1 the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Foreign Assistance Series ANDREW NATS
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Foreign Assistance Series ANDREW NATSIOS Interviewed by: Carol Peasley Initial interview date: April 24, 2018 Copyright 2019 ADST This oral history transcription was made possible through support provided by U.S. Agency for International Development, under terms of Cooperative Agreement No. AID-OAA-F-16-00101. The opinions expressed herein are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. TABLE OF CONTENTS Childhood and Early Background Grandparents: Greek Immigrants Lowell and Holliston, MA Childhood Congregational Church – and The Heifer Project Childhood Trip to Greece – and Seeing USAID Results Famine in Greece – Remembering Uncle Demetrius Georgetown University – BA; 1971 Massachusetts Political Life Elected to State Legislature in 1974 – Calvin Coolidge’s Seat Friendship with Andrew Card Republican Party Chairmanship at 29 Years of Age – “Blood Sport” 1980 Presidential Campaign Announcing Selection of George H.W. Bush as Reagan Vice-President Choice Introduction to USAID by Peter McPherson Director of USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and Assistant Administrator for Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs (BHA) 1989-1993 Woods Report – and Thoughts About Development Theory Replacing Julia Taft Three Early Emergencies Train Explosion in Ufa, Russia Tiananmen Square Southern Sudan Growth of OFDA: $20 million to $200 million 1 Civil Wars: Mozambique, Sudan, and Ethiopia Soviet Union – Preventing Food Crisis – and Building Relations with Senior Government Official – the Man Who Saved Gorbachev Against Coup DART Teams – Overseeing First Deployments Shifting OFDA to Focus on Complex Humanitarian Emergencies Relief and Development Conflicts – Changing Organizational Culture First Gulf War – Natsios Mobilized and Military/OFDA Collaboration and Protecting Palestinians in Kuwait Somalia and Bosnia – Active Duty Army Reserve Assignment More OFDA and Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs Food Aid Reform – Local Procurement Southern Africa Drought of 1991-92 Clash of Counter-Bureaucracy with Development Kurdish DART Team – Fred Cuny and Dayton Maxwell Role of OFDA in Defining USG Strategy Support by Joint Chiefs of Staff “Outing” the Iraqi Secret Police Soviet Food Aid Analysis – Fred Cuny Study Fred Cuny Papers at Texas A&M University OFDA: Value of Decentralized Decision-making in Emergencies World Vision – Vice President for International Programs 1993-1998 Advising USAID About NGO Efforts to Move Food Aid to USDA North Korea Famine – Food Aid and Politics U.S. Committee on South Sudan Sudan – Miscellaneous Thoughts South Sudan – Thoughts on Where Things Went Bad John Garang’s Death 2005: USAID Sudan Mission Director Appointment 2006: Meeting with Sheik Musa Hilal, Militia Leader Back to Massachusetts 1998-2000 Secretary of Administration and Finance Director of “Big Dig” in Boston – Contractor Challenges USAID Administrator 2001-2006 Comparing “Management Rules” with Secretary Powell Senior Management Training Afghanistan: Pre and Post 9/11 President Bush Policy to not use Food Aid as a Weapon President Bush Meeting with African Leaders – My AID Administrator Doing a Good Job? Millennium Challenge Account and Creation of the MCC – 2 Early USAID Support Technical Staff – Strengthening Pillar Bureaus and Centralization Creation of DCHA, Office of Military Affairs, and Office of Conflict, Mitigation, and Management Global Development Alliance September 11, 2001 – and Follow-up Security Efforts Post-9/11 Visit to “Stans” and Northern Afghanistan Building USAID Afghanistan Program – Planning vs. Reactive Programming Kabul-Kandahar Highway Agriculture – high yielding wheat seed Schools and Text Books – threatened law suits from Right and Left Inter-Agency Challenges Afghan Task Force Within USAID American University of Kabul Media Program – Development of TV and Radio Industry Inspector General for Afghanistan Agriculture/Irrigation Physical Buildings vs. Capacity Building Pre-9/11 Efforts to Connect Foreign Assistance to U.S. National Interests Iraq: Correlation Between USAID Activities and Lower Troop Casualties USAID Budget Authority Keys to Well-Functioning Bureaucracy Consensus on “mission” or objectives Autonomy from other agencies Results-oriented operations Creation of State Department’s F Bureau – Effort to Eliminate Turf Battles Goes Awry Creation of PEPFAR – USAID vs. CDC and Prevention vs. Treatment Building USAID Iraq Program Reconstruction Planning Process DOD Takes Over Delayed Start of Agriculture Programming Fuels Insurrection Marsh Restoration C-SPAN Filming of USAID in Iraq Natsios Memo with Recommendations on Iraq Real Reconstruction vs. Infrastructure: USAID vs. CPA 2004 Bob Gersony Review of USAID in Iraq – highly positive Thoughts on Senior Staffing Higher Education Reform – Critical to Changing a Society – Lost Opportunity in Iraq Sudan Darfur – Gathering Evidence and UN Security Council Resolution