John Kiriakou says that while still at the CIA, he was aware USAID gave money to the National Endowment for Democracy amid accusations that the organization was a CIA front involved in money laundering under the guise of public-private partnerships.[1]
Nominal cover, not USAID cover
Kiriakou says there is a formal written agreement between the CIA and the State Department addressing cover issues, and that for his entire CIA career he worked under “nominal cover” as a State Department employee — with no actual institutional backing if anyone had called to verify it.[2] He says he never once encountered a CIA officer embedded undercover inside USAID itself, because the agency instead ran covert operations through USAID rather than placing officers under USAID cover.[3]
Origins and the 1964 shift
Kiriakou says USAID, the Peace Corps, and VISTA were all created together by President John F. Kennedy, and that by 1964 — after Kennedy’s assassination — the CIA was running covert operations out of USAID, a fact he says has since been declassified and is available at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.[4]
The Kissinger letter
Kiriakou cites a declassified 1972 letter in which Senator Ted Kennedy asked the CIA whether it was paying Laotian mercenaries through USAID payroll checks. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s reply confirmed the CIA had paid the mercenaries in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972.[5]