ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのSecretary of State Mike Pompeo Voice of America Speech

Speaker 1: (00:04)
An address and conversation presented in voice of America headquarters by mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming USA GM CEO, Michael Pak.

Michael Pak: (00:24)
Hello and welcome to everyone joining us live both in person and virtually all over the world. I am Michael Pak, the chief executive officer of the US Agency for Global Media, which is the federal government entity that manages and oversees US civilian international broadcasting. Now, unfortunately, as many of you abroad know all too well, there are regimes bent on preventing people from accessing objective news and information.
(01:15)
To keep power, they manufacture and propagate false realities, seeking to control thought and belief, and ultimately action. Let me be clear. This behavior is an affront to the universal right of freedom of expression, a right which every single person is entitled by virtue of being a human being. America has never stood for this form of malevolence and our nation must now confront it even more vigorously. Indeed, as the adversaries of liberty and democracy, double down on producing and distributing disinformation, America must reassert itself in the new global war of ideas.
(02:02)
To do that, we need to more robustly promote and explain our principles to the world. Fortunately, since 1942, we have had an excellent platform to do exactly that. That platform of course, is Voice of America. Today here at the headquarters of Voice of America in Washington, DC, we are tremendously honored to host this very special event, featuring the 70th US Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo. To further introduce the secretary, I’d like to turn the podium over to the director of the Voice of America, Robert R. Riley. Thank you. And please enjoy the event.

Robert R. Riley: (02:48)
Thank you, Michael. And for your unstinting support, it’s greatly appreciated. Welcome, everyone. I want to begin by thanking a few people who worked so hard to make this event a success. I begin with Eduardo [inaudible 00:03:15], who’s the director of studio and production operations here at VOA, and his very hardworking team who under the added difficulties of the COVID restrictions worked so hard to get this job done.
(03:24)
I want to thank John Lippman, the deputy programming director with his daily meetings for shepherding this all through and pulling it together. And most, especially the deputy VOA director, Beth Robbins, for all the hard work she has done. Now, it’s a pleasure to introduce a man who needs no introduction. I think I can do it with two words. They are Renaissance man. Why? Well, briefly at the US Military Academy at West Point, first in his class. A army officer in West Germany. In an army cavalry unit, he helped protect Western Europe against what Ronald Reagan had called the evil empire.
(04:16)
Now, Ronald Reagan was known for saying some other things. He was very fond of saying there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse. It’s been a long time since we’ve had horse cavalry, but with a little twisted emphasis on what he said, I’ve heard that the secretary is occasionally heard to say life is always better in an M1 tank. Well, after his military career, Mr. Pompeo went on to Harvard Law School where he excelled with the Harvard Law Review. After law school, he went to Kansas and began a successful business career. He founded [inaudible 00:05:01] Aerospace, where he served as CEO for more than a decade. He later became president of Century International. From thence, he ran for Congress successfully in the fourth district of Kansas.
(05:17)
And even as a freshman Congressman, he had an outsized influence due to the depth of his knowledge on foreign policy and intelligence issues and his powers of persuasion. He was in his fourth term when the president called upon him to take upon himself the role of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. And then in 2018, he was sworn in as the Secretary of State. Now, he’s done all this while still being at least from my perspective, still a young man, so we can expect much more from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. I am so grateful for his honoring VOA with his presence today, Secretary Pompeo.

Mike Pompeo : (06:08)
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the warm welcome. Michael, thanks for your leadership, for this incredibly important institution. And Bob, congratulations on returning to the helm of VOA. I am truly happy to be here. I’m honored to have been requested and it’s always fun to be with a fellow tanker too. I want to acknowledge the other network chiefs who is with us today. Steve Yates of [inaudible 00:06:43]. Steve, where are you at? Nice to see you. And a note of appreciation too, to the Voice of America journalists staff and to all those watching and listening. I have sat down for interviews with many of you in the far corners of the world. They’ve always been a joy. And speaking of which to, I understand that this speech is being broadcast on TV, radio, on your website, social media in more than 40 languages. Hats off to the translators. I have no idea how anyone can translate my talking into Uzbek this quickly, that guy or gal deserves a bonus.
