The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

30 NOVEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL of food aid, but the Department of Agriculture was reluctant to relinquish the program. In the end, the Department of Agricul- ture was left in charge of most international food aid because the administration feared any alternative would lead to cuts in the budget. One more important question to be resolved was the relation- ship of the new aid agency to the Secretary of State and the State Department. “There was a strong feeling,” David Bell explained, “that aid decisions had been improperly subordinated in the previous arrangement to the views and judgments of the State Department’s assistant secretaries and office chiefs.” It was ultimately decided that the head of the new agency should report to the Secretary of State, but not through any intervening layer of State Department officials. Many at State bristled at not having a closer hold on assistance programs. On March 22, 1961, Kennedy’s foreign aid message was deliv- ered to Congress. The president wanted a single agency in charge of foreign aid in Washington and in the field, a “new agency with new personnel,” drawn from both existing staff and the best people across the country. Aid would be delivered on the basis of clear and carefully-thought-through country plans tailored to meet local needs. It would be distinct frommilitary aid because “development must be seen on its own merits.” Kennedy urged a special focus on countries that were willing to mobilize their own resources and embrace reform. Less than a month later, President Kennedy lurched into the botched Bay of Pigs invasion. Yet, paradoxically, this also lent momentum to his calls for an expanded and overhauled aid program. On May 26, Democratic Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas introduced the Act for International Development, the key vehicle for creating the new agency. But if Congress was willing to accept foreign aid as part of the price of facing global communism, it was not going to give the White House carte blanche in its design. Sam Rayburn, the immensely powerful Democratic Speaker of the House, insisted that support for foreign aid would evaporate if the security and USAID spearheaded child survival campaigns with its partners, saving millions of lives with a simple intervention. USAID Administrator Peter McPherson presents information on the Ethiopian famine to President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office. Also pictured, from left: Counselor Ed Meese, Vice President George H.W. Bush, Chief of Staff James Baker and NSC Director Bud McFarland. WHITEHOUSE