
       Ashe's departure from the board was particularly mourned by 
     BBG employees. Their union has arranged with the Knoxville, 
     TN city administration to have a tree planted in one of its 
     parks in honor of former BBG Governor and former U.S. 
     Ambassador.
       In a recent article in Ambassador Perspectives, a forum of 
     commentary on current world issues by non-career U.S. 
     Ambassadors who have served presidents of both parties, Ashe 
     has proposed several solutions to management problems at the 
     BBG, including appointing a single agency head, confirmable 
     by the Senate, dissolving the current part-time nine-member 
     board, or making it much smaller. The CEO proposal, but 
     without Senate confirmation, is also being pursued by 
     Chairman Shell and the current BBG board.
       Ashe has also called for bringing Congress more closely 
     into the process of reforming U.S. international media 
     outreach to those countries where independent press is either 
     severely restricted or completely repressed. Ashe told a 
     reporter that ``hopefully, Congress will start holding annual 
     oversight hearings on U.S. international media outreach, 
     which have not been held for six years.''
       The key questions, however, are whether anyone among IBB's 
     current government executives who are still in their 
     positions will answer for alleged violations of tax and other 
     federal rules? Who will pay millions of dollars, which have 
     not been appropriated by Congress, to correct alleged 
     mistakes? Can IBB officials get away with not releasing FOIA 
     documents that may expose their alleged attempts to cover up 
     corruption and abuse of power.
       BBG Watch has learned that at the urging of a least one 
     NGO, a member of Congress known for his support of U.S. 
     international broadcasting mission abroad plans to make 
     inquiries to the BBG to find out why IBB officials are 
     dragging their feet on answering FOIA requests for 
     information that may expose their alleged misdeeds.
       It's not the first time, and not the last, that we ask: 
     who's in charge of this Agency?
       As the new Broadcasting Board of Governors members get down 
     to business, we recognize their role of being in charge of 
     ensuring that the broadcasting arm of the United States 
     government carries out its mission for the 21st century. 
     However, we get the feeling that some in top and mid-level 
     management take the position that the bureaucracy is still in 
     charge, will remain in charge, and will make sure the BBG 
     understands who is really in charge.
       Why should there be any concern? Flash back to the arrival 
     at the Agency several years ago of a former BBG Governor, the 
     Honorable U.S. Ambassador Victor Ashe. A politician, in 
     addition to a diplomat, with extensive managerial experience, 
     he engaged in behavior any official on the BBG should feel 
     comfortable engaging in: he met with the staff, listened to 
     their concerns, opened a communication channel by providing 
     his personal e-mail and started asking questions of 
     management.
       The backlash was swift and fierce. Ambassador Ashe was 
     warned in private, then warned again more forcefully in 
     public, against assuming his full role as Governor. 
     Apparently he did not get the message. The General Counsel's 
     office--whose main purpose sometimes seems to be not to 
     assist management in respecting the law, but rather in how to 
     circumvent it--drafted new rules that essentially tried to 
     muzzle BBG members, trying to prevent them from freely 
     discussing Agency business.
       But that did not silence Ambassador Ashe. He had the 
     courage to publicly deplore the diplomatic mess created by 
     the firing of most of the staff at the Russian Service of 
     Radio Liberty. Payback time came in many forms including a 
     rather silly and spiteful incident, when Governor Ashe was 
     refused entry to an event to which he was invited. Other 
     blockades were erected by the resident bureaucracy to thwart 
     any attempts by Governor Ashe to find out what was going on 
     in the Agency including a scandalous contracting-out process. 
     Even the OIG, in its January 2013 report, characterized 
     Governor Ashe's actions as somewhat of a transgression when 
     it wrote: ``He visits widely throughout the agency, offering 
     to bypass IBB management to assure Board attention to 
     employee concerns.''
       And yet, Ambassador Ashe did not budge. He continued his 
     fight. So, he was disposed of thanks to a blistering and 
     factually-challenged OIG report that the Union described, and 
     still does, as a `hatchet job'. He could have stayed in his 
     position as a Republican Governor on the BBG. There was no 
     need to push out the only BBG member who had a perfect 
     attendance record at all meetings and seemed to genuinely 
     care, and was competent as well. The Agency would not stand 
     for that and the White House somehow found time to name 
     someone to replace him.
       AFGE Local 1812 will always be grateful to former Governor 
     Ashe for his intrepid efforts to try to find out what was 
     wrong in the Agency and to fix it. We are also grateful that 
     he did not look at the Union as a pariah. For its part, the 
     Union has arranged with the Knoxville, TN, city 
     administration to have a tree planted in one of its parks in 
     honor of Governor Ashe where he served five terms as mayor. 
     We are considering another project in his honor as well.

                          ____________________