The original mission of USAID was to provide support to developing countries in their efforts to acquire knowledge and resources essential to development.

However, over time, the agency’s mission became corrupted and it was used as a tool for domestic political agendas and foreign covert operations by the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”).

Let’s not lose touch…Your Government and Big Tech are actively trying to censor the information reported by The Exposé to serve their own needs. Subscribe now to make sure you receive the latest uncensored news in your inbox…

Stay Updated!

Stay connected with News updates by Email

Are You a Human? 8 + 2 =

---

The United States Agency for International Development (“USAID”) was established by President John F. Kennedy on 3 November 1961.  Kennedy created USAID to implement the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and consolidate several existing foreign assistance organisations and programmes into a single agency under the US State Department.

In 1998, USAID split off from the State Department and became a stand-alone agency, which led to a lack of transparency and accountability, resulting in widespread waste, fraud and abuse.

DOGE Revelations

The Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”), established by President Trump and led by Elon Musk, began reviewing and terminating wasteful contracts, leases, and grants across several government agencies, including USAID. 

Musk described USAID as a “ball of worms” during a live discussion, stating that the agency is beyond repair and should be eliminated.  He also posted critical comments about USAID on X (formerly Twitter), calling it a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” and a “radical-left political PsyOp”.

Senator Joni Ernst authored an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, describing USAID as a “rogue agency” that has a history of stonewalling congressional requests for information about its activities and criticising the agency for misusing tax dollars and protesting the review of its records by DOGE.

The criticisms of USAID by Musk and Senator Ernst are backed up by detailed lists of waste, fraud and abuse uncovered by the DOGE team and congressional committees.

At the end of last month, a tweet posted by DOGE showing the value of DEI contracts terminated as part of a broader push to reduce government spending on DEI initiatives and other programmes deemed wasteful or unnecessary.  The list included seven DEI-related USAID contracts with a total contract value of $375.1 million.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, the waste and abuse of funds were happening outside the USA as well.

On 3 February, the Trump White House released a fact sheet titled ‘At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep’, which highlighted numerous examples of wasteful USAID spending, including millions of dollars spent on promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) and LGBT activism in multiple countries, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars paid to support poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan that benefitted the Taliban regime.

The next day, the House Foreign Affairs Committee also issued a press release listing several egregious examples of USAID’s wasteful spending in various countries.

Some recipient countries, such as El Salvador, have expressed that they no longer want USAID funds due to concerns that the majority of the money is funnelled into opposition groups, non-governmental organisations (“NGOs”) with political agendas, and destabilising movements rather than reaching real projects that help people in need.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele tweeted, “Cutting this so-called aid isn’t just beneficial for the United States; it’s also a big win for the rest of the world.”

Censorship, Disinformation and Covert Operations

According to former State Department official Mike Benz, USAID’s activities go beyond foreign aid and into radical left-wing cultural and political activism, including disinformation campaigns and censorship efforts in collaboration with the State Department and the CIA, which have been exacerbated in recent years.

Benz, the founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online provided a detailed report on USAID’s censorship operation using the agency’s own internal documents, including a 97-page proprietary ‘Disinformation Primer’ that outlines the agency’s advocacy for economically damaging censorship strategies, many of which have been deployed in America to throttle populists.

USAID’s ‘Disinformation Primer’ was dated February 2021, the first month after the Biden Administration took office.  It proposes censorship action points for various governmental, non-governmental and private-sector commercial actors across society.  The concerns this raises about the “aid” agency’s role in promoting censorship and undermining democratic societies are obvious.

Benz has explained in recent interviews that the CIA cannot lawfully engage in covert operations without a presidential finding but USAID is not subject to the same requirement.  This allows the CIA and the State Department to use USAID to carry out covert operations that they want to hide from the President and Congress.

Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger has written an article corroborating the comments made by Benz, in which he discusses USAID’s history of regime change, destabilisation and censorship.

According to Shellenberger, USAID has been funding censorship advocacy worldwide through its ‘Countering Disinformation’ programme – which is part of its Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening – as a means to overthrow governments abroad or influence their actions.

Trump Administration’s Actions and Plans for USAID

After exposing USAID’s extensive waste, fraud and abuse, the Trump Administration has taken steps to shut down USAID’s head office in Washington, D.C., and is planning to fire over 10,000 USAID staff.  Both Trump and Musk favour abolishing USAID as an agency and the transfer of its legitimate foreign aid functions to the State Department.

The potential abolition of USAID by Trump through executive order is legally questionable but there is a general consensus that the agency needs to be dramatically downsized, with its transparency and accountability restored under the State Department and its functions returned to the basics of its original mission as envisioned by John F. Kennedy in 1961.

The above is a summary of the article ‘USAID’s Nefarious Activities Go Beyond Foreign Aid Corruption’ published by The Daily Economy.   You can read the full article HERE.

Featured image taken from ‘USAID and the history of US foreign assistance programmes’, Alaska Watchman, 10 February 2025

The Expose Urgently Needs Your Help…

Can you please help to keep the lights on with The Expose’s honest, reliable, powerful and truthful journalism?

Your Government & Big Tech organisations
try to silence & shut down The Expose.

So we need your help to ensure
we can continue to bring you the
facts the mainstream refuses to.

The government does not fund us
to publish lies and propaganda on their
behalf like the Mainstream Media.

Instead, we rely solely on your support. So
please support us in our efforts to bring
you honest, reliable, investigative journalism
today. It’s secure, quick and easy.

Please choose your preferred method below to show your support.

Stay Updated!

Stay connected with News updates by Email

Daily Digest

US News Posts

UK News Posts

World News Posts

All News Posts

Are You a Human? 4 + 1 =

Scheduled Maintenance

Sharia Law Now Legal in Austria – What Next For Europe?

UK Online Safety Act is about global censorship – and American lawmakers are noticing

The use of genetically engineered organisms in the food industry is widespread

Rhoda Wilson

While previously it was a hobby culminating in writing articles for Wikipedia (until things made a drastic and undeniable turn in 2020) and a few books for private consumption, since March 2020 I have become a full-time researcher and writer in reaction to the global takeover that came into full view with the introduction of covid-19. For most of my life, I have tried to raise awareness that a small group of people planned to take over the world for their own benefit. There was no way I was going to sit back quietly and simply let them do it once they made their final move.

See Full Bio