Does a military document prove the U.S. Agency for International Development is "actively helping to destabilize nations"? No, that's not true: The 2021 document presented by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna at a hearing on February 13, 2025, was a scenario involving a fictitious country. Testifying at the same hearing, former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios said the suggestion the agency was involved in destabilizing nations was "nonsense."
The claim originated in a post on X (archived here) on February 13, 2025, by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. It opened:
USAID is actively destabilizing nations without any oversight from Congress or the president. These findings from @MikeBenzCyber are unbelievable to say the least. Why should Americans continue to fund this corruption?
WATCH:
The post includes a 46-second clip of Luna in a hearing holding up various pages highlighted in yellow. Here is a screenshot of the post at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Feb 14 13:42:09 2025 UTC)
What Luna is holding are pages from a 2021 U.S. military document written by the 1st Special Forces Command Airborne titled "A VISION FOR 2021 AND BEYOND" (archived here). There is no evidence the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) helped write the 20-page document. Here is a close-up of one of the documents Luna showed in the hearing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Feb 14 14:17:32 2025 UTC)
Here is page 11 of the 1st Special Forces Command Airborne document:
(Source: VISION FOR 2021 AND BEYOND screenshot taken on Fri Feb 14 14:15:22 2025 UTC)
The document does mention USAID once: in a section about a fictitious scenario called a "Competition Vignette," where Special Forces Command strategizes how best to counter Chinese influence in building a port in the West African country of Naruvu:
... working with local branches of the Naruvian government, DoS, USAID, and NGOs, established job fairs near protest areas, providing disaffected workers with alternative employment options. Within two weeks, the construction company lost 60% of its required labor pool.
Here is the sole reference to USAID, on page 17:
(Source: A VISION FOR 2021 AND BEYOND screenshot taken on Fri Feb 14 14:23:00 2025 UTC)
There is no country in Africa called Naruvu. A Google search of the words "Naruvu" and "Africa" only returned results from other reports indicating the country is fictional (archived here):
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Fri Feb 14 18:11:38 2025 UTC)
During a House Foreign Affairs Hearing on February 13, 2025, former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios (archived here) told Luna that USAID did not write the scenario she was holding in her hand:
I personally doubt very much that what you've been told is accurate.
Later in Natsios' testimony, he said it was "nonsense" to suggest the document was evidence the USAID is actively involved in destabilizing nations:
I'm telling you it's nonsense.
Any person can write AID's name into a manual.
For more Lead Stories fact checks about claims involving USAID, click here.
