Helping Opposition in Cuba, USAID’s Longest-Running Mission

By David Brooks and Jim Cason on February 18, 2025

President Donald Trump’s plans to close the international aid agency USAID have put the organization, founded in 1961 as part of the US Cold War strategy to confront the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, under the microscope. Among its first missions was supporting counterinsurgency efforts in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

In its early days, US international assistance was dedicated to supporting Washington’s allies in the fight against communism.

According to a summary by the Office of the Historian of the State Department, one of the first tasks assigned to what was called the Agency for International Development (AID) was to join a special (counterinsurgency) group that included the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department. The group was dedicated to defending the South Vietnamese government and AID was in charge of coordinating economic assistance programs with civil-military action programs.

Apparently, the agency did its job well. In 1962, White House National Security Advisor Robert Komer wrote that AID was more valuable than the Special Forces in global counterinsurgency efforts.

The agency’s role quickly expanded beyond Southeast Asia and by the end of the 1960s, AID was funding counterinsurgency police training programs around the world.

When Dan Mitrione, head of the USAID Office of Public Safety in Uruguay, was kidnapped and murdered in the 1970s, information began to emerge about the former police chief of the city of Richmond, Indiana, and his role in Uruguay in training the Uruguayan police in new techniques for torturing and killing Tupamaro guerrillas.

A quote attributed to Mitrione is that his goal was to produce precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect. Mitrione’s character would be portrayed in the 1972 Costa-Gavras film State of Siege. In 1973, the United States Congress ordered the closure of the AID Public Security unit.

But many of the police training functions were not discontinued, but simply transferred to the State Department and other US agencies, something that was evident during the conflicts in Central America in the 1980s.

Until now, USAID has been perceived in Washington only as a tool of US foreign policy, but most of its funding has been shifted to humanitarian programs. But even in this more benign area, several problems are reported.

In 2018, the US Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported that USAID support for farmers in that country had inadvertently supported poppy production. In another case, the agency had given more than $30 million to a charity in Kenya that knew or should have known about multiple incidents of child sexual abuse, without taking action.

Funding for both programs was eventually suspended. USAID’s Office of the Inspector General warned this week that the funding freeze will make it more difficult to detect cases of fraud or misuse of funds. He was fired the following day by the Trump administration.

One of USAID’s largest and longest-running initiatives is focused on Cuba.

“USAID provides ongoing humanitarian assistance to political prisoners and their families, and to marginalized individuals to alleviate their hardships due to their political beliefs or efforts to exercise their fundamental freedoms,” the agency wrote in 2014.

But there is evidence that they do more than that. In 2009, the Cuban government arrested USAID contractor Alan Gross, who was attempting to enter the island with a SIM card, needed to activate a satellite communication service, supposedly for the Jewish community in Cuba.

“The type of SIM card used by Gross is not available on the open market and is distributed only to governments,” the Associated Press news agency reported at the time.

“An expert in satellite telephone systems and a former intelligence officer who has used this type of chip informed AP that the chips are most frequently granted to the Department of Defense and the CIA, but they can also be obtained by the Department of State, which oversees USAID. A spokesman for the agency told AP that USAID played no role in the acquisition of this equipment for its contractor Gross. “We are a development agency, not an intelligence agency,” he said.

Media impact

The current freeze on USAID has also impacted the $2.3 million in funds that the US government grants to what they call independent anti-government media in Cuba. Reuters reported that Miami-based CubaNet and Madrid-based Diario de Cuba have issued urgent public requests for contributions, as their funding via USAID has been suspended.

In 2023, the United States provided more than $265 million in assistance to 707 non-state media outlets and supported 279 civil society organizations in the media sector dedicated to strengthening independent media and the free flow of information, according to USAID. Nine out of ten independent media outlets in Ukraine are supported by USAID, and the US government provides financial support to civil society organizations that support independent media throughout Latin America.

During his first term, Trump tried to cancel some of these democracy promotion programs, but in the end the funds continued to flow after pleas from Cuban-American lawmakers, including then-Senator Marco Rubio, now the new Secretary of State.

But former officials with knowledge of the internal discussions about USAID’s fate say that this time it is not clear whether these types of programs will be restored.

What is expected is that the remaining US foreign assistance will be more focused on political interests. Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we promote has to be justified by answering three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? And does it make America more prosperous? Rubio said in relation to the suspension of USAID programs.

But those questions have already been answered by USAID’s achievements and purposes, Democrats argue. Last week, liberal Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, speaking at a rally in front of the building that until a few days ago was the headquarters of USAID, declared: “Every day, the United States is safer because of what USAID does. The agency fights terrorist groups and supports freedom fighters around the world.”

For the Trump administration, closing USAID is part of a supposed symbolic war against an overly large federal government, rather than an attempt to reduce federal spending.

Even if Elon Musk manages to eliminate all USAID spending, it would only be a 1.2% reduction in the federal budget. For now, what remains of USAID’s mission and purpose could look much more like it did when it first started operating.

Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English