(07:16)
Bob, it’s great to have this opportunity. I’ve been following the work of Voice of America for decades. And as Bob just mentioned, I started my career as an army officer patrolling the iron curtain freedom’s frontier. In the 1980s. I couldn’t cross into East Germany. I was serving in a little town called [inaudible 00:07:39]. West Germans couldn’t cross either, but your broadcast, Voice of America broadcast could. Millions of men and women whose names we’ll never know listened to you, often at their own peril. Their governments dealt only in lies and propaganda, but VOA’s listeners wanted the truth. And that’s what you gave them. VOA’s very first broadcast in 1942, that Bob referred to, begin with a Battle Hymn of the Republic. Along with this pledge, “The news may be good. The news may be bad, but we’ll tell you the truth.”
(08:15)
I love that. I always told my son, I told the story before, when he was growing up, I said, “Work hard, keep your faith, and tell the truth.” He mostly followed my advice and it has served him and many of you, I know, well. Your mandate here at Voice of America is unambiguous. To be accurate, objective, and comprehensive, and to represent America. The mission of US AGM is to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. That’s because expanding freedom and democracy of what America has always been about. You’re the voice of American exceptionalism. You should be proud of that. The world needs VOA’s Clarion call for-
(09:03)
… that. The world needs VOA’s clarion call for freedom, now more than ever. I hear it wherever I go. That’s what I wanted to talk about today. I tell audiences about American exceptionalism wherever and whenever I can, because it’s true and because it’s important. America is good and great, and everyone who truly grabs our founding understands this. Michael and Bob have made studying this history their life’s work. Many of you have made it your life’s mission too. That’s why you work here at Voice of America. We were indeed the first nation founded on the central belief that all human beings are endowed with certain unalienable rights and that governments are instituted to secure those God-given rights. We have always striven for a more perfect union. And goodness knows we don’t always get it right. Therefore, we need both pride and humility about our past and our present. We need the truth. But it’s very clear that when Americans have united around our founding values, be it in Philadelphia, at Gettysburg, at Seneca Falls, or during Martin Luther King’s March on Washington, we have made good on our founding promise time and time again.
(10:22)
Now, our adversaries try and claim otherwise. When the Chinese Communist Party attempted to exploit the tragic death of George Floyd to claim their authoritarian system was somehow superior to ours, I issued a statement, which read in part: “During the best of times, the People’s Republic of China ruthlessly imposes communism. But amid the most difficult challenge, the United States secures freedom.” There is no moral equivalence. This is a self-evident truth. It is not fake news for you to broadcast that this is the greatest nation in the history of the world and the greatest nation that civilization has ever known. Indeed, I’m not saying this to ignore our faults. Indeed, just the opposite; it is to acknowledge them.
(11:16)
But this isn’t the Vice of America, focusing on everything that’s wrong with our great nation, it’s the Voice of America. It certainly isn’t the place to give authoritarian regimes in Beijing or Tehran a platform. Your mission is to promote democracy, freedom, and American values all across the world. It’s a U.S. taxpayer-funded institution aimed squarely at that. Indeed, this is what sets VOA apart from MSNBC and Fox News and the like. You can give voice to the voiceless in dark corners of the world. You’re the voice of American striving. You’re the voice of American exceptionalism. You are indeed the tip of freedom’s spear.
(12:03)
Now look, like many government agencies after the Cold War ended, our international broadcasters, well, they lost their way. Many of you know this. And there were, I’m sure, many reasons. The Soviet Union had collapsed. The Wall had come down. Names like Bin Laden and Zarqawi and Baghdadi weren’t widely known. In fact, many wrote that history was over. We allowed security protocols to lapse, and VOA lost its commitment to its founding mission. Its broadcasts had become less about telling the truth about America, and too often about demeaning America.
(12:36)
In 2013, one of my predecessors described the Broadcasting Board of Governors as, quote, “practically defunct,” end of quote. Look, that’s in part why Congress created the role of CEO of the USAGM on a bipartisan basis, and it is, again, why I am here today. I read that some VOA employees didn’t want me to speak here today. I’m sure it was only a handful. They didn’t want the voice of American diplomacy to be broadcast on the Voice of America. Think about that for just a moment.
