INSIDE USAID
An Odyssey of Foreign Assistance
by
Clifford Brown
Current events / Politics
Publisher: MindStir Media
Publication Date: September 26, 2025
Page count: 282 pages
SYNOPSIS:
This book gives needed context for the current controversy about the US
foreign aid agency, USAID. One evaluation described it as "an eye-opening,
sharply insightful, and often humorous look into the inner workings of USAID
and the broader world of US foreign assistance. Blending memoir, policy
analysis, and rich storytelling, the book delivers a compelling
behind-the-scenes portrait of what it means to work in international
development, from the surreal bureaucracy to the life-threatening assignments
abroad."
Inside USAID is an insider's view of some of the sillier aspects of government
bureaucracy, revealing the adventurous, often risky life of diplomatic staff
posted in third-world countries as well as some of the waste in the system. It
also takes readers through some fascinating and dangerous events in the
author's own twenty-seven-year career with USAID, peeling the curtain on
nearly three decades of diplomatic service across seven countries, sharing
war-zone experiences, absurd government acronyms, failed aid attempts, and
moments of genuine impact.
The stories balance critical reflection with a deep appreciation for the
ideals behind U.S. foreign aid. The book is both a tribute to the unsung
heroes of development work and a critique of the system's inefficiencies,
political intrusions, and sudden dismantling. It contextualizes the countries
historically, politically, and economically, off ering readers a nuanced
understanding of how aid shapes (and sometimes fails) entire nations. The book
also is both a eulogy and a call to action for rebuilding what the author sees
as one of the U.S.'s most effective foreign policy tools.
Witty, wise, and often sobering, Inside USAID is a must-read for policymakers,
development professionals, historians, and anyone who wants to understand the
real stories behind America's global influence through foreign aid.
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DIVE INTO AN EXCERPT:
The Bigger Picture
Did foreign aid work? Yes, but not always. It certainly meant a great deal to the individuals and organizations who received the assistance, even far beyond the obvious cases when we responded to natural disasters and such, saving uncounted lives in the process. I recall visiting a clinic we supported in Guinea where women received medical treatment to repair fistulas (open wounds) suffered during unattended childbirths. These women become so incontinent that they are shunned by their own families and villages and forced to make a subsistence living alone or with only their kids. While I did not start the program, my visit as the USAID Mission Director, to them, was like the second coming of Christ. The drums beat; the ladies sang and danced; their joy and gratitude were unbelievable.
USAID created entire industries in many countries by, for example, investigating which crops could be harvested at times when they would be out of season in the US, such as onions, strawberries, or melons, and/or financing a trial shipment to, say, Miami for a relatively small investment. Years later, in Honduras, over half a million workers made their living shipping onions to the US so consumers could enjoy them during seasons in which they previously had gone without. Shrimp, cantaloupe and melon farms in Central America, flowers from Costa Rica and Colombia, and broccoli and strawberry farms in the hinterlands of Guatemala are all the results of USAID projects and part of trade with the US.
I once helped design a USAID guarantee to US investors in two funds that made collective loans to Guatemalan villages (all the villagers signed the note) to help connect them to the national electrical grid. USAID collected a $30,000 fee from the protected investors, the villagers purchased the equipment and provided the labor, and over three hundred villages got electricity for the first time, facilitating major improvements in their own economic well-being and reducing the pressure they felt to flee to the US. Every loan was repaid in full, though two villages were late. Apart from our own staff, it cost US taxpayers exactly nothing! The US Treasury kept the guarantor’s fee.
On the other hand, plenty of evidence shows that some types of aid (for example, governance and rule of law programs) often did very little, long term, to change the governance or cultures of recipient nations. Look at all the money we and many other donors sank into Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC). I first visited there in 1992. Exact figures are elusive, but the country had received dozens of billions of dollars in assistance from all donors in the years since its independence in 1960. In 1992, it was a total basket case. Mobutu Sese Seko fled in 1997, and it all fell apart. I returned in 2019 after almost another thirty more years of massive foreign aid, both US and European, and it remained a basket case. It still is, and the USAID staff most recently evacuated from the DRC for security reasons (in February 2025) soon found themselves in limbo without help from or access to their prior employer.
I was in Nicaragua in 1999, nine years after Violeta Chamorro had defeated the Sandinistas of Daniel Ortega. We and other donors thought real democracy had blossomed for good. Assistance poured in from all sides. In 2025, Ortega’s back in charge, and whatever donors accomplished in the interim made little difference.
I was in Colombia in 2001, helping to manage USAID’s part of one of the largest assistance programs in the world, called “Plan Colombia,” an expensive effort to reduce coca and cocaine production. Twenty-four years later Colombia is still the biggest coca producer in the world, despite the small army of contractors who sprayed the coca fields and tried to get farmers to grow other crops. Much the same occurred in similar programs in Bolivia and Peru.
. . .
While there is no doubt the current administration intends it, what happened to USAID in 2025 is incredibly cruel and unsettling, especially for those dedicated career staff and the staffs of the many contractors and grantees thrown unfairly and without notice into total chaos. To me and many others, there are far better ways to improve our effectiveness. The sudden, blanket stop-work order has created a feeding frenzy for lawyers that will continue for years—not unlike a major commercial bankruptcy. As you will see below, this is a topic close to my heart. Will it save the USG money? Perhaps in the very long run. Will it improve our standing overseas? Not where it counts, in my view—quite the opposite. More people will die much sooner than otherwise, the environment and biodiversity will suffer, and the US will be much less safe and respected.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Clifford Brown is a retired Senior U.S. Foreign Service Officer who
served for 27 years with the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), including roles as Mission Director, Deputy Mission Director, and
Regional Legal Advisor. His work took him to postings in Kenya, Honduras,
Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Guinea, Peru, and Washington, DC,
with regional responsibilities spanning numerous additional USAID missions.
Before joining USAID, Brown practiced commercial law for eleven years in Los
Angeles as a partner at Ervin, Cohen & Jessup in Beverly Hills,
California. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Whitman
College, where he was also a Thomas Watson Fellow, spending a year conducting
independent research in Latin America. He earned his Juris Doctor from UCLA
School of Law, where he served as Managing Editor of the UCLA Law Review.
Brown is the author of Dilettante: Tales of How a Small-Town Boy Became a
Diplomat Managing U.S. Foreign Assistance (2021), a collection of stories
tracing his path from early work on farms, railroads, and tugboats in Eastern
Washington to a career in international law and diplomacy. He is retired in
Maryland.
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