Open Secret – USAID is Rogue

For decades, USAID – founded in 1961 by John F. Kennedy to advance US interests during the Cold War via economic development – has been rogue. Saying “it does good” is no defense. Here is why.

First, USAID has long spent money – today more than $50 billion in hard-earned US tax dollars – on programs with virtually no oversight. Where most end up is, literally, a mystery.

Defenders of the USAID approach to foreign aid, including the Biden head, Samantha Powers, who was the Obama UN Ambassador who famously “unmasked” – or spied on – hundreds of Republicans without cause, offer that “children will die” without USAID.  This is a deflection.

The truth is that the top USAID contractors, which do not change decade after decade, have paid hundreds of millions in fines for violating the False Claims Act, yet never get fired, never get removed, never face competition, and continue to make billions, despite flagrant disregard.

More than 65 reports by IGs, auditors, and congressional oversight investigators reveal a pattern of rank indifference to the law, including more than 500 misconduct allegations never revealed to the IG by subcontractors and UN recipients. Why? At USAID, no accountability, no one cares.

How can this be, since these are US tax dollars? The answer is the agency is rogue, has no parent to which it reports, regularly stiff-arms Congress, and is a wandering stepchild of the State, with no leash.

The way USAID contracting works – without meaningful oversight – is that longtime bureaucrats, often ideologically aligned with leftist Democrat appointees – give billions to the UN and non-government organizations through cutouts or contracts with friends of the agency.

More often than not, these contracts are never completed, just papered with window dressing, a process where bids are asked, and surprisingly only one meets requirements, the favored friend. 

These prime contracts are then divided, again more often than not, among countless, shadowy foreign subcontractors. The subs work in countries with weak rule-of-law institutions, and no real capacity – or any will – to monitor the spending and prevent theft, bribes, or mass corruption.

Objectively, since the top USAID recipient countries include Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Congo Ukraine, Nigeria, and South Sudan, countries run by terrorists, criminals, and rights violators, accountability is nowhere. Everyone just looks the other way – and takes our money.

This is true despite the law. The law says no money can go to a country that is “communist” or “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, or other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person,” but an exception that swallows the rule. Money can go anywhere if it “will directly benefit the needy people in such country.” So, free to frolic, no one pays attention.    

Compounding the problem, most recipient countries, primes, and subs are not politically aligned with US national security and never have been. They lean hard left politically, like the programs.

Recent investigations – and they only scratch the surface – show USAID money going to global programs pushing “DEI,” class warfare and redistribution of wealth based on race, ethnicity, and – in the case of Serbia, anti-Christian views, transgender ideology, sex changes, electric vehicles, pro-China, pro-terror, and pro-drug production, including heroin poppies.

The outrage is that much of the USAID money actually works against US strategic interests since no alignment, oversight, or policy demands require otherwise. So, in a word, yes – USAID has long been and remains a “rogue” agency. With no collar or accountability, time for change.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).