Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has announced Marc Thiessen and Ilan Berman have joined its board of directors.
Thiessen is an author and has a weekly column in the Washington Post. He served as a speechwriter under President George W. Bush and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Berman is the senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council and also is a veteran national security policy advisor for the Department of Defense and Congress. He also recently served as head of the team handling the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) transition on behalf of the Trump administration.
The pair join a group of 11 RFE/RL board of directors, including Stephen Capus, the organization’s president and CEO and Lisa Curtis, the board’s chair.
In a release, Capus noted Thiessen’s writing work which he said reflects his championing of “American values.” He also cited Berman’s knowledge on regional security, including in the Middle East, central Asia and Russia, where much of RFE/RL’s current focus is.
[Related: “RFE/RL Says War Is Driving Traffic Spikes”]
“As we mark RFE/RL’s 75th year, the board of directors will continue to make sure that our global audiences, from Russia to Iran, have access to the truth,” Curtis said in the release.
The organization that is funded by Congress through the USAGM has recently come under scrutiny, including through Elon Musk’s comments on X. Musk suggested that RFE, along with Voice of America, should be “shut down” and that the outlets are “torching” U.S. taxpayer money.
The news organization said it reaches audiences in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, through radio, internet, TV and mobile audiences. It said it has a weekly audience of 47 million people “in places where censorship is the norm.”
