The Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked USAID today to turn over all records about the Obama administration's secret Cuban twitter programme as part of a broader review of the agency's civil-society efforts worldwide.
The request included copies of messages the US government or its contractors transmitted to subscribers in Cuba, who never were told about Washington's role in the primitive, text message-based cellphone service that was meant to undermine Cuba's communist government and was the subject of an Associated Press investigation last week.
"I'd like to get a full sense of all your democracy programmes, beyond the Internet, as well, because we're going to judge all of those in context," committee chairman Robert Menendez told US Agency for International Development (USAID) administrator Rajiv Shah during a hearing.
Menendez, who said he supported the Cuban twitter network known as ZunZuneo, said he may ask for separate reviews by other auditing agencies, including inspectors general and the Government Accountability Office.
He said he will advocate that pro-democracy programmes continue to be run by the agency.
Menendez made the surprise request after Senator Jeff Flake separately asked for data about the program under the auspices of Congress's oversight responsibilities.
"Will we have access to all the tweets or the messages that were sent by USAID or its contractors in full so we can judge here?" Flake asked. "Because we have to provide oversight, whether we authorise programmes or fund them."
The USAID administrator told Flake that the agency doesn't have most of them but promised to turn over any documents it can obtain from contractors. "You'll have access to what we are able to gather," Shah said.
Menendez, who made the request without a committee vote, said the review will consider whether USAID's pro-democracy programmes in Cuba were consistent with those run in other foreign countries, and whether USAID should operate what it has since acknowledged was a "discreet" programme.
The AP investigation revealed that the US government took great care to keep its role hidden in the now-defunct ZunZuneo, which was publicly launched in 2010, using foreign bank transactions and computer networks.
The AP also revealed that draft messages produced were overtly political, despite earlier US government statements that the service had a more neutral purpose.
In four congressional hearings over three consecutive days, lawmakers have debated whether USAID, best known for its humanitarian mission, should be running such a cloak-and-dagger mission instead of government spy agencies like the CIA.
