This took a while to type up sorry for errors. [after intro]

It's great to have this opportunity, I've been following the work of Voice of America for decades and it's because Bob just mentioned I Started my career as an army officer patrolling the Iron Curtain freedoms Frontier and the 1980s I couldn't come into East Germany I was serving in a little town called Binlach(?) West Germans couldn't cross either but your broadcast, VOA broadcast put millions of men and women whose names we'll never know listen 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 began with the Battle Hymn of the republic along with this pledge... quote:

"The news may be good, the news may be bad, but we'll tell you the truth."

I love that. I always told my son, I've told this 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 VOA is unambiguous to be accurate, objective, and comprehensive, and to represent America. The mission of USA GM is to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. That's because expanding freedom and democracy are 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 freedom now more than ever, I hear it everywhere 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 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 VOA. We were indeed the first nation founded on the central belief that all human beings are endowed with certain inalienable rights and the 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 when Americans have united around our founding values, be it in PA, Gettysburg, at Seneca Falls, or during Martin Luther King's march on Washington, we've made good on our founding promise time and time again. Now our adversaries try to claim otherwise, when the Chinese Communist Party tried 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, quote: "During the best of times the People's Republic of China ruthlessly opposes 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, it's just the opposite, to acknowledge them. But this isn't the vice of America, focusing on everything that is 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. The US 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 Americans striving. You're the voice of American exceptionalism. You're indeed the tip of freedom's spear.

Now look, like many government agencies after the Cold War ended, our international broadcasters... well they lost their way. Many of you know this. I'm sure there were 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 have become less about telling the truth about America and too often about demeaning.

In 2013 one of my predecessors described the broadcasting board of governors as "practically defunct" (end of quote).

Look that's in part why Congress created the role of CEO of the USA GM on a bipartisan basis and it is again why I'm here today. I read that some VOA (word?) 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 VOA. Think about that for just a moment. Look, were all part 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 statutorial mandate here at VOA, censorship, wokeness, political correctness, it all points in one direction: authoritarianism cloaked as moral righteousness. Similar 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 VOA should be. It's time that we simply put wokeism to sleep, and you can lead the way. You all know that's why you came here. There's a new dawn here at VOA the American public doesn't know this but when Michael took office some 1500 employees, almost 40% of the workforce, had been improperly vetted including 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 many Mandarin language speakers here in America and we are building, growing, teaching, educating more! Committed patriots. Some of them are Chinese American descent who are amazing people.

The Trump Administration team is working to fix these national security threats. We want to vet employees properly. We want to re-orient VOA to its mission of truth and unbiased reporting. We want to de-politicize 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 a message of freedom, democracy, and American exceptionalism. This isn't about politicizing these institutions, we're trying to take politics out, and pretty good feature story for whoever wants to write it up.

As Secretary of State I'm telling you all of this because I want the best for the people here and for this organization because you are vital to helping American shine light into the darkest places with a power that only America can muster. Governments like those in China, Iran, North Korea, they don't have 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 the government exists to serve people. They... they believe the people exist to serve government and VOA's work is vital. As I've 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 Islamic shackles. There are Moldovans and Ukranians who want truthful reporting, not Russian disinformation and propaganda. There are Chinese citizens who are tired of a regime who has done nothing but brutalize them since 1949. There are Venezuelans who want to know the truth of the Maduro regime's corruption. There are press people all over the globe who still turn to America for hope.

Now I know many of you, especially those overseas, continue and have done heroic work thank you. I want to commend VOA's Hong Kong reporting team which faced political intimidation harassment attacks but still go the job done. My highest praise. Well done. You were behind the barricades of the freedom fighters telling their stories. You're upholding VOA's finest traditions and continuing to be the voice of American exceptionalism.

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 Shinjiang, the stain of the century, and you've done so despite the fact that the CCP has jailed the relatives of at least six of RFA journalists in Shinjiang'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 the VOA's mission is so critical before I take some questions from Bob. This quote's from a ways back, it's from George Washington. He said quote: "Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light" end of quote. 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 VOA, and God bless these United States.

Thank you all.