Bernie Goldbach

Into the wood chipper

· Bernie Goldbach
Into the Woodchipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID by Nicholas Enrich

I am reading Into the Wood Chipper by Nicholas Enrich and hope Elon Musk never sheds that phrase of endearment. Musk’s shockingly ignorant, callous, and bigoted perspectives about America’s humanitarian institutions seep through the 209 pages of this page turner. Pulling back the cloak of anonymity in his preface, Nicholas Enrich publishes three pages of key officials like Musk who watched the systematic dismantling of USAID.

I've worked with loyalists before and felt my hands tense up as Nicholas recounted how career public servants were defrocked. I also worked with military liaison officers in the United States Department of State who co-ordinated the movement of American medical equipment, food stock, and essential supplies into remote parts of Africa.

C-141 flying over mountainous terrain with snow-capped peaks in the background.

Forty years ago, I flew tonnes of this life-saving equipment into Africa several times a year in support of State Department missions. Some of the palletized cargo in the back of my aircraft, often accompanied by handlers who would drive the medical equipment to flash points, would have been organised by USAID response teams.

Musk will deny anybody died after he fed USAID into the wood chipper. So I’m writing some of the names of the Ebola victims into the margins of chapter 20 “Millions of Lives”. And then I will check to see if Musk lets me post the items I’ve saved inside Readwise on Xwtitter.

Auto-generated description: A view of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., from above the 14th Street Bridge.

I reflected on my time in Washington as I finished Nicholas Enrich’s work, wondering what I could have done if I was assigned to the Pentagon when DOGE was running rampant. I had some tools and techniques that Nicholas could have leveraged as secondary communications networks and there were very powerful inter-agency services that might have helped USAID delay or confound the Trump loyalists (who I reckon were not as clever as my Deep State colleagues near the Pentagon South Parking Lot).

The photo above is similar to the look I could get every week aboard special ops helicopters as I flew briefing papers and planning scenarios directly to senior officers scattered along the Beltway and on ramps awaiting departure from military installations. After a few weeks inside the Pentagon with COSMIC clearance, I saw how the public briefing books and the actual compartmentalised plans were maintained. I wish USAID had used a few days between the election of Trump and the invasion of DOGE to implement some of the dark art that Hegspeth now uses to ensure even the best auditors cannot find his hidden appropriations.

When I’m chatting about this past life on TippFM, some listeners have asked when I’m going to write about what I’ve done in a book they can read. I think I’ll borrow some of the vignettes from Into the Wood Chipper. I will need to capture the book from friends in my reading circle first.