If the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement is a entrance for the CIA, we’re about to search out out all about it. A brand new official contained in the company is ready to blow the lid off the entire conspiracy.
That official is Mike Benz, a right-wing influencer who popularized the notion that Taylor Swift is a secret NATO asset and as soon as wrote, below a pseudonym, “I need white id politics to develop like wildfire.” Benz rose to prominence final yr by spreading fantastical claims about USAID, portraying the company as a terrorist group or a spy operation—or each. His feedback caught the eye of Elon Musk, setting into movement the dramatic dismantling of the company. USAID, Benz argued earlier this yr, “is infamous for funding the darkest, most controversial, most horrifying tasks identified to all of mankind.”
So it was considerably shocking for employees remaining on the decimated company when Benz strode into their workplace final week. U.S. officers who spoke with me on the situation of anonymity to explain Benz’s place stated he’s a particular authorities worker, a kind of executive-branch appointee introduced in to carry out vital providers for a restricted time frame. Musk had the identical standing when his DOGE initiative took a chainsaw to the federal paperwork.
Benz’s mission, officers informed me, is to make use of the company’s archives to substantiate his personal allegations about USAID’s pernicious affect on the earth—its position in international regime change, its promotion of “state-sponsored hit items,” and its suppression of free speech. He’s fixated, for instance, on communications amongst USAID employees following the 2024 election, which he has informed associates maintain the important thing to the company’s wrongdoing. However his ambitions are in the end broader, officers stated. He needs to show that USAID has secretly incited so-called colour revolutions, a pejorative used usually by Russian President Vladimir Putin in charge Western powers for widespread uprisings in post-Soviet nations.
Benz didn’t reply to a request for remark. Present and former USAID workers predicted that Benz’s analysis goes to come back up brief.
Until this yr, USAID supplied meals, medication, shelter, and entry to scrub water in a few of the bleakest components of the world. Its applications handled acute malnutrition in Ethiopia, introduced hygiene and sanitation tasks to displaced Gazans, and supplied safety and shelter to Haitians fleeing gang violence. Its roughly 10,000 workers labored in additional than 100 nations; in the newest fiscal yr, it spent $21.7 billion, accounting for a mere 0.3 % of federal spending.
The company was created by Congress in 1961, an outgrowth of Chilly Battle competitors. Humanitarian help, the pondering went, was important to the sort of tender energy essential to counter Soviet affect. In its early years, USAID generally superior CIA operations, maybe most notoriously by means of a blandly titled Workplace of Public Security that skilled police and paramilitary forces in allied nations. A sequence of reforms sought to divorce growth initiatives from intelligence work. Some clandestine work continued. In 2010, USAID created a social-networking service in Cuba designed to kindle opposition to the federal government.
Predictably, USAID is deeply unpopular with autocratic regimes, which accuse the company of meddling of their inner affairs. Along with meals and clear water, USAID grants have supported election displays, anti-corruption watchdogs, and unbiased media shops. In 2012, Putin’s authorities blocked the company’s grants and expelled its employees. Human-rights activists lamented USAID’s departure, however Russian authorities argued that its true goal was improper political affect. The identical argument—that humanitarian help was a smoke display for regime change—ultimately discovered help amongst Trump acolytes.
Enter Mike Benz, a brash 41-year-old who labored mid-level jobs in Donald Trump’s first administration, together with a brief stint on the State Division. Afterward, he based the Basis for Freedom On-line, presenting himself as a “nationwide knowledgeable on how the federal government, companies, non-profits, and enormous web platforms work collectively to censor the speech of Individuals.” This yr, the Trump administration has illegally focused noncitizens for pro-Palestinian speech, in accordance with a federal decide appointed by Ronald Reagan; threatened broadcast networks over unfavorable protection; and inspired campaigns of intimidation towards individuals who criticize the slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. However in Benz’s telling, the foremost menace to free expression is USAID and related U.S. humanitarian missions cloaking plots towards world right-wing actions. “USAID declared censorship holy conflict towards each single populist group,” Benz has stated. If USAID didn’t exist, he argued, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro would nonetheless be in energy “and Brazil would nonetheless have a free and open web.”
