The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is (was) an independent agency of the United States government. Current indications are that it may be the first agency defunded by the new Trump administration, in part consequent to investigations by the DOGE initiative (Department of Government Efficiency). The agency defines (or defined) its mission as "We partner to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing our security and prosperity." Historically, the chain of command for USAID does not follow the military chain of command but rather is structured within the executive branch of the U.S. government. USAID operates under the President's guidance and is directly overseen by the Secretary of State with support from the National Security Council. The President has ultimate authority and responsibility, followed by the Secretary of State, overseeing USAID's operations and policy guidance. So while USAID is historically separate from the State Department, both ultimately separately report to the Secretary of State.
With a budget of over $50 billion, USAID is one of the largest official aid agencies in the world and accounts for more than half of all U.S. foreign assistance – the highest in the world in absolute dollar terms. USAID has missions in over 100 countries, primarily in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
A former USAID director, John Gilligan, admitted that USAID was "infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people." Gilligan explained that "the idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas; government, volunteer, religious, every kind." Given that USAID is widely believed and reported to be infiltrated by CIA personnel, and to function essentially as an arm of the CIA, it is ironic that USAID was established by President John F. Kennedy on November 3, 1961, through the signing of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Kennedy aimed to create a more efficient way to counter Soviet influence abroad through foreign assistance, seeing the State Department as too bureaucratic to accomplish this task efficiently.
When American humanitarian groups receive funds from USAID, their reports made the groups they assisted legible to USAID, and through USAID, this information is passed along to the CIA. Father Cotton, a missionary who became curious about the sources of mission work, described USAID as "the CIA'S little sister", and worried that those working on humanitarian and assistance projects were being "plugged into an information network that starts with the U.S. government and to which the CIA is connected". Cotter also understood that the CIA valued missionaries because, like anthropologists, they tended to "spend years working with grass-roots people and helping the unfortunates among them, they win trust and confidence. People will tell them about their hopes and fears, about village happenings, and about whatever there is of interest. They learn who are the most promising leaders, what are the region's problems, and they are often given access to people and areas closed to most outsiders. This is the information wanted by the CIA, and wanted in steadily flowing streams".
While groups such as Anthropologists for Radical Political Action developed critiques of military-linked anthropological projects, at times singling out USAID projects directly linked to war zone counterinsurgency operations, during the Cold War American anthropologists were slow to develop such broad critiques of the ways that modernization theory, USAID, and other development projects directly and indirectly connected with the CIA and Cold War politics
The USAID mission focuses on and has primary responsibility for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. Its charter does not include domestic US programs or focus. And yet, it is now being reported that "USAID Funded Stanford University and Its "Internet Observatory" Project – The Same Censorship Group That Targeted The Gateway Pundit and Parler." This funding is reported to have used the National Science Foundation as the funding conduit. Searching on the Federal website "USASpending" does not reveal USAID funding directly passing to the Stanford Internet Observatory or the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public. Such funding would represent yet another case of Federal Agency "mission creep", as USAID was not chartered to interfere with either free speech or domestic US affairs.
In 2008, the US State Department, through its "foreign assistance" agency USAID, set up a fake social network in Cuba. Supposedly concerned with public health and civics, its operatives actively targeted likely dissidents. The site came complete with hashtags, dummy advertisements and a database of users' "political tendencies".
In 2016, Wikileaks termed the Panama Papers leak a "Putin attack" and that it "was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros".
In addition to apparently funding academic "misinformation" research, USAID has also been used as a funding conduit for various "public health"- related endeavors. This mechanism appears to be used to bypass HHS oversight for various biological research and health-related programs. For example, in 2021, the Daily Mail reported that USAID funded Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance to the tune of $64.7 million. Apparently only a fraction of this funding is being reported via the USA Spending website, the remainder apparently being "dark" or classified funding.
USAID was also involved in a hepatitis B vaccination campaign in Pakistan that was used to gather intelligence leading to the assassination of Osama bin Laden. An American woman (presumably a CIA operative) recruited a Pakistani doctor named Shakil Afridi, referred to as "Kate," who operated USAID's vaccination campaigns in the tribal region along the Afghan border. The goal of the campaign was to vaccinate children in areas near Abbottabad, where bin Laden was believed to be hiding, and to test the DNA on the used syringes to see if they were related to bin Laden, eventually leading to identification of his compound location. Blowback from this operation included suspicion about public health campaigns in Pakistan, leading to a spike in refusals of polio vaccinations and targeting of health workers.
In researching USAID funding history relating to COVID, searching on the Federal USA Spending web portal revealed that USAID has awarded up to 6.9 Billion US Dollars to Pfizer for "COVID-19 VACCINES FOR INTERNATIONAL DONATION" as of July 20, 2021 (contract W58P0521C0002). Of those 6.9 B$, 2.8B$ are reported to have been spent.