(13:09)
Look, we’re all parts of institutions with duties and responsibilities higher and bigger and more important than any one of us individually, but this kind of censorial instinct is dangerous. It’s morally wrong. Indeed, it’s against your statutory mandate here at VOA. Censorship, wokeness, political correctness, it all points in one direction: authoritarianism, cloaked as moral righteousness. It’s similar to what we’re seeing at Twitter, and Facebook, and Apple, and on too many university campuses today. It’s not who we are. It’s not who we are as Americans, and it’s not what Voice of America should be.
(13:53)
It’s time that we simply put woke-ism to sleep, and you can lead the way. You all know. That’s why you came here. There is a new dawn here at Voice of America. The American public doesn’t know this, but when Michael took office, some 1,500 employees, almost 40 percent of the workforce, had been improperly vetted, including many with high-level security clearances. VOA was rubber-stamping J-1 visas for foreign nationals, including some from communist China. We shouldn’t be doing that. We have plenty of Mandarin-language speakers here in America, and we are building, growing, teaching, educating more committed patriots, some of Chinese-American descent, who are amazing people.
(14:38)
The Trump Administration team is working to fix these national security threats. We want to vet employees properly. We want to reorient VOA to its mission of truth and unbiased reporting. We want to depoliticize what takes place here. It’s too important for the American people and for the world, returning this organization to its charter and its charge to spread the message of freedom, democracy, and American exceptionalism. This isn’t about politicizing these institutions. We’re trying to take politics out. That’s a pretty good feature story for whoever wants to write it up.
(15:16)
As Secretary of State, I am telling you all of this because I want the best for the people here and for this organization because you are vital to helping America shine light into the darkest places, with the power that only America can muster. Governments like those in China, Iran, North Korea, they don’t have the respect for the universal dignity of every human being in the way that America does. Indeed, that is what America was founded upon. Those regimes are anathema to everything that our nation stands for. We, we know that government exists to serve people. They, they believe that people exist to serve government, and VOA’s work is vital.
(16:02)
As I said before, you’re the tip of freedom’s spear. Every week, 278 million people listen to VOA in 47 languages. There are Iranians who are listening to you, wondering if they’ll ever be able to shed their Islamist shackles. There are Moldovans and Ukrainians who want truthful reporting, not Russian disinformation and propaganda. There are Chinese citizens who are tired of a regime that’s done nothing but brutalize them since 1949. There are Venezuelans who want to know the truth of the Maduro regime’s corruption. There are oppressed people all over the globe who still turn to America for hope.
(16:41)
Now, I know many of you, especially those of you overseas, continue and have done heroic work. Thank you. I want to commend VOA’s Hong Kong reporting team, which faced political intimidation, harassment, and attacks, but still got the job done. My highest praise. Well done. You were behind the barricades with the freedom fighters, telling their stories. You’re upholding VOA’s finest traditions and continuing to be the voice of American exceptionalism.
(17:10)
I also want to pay tribute to members of the other radio services who are here and listening. The only Uyghur-language news service in the world is run by RFA. You’ve told everyone who will listen, indeed, some who didn’t want to, the truth about the CCP’s atrocities against its own people in Xinjiang, the stain of the century. And you’ve done so despite the fact that the CCP has jailed the relatives of at least six RFA journalists in Xinjiang’s internment camps and continues to threaten you and your families simply for doing your jobs. Your work takes courage. Please keep telling everyone who will listen what’s happening in the toughest parts of the world. The world expects it, and America will be better off for it. I want to leave you with a quote that conveys why VOA’s mission is so critical before I take some questions from Bob.
(18:03)… mission is so critical, before I take some questions from Bob.
(18:04)
This quote’s from a ways back. It’s from George Washington, he said, “Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.” When America brings truth to the world, we bring light. Don’t forget that. It’s what you do. May God bless you. May God bless the voice of America and God bless these United States. Thank you all.