The Officials Who Dismantled USAID
Between individual deposition hearings and Russell Vought’s call before Congress, there is no shortage of instances where the reality of DOGE’s destruction is being brought to light. We can now add Nicholas Enrich’s recently published book, Into the Wood Chipper, to that list. The memoir of the former Acting Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID -turned whistleblower offers a first-person account of USAID’s destruction at the hands of DOGE.
Here are the individuals who, according to Enrich, were instrumental in dismantling U.S. foreign aid:
Pete Marocco - Deputy Director of Foreign Assistance, U.S. State Department; Acting Deputy Administrator, USAID
Secretary of State Marco Rubio handed Marocco full oversight authority over USAID, placing someone with a longstanding commitment to USAID’s destruction in charge of it. Marocco served as the head of USAID’s Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Stabilization during Trump’s first term, and was reportedly “hell bent like he is today on finding and validating his preconceived notion that [foreign aid] is all corrupt.” The same allegations of mismanagement that defined Marocco’s 2020 stint at USAID defined Enrich’s experience of Marocco’s disastrous tenure during the second Trump administration.
On January 27, 2025, Marocco led a team of DOGE operatives into USAID’s headquarters, purportedly to root out staff who had “subverted” Trump’s embargo on foreign aid. This incursion—premised on the false notion that the agency had the power to freeze payments on already-approved Biden-era contracts—resulted in a 58-person purge of senior USAID leadership.
Enrich goes on to describe how Marocco used his gatekeeper role over USAID’s public health funding as a tool of ideological discipline. He flatly refused to disburse funds for prevention, treatment, and monitoring efforts targeting bird flu, Ebola, polio, and monkeypox on the grounds that those diseases were not “killing anyone right now.” Ironically, an Ebola outbreak in Uganda was killing people and Marocco refused to do anything about it. Enrich alleged that Marocco personally vetoed his efforts to send PPE to Uganda while simultaneously assuring concerned National Security Council officials that USAID had “approved every Ebola support program.”
Mark Lloyd - Assistant Administrator for Global Health and Assistant to the Administrator for the Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Stabilization, USAID
Another controversial USAID alum from Trump’s first administration, Lloyd stands out in the book as an individual uniquely driven by vengeance:
“When I asked what he thought about dismantling the agency where he had just been appointed as leader, Mark’s eyes lit up. He described with excitement his deep-seated distrust and animosity toward USAID and its staff [...] ‘So, yeah when Pete called me up and asked if I wanted to come back to USAID, I said, ‘Yes, sir, I have a list.’’”
Enrich alleges that Lloyd repeatedly refused to approve funding for lifesaving foreign aid programs, even after requesting that Enrich and fellow bureau chiefs quantify the negative impacts expected from program terminations. When these morbidity and mortality estimates were presented to him, Lloyd allegedly told Enrich to “take a step back” from reminding him of the cumulative cost.
Laken Rapier - Head of Public Relations, USAID
As the head of USAID’s press office, Rapier held direct responsibility for the agency’s public communications, including the obligation to correct the record when false claims were used to justify aid cuts. Yet Enrich alleges that Rapier played a role in spreading the false narrative that USAID had been funding the distribution of condoms in Gaza:
“Karoline Leavitt had highlighted the condoms-to-Gaza example as ‘a preposterous waste of taxpayer money.’ Her statement sent USAID staff into a frenzied scramble to figure out what she was talking about. With no hint from DOGE on how they ‘found’ the Gaza condoms activity [Global Health] staff pored through every project file, work plan, and financial report in a desperate search to uncover the error [...] once the source of confusion was identified, the team immediately informed Laken Rapier [...] but now, hearing Trump amplify the false assertion again the next day, we realized that Rapier had apparently sat on the response.”
In addition to spreading false narratives of USAID activity, Rapier also sought to downplay the truth about the agency’s dismantling. Enrich recounts a February 2025 incident where, in response to reporting that administration officials had lied about disruptions to livesaving aid, Rapier pushed him to publish a memo claiming that “there was never a pause” on activity.
Jeremy Lewin - DOGE Team Leader, USAID
Lewin headed the DOGE team assigned to USAID and made no secret of his primary objective: gaining access to the agency’s internal systems. According to Enrich, Lewin repeatedly pressured USAID’s then-acting administrator Jason Gray for that access, and escalated all the way up to Elon Musk when Gray proved resistant.
Luke Farritor - DOGE Operative
Farritor was part of the initial cohort of DOGE personnel within USAID. He joined Pete Marocco and fellow DOGE operatives Clayton Cromer, Edward Coristine, and Gavin Kliger in the January 27 purge of senior agency staff.
According to Enrich, it was Farritor’s “uninformed and contextless review of the agency’s financial records” that lit the fuse for 58 USAID senior staff members to be ousted:
“Luke Farritor [...] emailed his DOGE colleagues his conclusion that fifty-eight senior officials had subverted the president’s orders (although he hedged that ‘I could be wrong… my numbers may be off’).
Gavin Kliger - DOGE Operative
Kilger joined Pete Marocco and fellow DOGE operatives Clayton Cromer, Edward Coristine, and Luke Farritor in ousting 58 senior USAID officials over false accusations of misconduct.
According to Enrich, Kilger also infiltrated the agency’s emergency notification system to announce the abrupt closure of USAID’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.:
Gavin Kliger [...] tapped into the agency’s emergency notification system and blasted out an ominous message agency-wide: At the director of Agency leadership, the USAID headquarters at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C., will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, February 3, 2025. Agency personnel normally assigned to work at USAID headquarters will work remotely tomorrow, with the exception of personnel with essential on-site and building maintenance functions individually contacted by senior leadership.”
Cartwright Weiland - Deputy Assistant Secretary for Andes And Southern Cone, Department of State; Senior Bureau Official at International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Department of State.
Weiland led the Trump administration’s USAID landing team, the group nominally responsible for understanding what the agency does before the new administration took the helm. But by Enrich’s account, the team had essentially no interest in that question:
“Weiland’s crew showed no interest in global health, or for that matter, in international development at all. Instead they were laser-focused on staff. How many people worked on gender equality, how many on DEI, how many on climate change, how many on policy? Which staff were contractors, which were federal employees? How many staffers were tenured, how many were still in their probationary period?”
Clayton Cromer - DOGE Operative
Part of the initial cohort of DOGE personnel within USAID, Cromer joined Pete Marocco and fellow DOGE operatives Edward Coristine, Gavin Kliger, and Luke Farritor in ousting 58 senior USAID officials over false accusations of misconduct.
Edward Coristine - DOGE Operative
Part of the initial cohort of DOGE personnel within USAID, Coristine joined Pete Marocco and fellow DOGE operatives Clayton Cromer, Gavin Kliger, and Luke Farritor in ousting 58 senior USAID officials over false accusations of misconduct.
Into The Wood Chipper ought to play a central role in the effort to hold DOGE accountable. Understanding how USAID was dismantled is a necessary step in the process of rebuilding the agency—or any of the other institutions targeted by the Trump administration. In naming the architects of USAID’s destruction, Enrich opens up the potential for legal accountability, and social scorn, against the perpetrators of such reckless malevolence.
For a deeper dive into DOGE’s campaign of destruction, see our January report DOGE: From Meme to Government Erosion Machine.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
Map: Trump Has Often Delayed or Denied Disaster Aid
Russell Vought’s Proposed Overhaul of Performance Reviews
DHS is buying access to real-time location data
States are demanding property insurance records to study climate change
They all need to be charged 🤬