Senior USAID official ousted after detailing problems providing life-saving aid

WASHINGTON – A senior career official at the U.S. Agency for International Development was placed on leave Sunday after he disseminated a detailed memo to staff describing the U.S. government’s “failure” to provide lifesaving assistance around the world because of actions by President Donald Trump’s political appointees.

The memo, by Nicholas Enrich, the acting assistant administrator for global health, contradicts claims by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that he has put in place a functioning system for exempting lifesaving assistance from the aid freeze imposed by Trump in his first week in office.

“USAID’s failure to implement lifesaving humanitarian assistance under the waiver is the result of political leadership,” the memo obtained by the Washington Post reads.

“This will no doubt result in preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a massive scale,” the memo says.

The broken system for providing waivers has been noted by aid groups for several weeks but never spelled out in such detail in an official government memo. The ouster of a senior official for acknowledging the problem also underscores the intolerance for dissent among senior USAID leadership.

The memo says the problem with providing exemptions is because of “the refusal to pay for assistance activities conducted or goods and services rendered, the blockage and restriction of access to USAID’s payment systems followed by the creation of new and ineffective processes for payments, the ever-changing guidance as to what qualifies as ‘lifesaving’ and whose approval is needed in making that decision, and most recently, the sweeping terminations of the most critical implementing mechanisms necessary for providing-lifesaving services.”

Enrich on Sunday sent a follow-up message to staff, obtained by the Post, thanking them for their service and saying he had been placed on “administrative leave, effective immediately.”

USAID did not immediately respond to a request for comment.