Toxic mistrust, impossible deadlines, unclear direction, and demoralization.
That’s the vibe among the skeleton crew inside USAID’s so-called legacy unit, which is tasked with settling termination agreements between the defunct foreign assistance agency and its now-former NGO and contractor partners to whom it owes hundreds of millions of dollars.
Multiple insiders, including four former USAID officials with direct knowledge of the situation, painted a similar picture of a closeout process that has gone from daunting to dysfunctional in the last six months. What was once a 10,000-person strong bilateral aid operation is now a few dozen beleaguered career officials working under the suspicious eye of political appointees from the White House Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, without any agreement over how they are supposed to shut down the agency without breaking the law, they told Devex.