and Forecasting Casualties North-South Peace Agreement – USAID Role 3 Aceh Tsunami – Massive U.S. Response Rapid Increase in U.S. Approval Rate Former Presidents Clinton and Bush – Public/Private Response Modernizing USAID Business Systems Electronic Procurement System Management Information System White Paper – and New Budgeting System Employee Surveys: Using and Making Public USAID Branding Campaign Global Development Alliance Improving Response to Fragile States – New Structures Disabled Initiative Major Programmatic Changes in Ethiopia – Major Results Expanding USAID Focus on Economic Reform and Growth INTERVIEW Q: This is Carol Peasley interviewing Andrew Natsios. We are in College Station, Texas. The date is April 24, 2018. Childhood and Early Background Let’s get started, Andrew. Maybe you could start by talking a little bit about your childhood and youth, where you were born and brought up, education, and then evolving into how you ended up with the career that you ended up having. NATSIOS: My family emigrated from Greece in the early 20th Century. In 1905, my namesake, Andrew Natsios, emigrated, and my mother’s parents in 1907. Q: Was Andrew Natsios your grandfather? NATSIOS: Yes. He could broken English, and was illiterate in Greek and in English. He worked in the mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, for 60 years until he was 74 years old, making about seven dollars a week. He walked to work, never owned a car, and lived in tenements. He and my grandmother had five sons, who all went to college and became professionals, and one daughter. All their children rose to the middle class, mirroring the remarkable story of many immigrant families in the United States. Two of my uncles participated in the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under Allen Dulles in the late 1940s, during the Greek civil war. Though they were born in the United States, these uncles learned perfect Greek in the tenements of Lowell, 4 which was 20% ethnically Greek in those days. Because of this, they could enter Greek villages during the civil war without exposing their American origin. Allen Dulles was a genius in recruiting Americans from various ethnic groups into the CIA in those early days. My uncle Nick served as station chief in four countries, including Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 1960s, under Henry Cabot Lodge. My uncle warned against trying to get rid of Ngo Dinh Diem, but Embassy ignored him. My uncle Jim was also a station chief, in Tunisia I believe, and met George Bush when he was CIA director. Jim is 90 years old now, and is the last living brother of my father. My father was a textile chemist for the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps research labs in Natick, Massachusetts. He designed the materials used for astronauts’ suits used for the lunar landing, as well as the camouflage for the first military uniforms used in Vietnam. When I was six years old, we moved to Holliston, a small New England town about 35 miles west of Boston in eastern Massachusetts. This is where I grew up, eventually serving as a state representative in the Massachusetts legislature for 12 years. I have two very different roots. On one hand, I come from an immigrant family. On the other hand, I was brought up in a town comprised of Anglo-Saxon, Irish, and Italian whites—half the town Protestant and half Catholic with a small Jewish community. As I was raised in the Congregational Church, part of me is a still the Puritan from New England. Q: [Laughter] NATSIOS: Though I went back to the Orthodox Church 9n 1998, I was brought up in the Congregational Church, the Church of the Puritans and Pilgrims in New England. My parents sent me there when I was six years old, so I didn’t have a choice. Still, I was very active in the church. I served on the board of deacons. We had mission groups. When I was a kid, the Congregational Church was involved in supporting the Heifer Project, an NGO out of Arkansas that does work with animal husbandry in developing countries. We used to give money and read all the stories about the people in poor countries who received animals from Heifer. That was my first sort of connection to development work. My American-born, ethnically Greek parents had not been to Greece before 1963, when our whole family visited. That was my first experience in a very poor, developing country, which is what Greece was at the time. I was 13 and my sister was ten. In my grandmother’s city of Trikala, in central Greece, we saw an open casket funeral for a baby where the family was in a procession through the village to the cemetery. My sister saw this and was in shock over it. She stopped talking for a couple of days, and we didn’t know why. My mother had to explain to my sister why this had happened; she explained that babies aren’t supposed to die, but this happens sometimes. Greece had high infant mortality rates in those days, perhaps as high as 60 per thousand births. But now, Greece, despite all the political chaos, has Western levels of health indicators.