Within the weeks earlier than Trump returned to the White Home and put Musk in control of downsizing the federal authorities, Benz’s outlandish claims appeared to ignite Musk’s animus towards USAID. On Joe Rogan’s podcast, Benz argued that the company’s very identify was some sort of psychological operation. “Your mind is being tricked once you see the phrase USAID,” he stated in the course of the December 3, 2024, broadcast. “It’s not an help group.” USAID, Benz stated, “is successfully a change participant to help the Pentagon on the national-security entrance, to help the State Division on the national-interest entrance, or to help the intelligence neighborhood on a type of clandestine-operations entrance.”
Musk reposted highlights from the podcast with the caption, “Mike Benz simply revealed every thing.” Weeks later, Musk’s DOGE initiative started freezing grants and placing company employees on go away. Benz’s assertions—together with his reference to USAID because the “Terror Titanic”—supplied justification for “feeding USAID into the wooden chipper,” as Musk boasted of doing in February. He referred to as USAID a “prison group.” A Washington Put up evaluation on the time discovered that the billionaire had reposted, replied to, or in any other case talked about Benz greater than 160 instances within the earlier yr, and that he had by no means posted about USAID earlier than interacting with Benz’s content material.
Benz’s affect shortly grew. He landed an interview on Tucker Carlson’s podcast and appeared with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in April to have a good time a transfer by the State Division to close down an workplace geared toward countering international disinformation. “That is superb information,” Benz stated.
It was a exceptional star flip for a right-wing activist who as soon as labored within the shadows. Benz used to weblog below the pseudonym “Body Sport,” as NBC Information reported in 2023, exposing feedback he had made about “white genocide” and “Jewish affect.” In a prolonged put up on social media responding to the revelations, Benz stated he was Jewish and that his intent was really to “get individuals who hated Jews to cease hating Jews.”
In a single put up, from 2018, he elaborated on his goals: “I need two issues for the world my grandkids develop up in: (1) A nuclear proliferation treaty on ethnic id politics in America, and (2) a reversal of white demographic suicide.” There have been white nationalists who needed to go additional than that, he acknowledged. “I’m not a White Nationalist,” he wrote. “I don’t have any drawback with White Nationalists; it’s simply not me.”
Musk could have fed USAID into the wooden chipper, however the company isn’t absolutely lifeless. The Workplace of Administration and Funds, led by the highly effective Trump ally Russell Vought, gained accountability for its oversight on the finish of August. A U.S. official estimated that about 75 folks nonetheless work at USAID, managing remaining contracts and serving to switch different features to the State Division.
Nearly all of the company’s workers was once distributed all over the world; they have been laid off or placed on go away. Those that stay occupy the ninth flooring of an workplace constructing in downtown Washington, about three blocks from the White Home. That’s the place Benz confirmed up final week, telling his new colleagues that Vought had employed him as a particular authorities worker and given him a mandate to research USAID from the within. A spokesperson for Vought didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Benz has already chafed at elements of his position, officers informed me. He complained to a number of colleagues concerning the orientation session on ethics, arguing that his standing as a particular authorities worker ought to permit him to function outdoors of conventional protocols, as Musk did. In these conversations, he expressed concern, one of many officers informed me, that he may very well be accused of improperly benefiting from his authorities position by utilizing nonpublic data on his social media. His on-line commentary continues unabated. In current days, he wrote on social media that he holds USAID answerable for politically motivated arrests in international nations, together with in Moldova, the previous Soviet republic neighboring Ukraine.
Present and former USAID employees I spoke with predicted that Benz’s analysis venture will find yourself being in keeping with a sample in Trump’s second time period: acolytes of the president who whipped up supporters with grotesque tales of presidency wrongdoing immediately gaining authorities energy and struggling to search out details to help their mudslinging. This has performed out most notably within the case of presidency recordsdata about Jeffrey Epstein, which Trump and his associates as soon as dangled earlier than their base as proof of Democratic malfeasance however then resisted releasing as soon as they took workplace.
It’s additionally in keeping with the Trump administration’s willingness to dedicate authorities assets to the investigation of far-fetched claims that appear cribbed from extremist on-line boards. In June, I reported that the Division of Transportation had agreed to spend as a lot as $2.1 million to research assertions made by the president that range, fairness, and inclusion applications have been in charge for the lethal January crash at Ronald Reagan Washington Nationwide Airport.
In the meantime, Epstein’s victims say they nonetheless lack solutions. The Federal Aviation Administration remains to be brief on air-traffic controllers, who’re wanted to stop lethal aircraft crashes. And, in accordance with a examine within the medical journal The Lancet, 14 million folks may die over the following 5 years due to USAID cuts.
