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(((Hillary's))) forgotten foreign aid fiascos

(((Clinton's State Department))) doled out billions to corrupt governments…

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Hillary Clinton is the most qualified presidential candidate in history, according to President Obama. Much of her managerial experience stems from her four years as secretary of State. The biggest program she oversaw there was foreign aid, which spent roughly $50 billion a year between 2009 and 2012. Mrs. Clinton stated in 2009 that “a lot of these aid programs don’t work,” lamented their “heartbreaking” failures, and promised fundamental reform at the Agency for International Development (AID).

But “see no evil” was often the Clinton State Department motto regarding U.S. aid. The Ethiopian government received more than $3 billion in U.S. aid while Mrs. Clinton was secretary. That regime has a simple recipe for democracy: Those who vote wrong do not eat. A 2011 BBC investigation “found villages where whole communities are starving, having allegedly been denied basic food, seed and fertilizer for failing to support Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.” The U.S. government knew of the abuses but muzzled itself to avoid offending the Ethiopian regime. A confidential Nov. 25, 2009 email from the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa to Washington noted, “Efforts to monitor food distribution are aimed at making sure vulnerable people are fed and cannot be expanded to include investigation of political pressures applied to those people without jeopardizing that primary mission.”

Corruption has long plagued foreign aid and Mrs. Clinton claimed to be spearheading a global crusade against graft. But when push came to shove, she went to the barricades for the kleptocracies’ right to collect U.S. tax dollars. When Republicans crafted legislation in 2011 to prohibit aid from going to graft-ridden governments, Mrs. Clinton warned that restricting handouts to nations that fail anti-corruption tests “has the potential to affect a staggering number of needy aid recipients.”

Despite Mrs. Clinton’s reform pledge, AID continued burying boondoggles with bureaucratic bluster. At a 2011 congressional hearing, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican and chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, scoffed at AID’s boasts on its Iraqi projects: “262,482 individuals reportedly benefited from medical supplies that were purchased to treat only 100 victims of a specific attack; 22 individuals attended a five-day mental health course, yet 1.5 million were reported as beneficiaries … and 280,000 were reported as benefiting from $14,246 spent to rehabilitate a morgue.”

During Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, the State Department and AID gave grants to promote investigative journalism in numerous developing nations as part of its “good governance” programs. But exposing abuses was only a virtue

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/hillary-clintons-forgotten-foreign-aid-fiascos/

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MORE AUDITS UNCOVER AID FAILURES

(Updating Backgrounder No. 618, "Inspector General Audits Reveal Foreign Aid Failures and Boondoggles," November 23, 1987.) The House of Representatives last month passed a $14.3 billion foreign aid appropriations bill. An unusually congenial bipartisan alliance of supporters maintains that this assistance is vital to help the world's poor and to meet their "basic human needs." Yet congressionally mandated reviews of the Agency for International Development (AID) by its Inspector General (IG) con- tinue to reveal that, instead of addressing the root causes of poverty, U.S. foreign aid projects too often are costly burdens that ill serve the countries receiving such assistance. Examples:

Egypt. Ust year IG auditors inspected Egyptian schools participating in a $190 million AID education project. Since AID is required by law to give preference to U.S.-made goods for its projects, the agency had contracted to U.S. companies for all the equipment. Among the auditors' findings: the overhead projectors with American-type plugs could not fit into Egyptian electrical outlets and were thus jerry-rigged, resulting in hazardous bare wires and erratic cur- rent. Five thousand U.S.-built stoves valued at $135,000 were not being used because they were designed for pipeline gas, while the schools used only tanked gas. School administrators ex- plained that more acceptable stoves were readily available locally and the U.S. ones were not needed. Similarly, the 8,640 U.S. hand-cranked ice cream makers shipped at a cost of $95,040 were not being used. Schools reported that the models were unsuitable for Egyptian cream, ice was not readily available at most locations, and better models with motors were available in Egypt anyway.

Egypt. IG auditors discovered that in a $12 million AID-financed system to pipe clean water from the Egyptian city of Suez to the Suez Cement company about 38 miles away, AID project designers never specified who would operate the system. When the project was completed in September 1986, no Egyptian government agency related to the project accepted responsibility for operating it. The pipeline has yet to carry water.

More: https://www.heritage.org/public-health/report/more-audits-uncover-aid-failures

Whistleblowers Expose USAID's Pervasive Hidden Failures

Between 2011 and 2013, inspector general's office hid negative findings about USAID programs from the public, Washington Post investigation finds

Internal documents and whistleblowers reveal that the U.S. Office of the Inspector General, which is tasked with overseeing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)'s billions in civilian foreign aid, is abrogating its watchdog duties by censoring audits and reports to hide findings that reflect negatively on that agency, according to an investigative article published Wednesday in the Washington Post.

"Eight current auditors and employees" anonymously told the Post that information deemed unfavorable to USAID has been removed from audits from 2011 to 2013, according to the Post. "In some cases, the findings were put into confidential 'management letters' and financial documents, which are sent to high-ranking USAID officials but are generally kept from public view," journalists Scott Higham and Steven Rich report. Under the tenure of acting inspector Michael G. Carroll, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has grown increasingly soft on the agency, according to whistleblowers. Carroll withdrew his nomination to become permanent inspector general on Wednesday.

“The office is a watchdog not doing its job," Darren Roman, an audit supervisor at the inspector general’s office who retired in 2012, told the Post. "It’s just easier for upper management to go along to get along. The message is: ‘Don’t make waves, don’t report any problems.’”

The Post obtained a dozen draft audits, which are not publicly shared, from the OIG covering international projects between 2011 and 2013, ranging from a program to address waste and fraud in U.S. aid to Pakistan to an agricultural program in Haiti to a $4.6 million payment to free detained NGO workers in Egypt. The audit drafts were then compared with the publicly released final reports. According to the Post's analysis, "more than 400 negative references were removed from the audits between the draft and final versions."

The report states: "At the USAID inspector general’s office, several auditors and employees told the Post that their authority has been undermined, and some have hired attorneys to file whistleblower and employment discrimination claims."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/23/whistleblowers-expose-usaids-pervasive-hidden-failures

>>4624510

>Whistleblowers Expose USAID's Pervasive Hidden Failures

>Between 2011 and 2013, inspector general's office hid negative findings about USAID programs from the public, Washington Post investigation finds

>"Eight current auditors and employees" anonymously told the Post that information deemed unfavorable to USAID has been removed from audits from 2011 to 2013, according to the Post.

THIS

>>4624542

>>Whistleblowers Expose USAID's Pervasive Hidden Failures

>>Between 2011 and 2013, inspector general's office hid negative findings about USAID programs from the public, Washington Post investigation finds

>>"Eight current auditors and employees" anonymously told the Post that information deemed unfavorable to USAID has been removed from audits from 2011 to 2013, according to the Post.

>THIS