alt Hacker NewsI would be interested in reading some reporting about USAID's role in support of the CIA (or DoD intelligence?). Please recommend some that helped form your opinion.
I have, luckily, read a personal account of the logistical assistance that a USAID contractor had [0]. Doug Muir wrote about improving customs practices in Rwanda and training locals to take over for him. Improving, in this case, means standardizing inspections of trade goods to decrease holding time.
[0] https://crookedtimber.org/2025/03/08/usaid-my-next-to-last-p...
Look at phoenix program in Vietnam. More recently you have that https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/03/cuban-twitter-and-other... .
Also declassified files about mkultra and mknaomi mentioned USAID but I didn't read the specifics so it might not be that bad.
But yeah, I've never read the book you're talking about, but USAID usefulness wasn't so much in medicine and food (which are still important), but in organisational, logistics and administrative support to NGOs that really increases their effectiveness, and especially small NGOs like libraries without borders or OLSF( my cousin directed this one for a few years, that's how I know how useful USAID was)