The dangerous loopholes in security vetting of Voice of America (VOA) talent have finally come to the fore.

Poland, in the latest Russia-West prisoner swap, handed over an alleged Russian spy posing as a VOA freelance journalist. The exchange gave up several alleged Russian spies in exchange for innocent American journalists arrested and held hostage in Vladimir Putin's Russia to intimidate foreign and Russian journalists.

I was greatly relieved to see Alsu Kurmasheva, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist imprisoned on false charges, among those released by Russia.

As the Associated Press reported, one of the released Russians imprisoned in the West, whom Putin personally met at a Moscow airport, was a Voice of America freelancer, Pablo González, also known by his Russian name Pavel Rubtsov. He is a dual Russian-Spanish citizen whom Ukraine and Poland had accused of working for Russian military intelligence. When Polish authorities arrested González in November 2022, I was the first to report that VOA used him as a freelance reporter and had his reporter page on the main VOANews.com website.

At the time of his arrest in Poland, the initial Voice of America news report indicated no association whatsoever between González and VOA. In response to a subsequent inquiry, the Voice of America's management tried its best to minimize his role and the impact of his work on VOA's international and U.S. domestic audience. (A substantial portion of VOA's English news website's web traffic comes from the U.S.)

Voice of America officials had to admit that "Pablo González was a VOA stringer for the VOA News Center," but they added that since "he had not........

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