UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

Excerpts from piece in The Atlantic:

USAID Hired the Right-Wing Influencer Responsible for Its Decimation

Mike Benz was brought aboard to find evidence for his claims that the agency is secretly a spy operation.

By Isaac Stanley-Becker

If the u.s. agency for international development is a front for the CIA, we’re about to find out all about it. A new official inside the agency is prepared to blow the lid off the whole conspiracy.

That official is Mike Benz, a right-wing influencer who popularized the notion that Taylor Swift is a secret NATO asset and once wrote, under a pseudonym, “I want white identity politics to grow like wildfire.” Benz rose to prominence last year by spreading fantastical claims about USAID, portraying the agency as a terrorist organization or a spy operation—or both. His comments caught the attention of Elon Musk, setting into motion the dramatic dismantling of the agency. USAID, Benz argued earlier this year, “is notorious for funding the darkest, most controversial, most horrifying projects known to all of mankind.”

So it was somewhat surprising for staff remaining at the decimated agency when Benz strode into their office last week. U.S. officials who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity to describe Benz’s position said he’s a special government employee, a type of executive-branch appointee brought in to perform important services for a limited period of time.

Benz’s mission, officials told me, is to use the agency’s archives to substantiate his own allegations about USAID’s pernicious influence in the world—its role in foreign regime change, its promotion of “state-sponsored hit pieces,” and its suppression of free speech. He’s fixated, for example, on communications among USAID staff following the 2024 election, which he has told associates hold the key to the agency’s wrongdoing.

Until this year, USAID provided food, medicine, shelter, and access to clean water in some of the bleakest parts of the world. Its programs treated acute malnutrition in Ethiopia, brought hygiene and sanitation projects to displaced Gazans, and offered security and shelter to Haitians fleeing gang violence. Its roughly 10,000 employees worked in more than 100 countries; in the most recent fiscal year, it spent $21.7 billion, accounting for a mere 0.3 percent of federal spending.

Predictably, USAID is deeply unpopular with autocratic regimes, which accuse the agency of meddling in their internal affairs. In addition to food and clean water, USAID grants have supported election monitors, anti-corruption watchdogs, and independent media outlets. In 2012, Putin’s government blocked the agency’s grants and expelled its workers. Human-rights activists lamented USAID’s departure, but Russian authorities argued that its true aim was improper political influence. The same argument—that humanitarian assistance was a smoke screen for regime change—eventually found support among Trump acolytes.

Enter Mike Benz, a brash 41-year-old who worked mid-level jobs in Donald Trump’s first administration, including a short stint at the State Department. Afterward, he founded the Foundation for Freedom Online, presenting himself as a “national expert on how the government, agencies, non-profits, and large internet platforms work together to censor the speech of Americans.”

In the weeks before Trump returned to the White House and put Musk in charge of downsizing the federal government, Benz’s outlandish claims appeared to ignite Musk’s animus toward USAID. On Joe Rogan’s podcast, Benz argued that the agency’s very name was some kind of psychological operation. “Your brain is being tricked when you see the phrase USAID,” he said during the December 3, 2024, broadcast. “It’s not an aid organization.” USAID, Benz said, “is effectively a switch player to assist the Pentagon on the national-security front, to assist the State Department on the national-interest front, or to assist the intelligence community on a sort of clandestine-operations front.”