Natsios steps away from role at disaster relief agency

WASHINGTON --Andrew Natsios freely admits his life has been a series of disasters. He wouldn't have it any other way.

The Massachusetts native recently stepped down after nearly five years as head of the government's foreign aid agency, overseeing relief efforts for everything from the Asian tsunami to genocide in Darfur to the earthquake that rocked Pakistan.

As he adjusts to his new teaching job at Georgetown University's school of foreign service, he's still scanning the horizon for the next calamity.

"I have been here a month and nothing bad has happened to me," Natsios said with a wry smile during an interview with The Associated Press in his Georgetown office.

Natsios, 56, got his start in politics more than three decades ago, as a Republican state representative from Holliston, Mass. His early support of George H.W. Bush's 1988 presidential bid helped win him an assignment heading the U.S. Agency for International Development's foreign disaster assistance office

"I didn't want the job," Natsios recalled.

But he took it anyway. After witnessing wrenching scenes of hunger and disease in Africa and elsewhere, Natsios soon developed a passion for his work.

Over the years, in various relief roles, he has come face to face with the tide of human misery and brutality in global hot spots like Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia.

"It was too much at times," he said. "It does take a toll. You never really get over it."

Natsios, a father of three, is still haunted by the memory of a Rwandan church filled with the butchered bodies of about 1,000 women and children.

"The women and children had been hacked to death," he said. "The odor in there, the bodies were decomposing. I'll never forget it as long as I live."

In Somalia, he saw dump trucks filled with corpses making morning and nightly rounds.

"They didn't want bodies in the streets when international aid workers were around," he said. "So there were death trucks."

He interviewed a girl in Bosnia who had been gang-raped and forced to watch her brother be killed.

But Natsios can also recall the times his agency made a difference. He said a prime example was USAID's leading role in the worldwide humanitarian effort in Darfur, which was torn by civil war, famine and disease.

"There would have been hundreds of thousands more people who would have died," he said.

His first stint at USAID lasted four years. He joined World Vision U.S., a private relief and development organization, for five years.

Then Natsios wrestled with disaster of another sort: He was called in to clean up Boston's notorious Big Dig road project, which was plagued by scandal and massive cost overruns.

"It was not a fun thing to do, believe me," he said. "I had to fire a lot of contractors and I had to call the FBI once. I hired forensic auditors to come in. My heavens. Every week, something else we found."

When President Bush made him head of USAID in 2001, Natsios knew he was inheriting an agency with low morale and ebbing influence.

He got a boost from the Bush administration, which targeted more aid to fragile states while rewarding good-government nations. The Sept. 11, 2001, terror strikes gave new urgency to foreign assistance.

USAID's budget nearly doubled during his tenure, Natsios noted.

"The president has put more money into foreign aid than any president since Jack Kennedy," Natsios said. "He's been a transformational president for us in this field."

But Natsios has also been outspoken about flaws in the foreign aid system, which he believes is too fragmented among federal agencies and too often driven by powerful special interests.

He was frustrated last year after failing to push through a change that would allow USAID to buy the bulk of its food for Africa from African producers rather than U.S. firms, thus saving the cost of shipping it halfway across the world.

"You can't eat transportation," he said.

Natsios, signaling he will stay active in the debate over foreign aid, voiced some of his sharpest criticism a few weeks ago at a forum in Washington.

"My parting shot was we need to shake things up," he said. "There are too many entitlements, too many sacred cows, too many protections to the system that can't be defended anymore."

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One the Net: http://www.usaid.gov/