MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For more on what's happening at USAID, our co-host Leila Fadel spoke with Andrew Natsios. He is a conservative Republican - that's how he described himself. And he led USAID under President George W. Bush.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: I want to start with what Musk has said about USAID. It's a criminal organization that needs to die. He's referred to it as a ball of worms. And President Trump said this - we'll just play this clip.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: USAID, run by radical lunatics. And we're getting them out.
FADEL: Now, you spent five years heading this agency. Is it rampant with fraud, waste and abuse and run by, quote, "radical lunatics," as we heard from Trump?
ANDREW NATSIOS: Absolutely not. That's all nonsense. And in terms of accountability, there are layer upon layer of institutions and controls within the system. Forty percent of the aid officers, what they do is they make sure all the laws are complied with, but most importantly, that none of the money is misspent or stolen.
FADEL: Now, what is the impact of 90% of USAID's foreign aid contracts being slashed?
NATSIOS: Well, I mean, they're basically destroying the agency. They've laid off the 4,000 career direct hires. They're 1,800 foreign service officers. Most of the staff actually are foreign service nationals who are from the country we work in. The greatest strength of aid was the missions. And many of the local staff go on to become prime ministers, presidents, cabinet ministers. The first woman president of Costa Rica was a foreign service national who worked for USAID for 10 years. This is the case around the world. It was a training ground. And so we are now shutting down a system that trains people - and I might add, and they're very pro-American people - to public office in the developing world. Why would we do that? It's crazy.
FADEL: And there are a sizable number of Americans who support this move who would say, why is all this U.S. money going abroad when it should be spent here for Americans struggling? Why support continuing this funding, and how does it benefit the U.S.? I mean, this is an organization that was created under President John F. Kennedy and has been providing foreign aid for six decades.
NATSIOS: Yes. For example, we shut down the aid mission in Panama because it's become a middle-income country. As soon as aid left, guess who moved in? The Chinese.
Is the Panama Canal important to the United States? Of course, it is. The Panama Canal almost shut down because there was a big drought. And what we typically would do, the government will frequently go in countries all over the world in the Global South. If they have a problem they can't solve, they'll go to the aid mission director and the U.S. ambassador and say, can you help us? But we weren't there. We had left.
Fifty percent of the food that's sold commercially goes through what are called choke points on the high seas - one of which is the Suez Canal. Another is the Panama Canal. And we're one of the biggest exporters of food in the world. And we need open seas in order to ship our food, or it's going to affect the Midwest farmers.
The other thing is happening is there's still threats from these radical, fundamentalist religious groups in Africa and the Middle East that are threatening our allies. AID has a role to play in stabilizing things.
FADEL: So really, what you're saying is that this move creates a less stable world and also cedes power and influence to China that's coming in with its Belts and Roads Initiative - this loan program, into a lot of these countries.
NATSIOS: Exactly.
FADEL: Now, you're a lifelong Republican, active in the party, but you're not in step with your party right now. Republican lawmakers have stayed silent. Some made really tepid objections to the dismantling of USAID and other legally questionable actions by the administration. Why do you think they're not making the same objections that you are?
NATSIOS: Privately, they'll tell you, we're big supporters of aid. I think they're intimidated. They're afraid. And a lot of the people who are in the party now are devoted to the president and are carrying out his agenda and are getting quite aggressive about it.
FADEL: Aid groups and advocates have warned that there is and will be loss of life. Life-saving programs, including ones that provide HIV medications, have been terminated in Sudan. The most catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the world right now, for example, has a thousand food aid kitchens that were supported by USAID. What fills the vacuum for USAID work?
NATSIOS: No one does.
FADEL: No one does.
NATSIOS: Sixty percent of the food at the World Food Program, a U.N. agency, distributes comes from AID. That's shutting down now. So what's going to happen is a lot of people are going to die. I mean, there's no other way of putting it. I'm not trying to be an alarmist. Thousands of staff from the Global South who run many of these programs have been laid off.
FADEL: Andrew Natsios, a former administrator of USAID and professor at Texas A&M University, sharing his insights on the recent dismantling of the agency and its broader implications. Thank you so much for your time.
NATSIOS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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