USAID’s Ugly Face: Domestic Meddling, Subversion and Expulsions

US President Donald Trump’s daily thrillers on the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) programme leads us to a curious situation: A $21 million ‘voter turnout fund’ that the agency claims to have released but there is no recipient.

When Trump revealed the payment to India’s Election Commission, S.Y. Quraishi, who was the Chief Election Commissioner during that period, denied any such deal.  He said there was indeed a programme, but no financing. The ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) immediately launched a campaign alleging that the fund went into the Congress (which was then in power) coffers.

The BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya even linked Rajiv Gandhi to the scam and claimed it reaffirmed that ‘foreign powers’ indeed tried to stop Narendra Modi from coming to power.

Then came Trump’s biggest revelation: The $21 million went to ‘my friend’ Modi.

This has shuttled the Delhi establishment.

Neither Prime Minister Modi nor Trump has so far reacted to the latter’s damaging exposures. So far, Trump has made three statements on the subject, each time the who-got-it riddle getting further complicated. We do not know whether Trump himself will be able to get to the truth. There is nothing new in this.

That is what happens to some of the highly rated Senate hearings in US. That is how all Cold War fundings were designed. Confusing code names, wheels within wheels, ‘cloak and dagger’ style and intricate accounting systems make any secret funding really impregnable.

The US development aid is routed through a maze of identically worded agencies: USAID, US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), US Information Service, Democratic Elections and Political Processes (DEPP), Consortium for Democratic and Political Processes Strengthening (CEPPS), India-US CEOs Forum, India-US Economic Forum and Ford Foundation — all closely coordinated with the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).

In 1961, USAID was created by John F Kennedy via an executive order to act as a surrogate for CIA.  Even those who vehemently deny that USAID is linked with the CIA, admit that at times they were dragged into espionage and covert intelligence operations. Kennedy created many such organisations after the Warren Commission exposed the activities of CIA.

The US has been extending economic assistance to India since 1951 through PL-480 (Title II). The Ford Foundation, a private non-profit organization and CARE were operating in India through a MoU signed in January 1952.

One of the earliest US subversions abroad happened in 1953 when it managed to topple the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran. It was the scare of the communist Tudeh Party’s influence on the prime minister that made US to strengthen the hands of the Shah of Iran and with an eye on oil interests.

The US Information Service or USIS was also an active participant in the early years of US meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.

In India, the Kerala intervention happened in 1958-59, much before the USAID was set up. The CIA and USIS together led ‘Operation Kerala’. Danial Patrick Moynihan, who was then the US ambassador to India, in his memoirs admits that it had paid US funds to the Congress and other groups to topple the first communist government led by E.M.S. Namboodiripad. (A Dangerous Place, Danial Patrick Moynihan).

Moynihan said the Kerala payment was made directly to Indira Gandhi who was then a Congress ‘official’ (Congress president). When the memoirs were published in 1978, Indira Gandhi vehemently denied she accepted any foreign funds. Moynihan died in 2003. The memoirs said similar payments were made to West Bengal ‘interests’ to checkmate the growth of  communists in the 1960s

Former Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac has done more research into the use of US funds to topple the first communist government in Kerala in 1957-59. He managed to track what former US envoy at Delhi, Ellsworth Bunker, had recorded at Columbia University’s Oral History Archive. Bunker was emphatic. He said: “It’s a fact that we did give the Congress party assistance (during 1957-59) because we knew the Russians were putting money into the coffers of Communist party”.

While US government’s official website claims that USAID is engaging in democratic reforms, its former commissioner Andrew Natsios wrote in 2020 that it also offered aid and “support friendly authoritarian regimes during the Cold War. This included Taiwan and South Korea when they were under military rule and the Democratic Republic of Congo under Mobutu Sese Seko.”

Look at the ‘Cuban Spring’ operation last decade. Using a list of phone numbers, USAID workers began sending out mass text messages over the platform. When it reached a critical mass of users, it was used for organising ‘smart mobs’ that developed into ‘a Cuban Spring’.

Called a ‘digital Bay of Pigs’, the plan, however, failed to attain the objective. On the other hand, it helped the Cuban government keep an eye on the antecedents of its 40,0000 users. 

A report in Foreign Policy magazine found that USAID had a long history of engaging in intelligence work and meddling in domestic politics of its aid recipients. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, USAID partnered with the CIA’s now de-shuttered Office of Public Safety. In the 1970s, USAID conducted a programme to help train police forces in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. But it was closed later because it had ‘stigmatized’ the agency.

A WikiLeaks cable released in 2013 outlined the US strategy for undermining the Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela by penetrating his political base, ‘dividing Chavsmo’ and isolating him internationally. It was to be carried out by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, the same office involved in funding opposition organisations in Venezuela.

In recent years, several countries have accused USAID of interfering in their domestic politics or attempting to undermine their power. In 2013, Bolivian President Evo Morales expelled USAID officials from the country. He also charged that the previous USAID Programme that had sought to help coca farms switch to new crop was politically motivated. (Ibid)

Recently, declassified documents obtained by investigators Jeremy Bigwood and Eva Goliger revealed that USAID had funded and fomented separatist projects promoted by regional governments in Eastern Bolivia. For this, it had invested more than $97 million in ‘decentralization’ and ‘regional autonomy’ projects in Bolivia since 2002. 

And in February 2013, Kenyan cabinet secretary Francis Kememia claimed that his government had evidence that USAID had hired activists to organise anti-government protests. This, he said, was part of an effort to topple his government. 

In the summer of 2012, ALBA counties (Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda) called on their members to expel USAID from their countries for “meddling in domestic affairs”. The agency was accused of covert political operations in coordination with the CIA.

The writer is a veteran journalist. The views are personal.