Charities Protest Proposed Change in Federal Foreign-Aid Rules

Charities are loudly protesting a new program proposed by the U.S. Agency for International Development to screen nonprofit organizations for ties to terrorists.

The antiterrorism effort, known as the Partner Vetting System, would require international nonprofit groups that apply for grants, contracts, or other financial partnerships with the agency to turn over personal information about employees, executives, trustees, and possibly even aid recipients.

The information would include Social Security numbers, telephone numbers, nationalities, e-mail addresses, and birth dates and would be vetted for possible connections to individuals or groups designated as terrorists by the federal government.

In a notice in the July 17 edition of the Federal Register, the agency said, “The information collected from these individuals is specifically used to conduct screening to ensure that U.S. AID funds and U.S. AID-funded activities are not purposefully or inadvertently used to provide support to entities or individuals deemed to be a risk to national security.”

The notice, along with two others published July 20 and 23, outline the Agency for International Development’s proposal. The July 17 notice stated that the program would begin August 27.

An official with the federal aid agency, who declined to be identified by name, told The Chronicle the start date may be postponed and the proposal revised.

Under current regulations, the agency requires that recipients of federal money vet staff members on their own and certify to the government that no one associated with the organizations appears on terrorist watch lists.

The new rule has outraged international relief and development groups.

“The administration sees a terrorist under every bedcover,” said Philip D. Harvey, president of DKT International, an aid organization in Washington that operates in 11 countries. “The paranoia is getting awfully distressing.”

DKT currently has a $500,000 grant from the agency for a family-planning program in India, and Mr. Harvey says he is unsure he would comply with the Partner Vetting Service it if were to start.

Charities said the most disturbing detail of the proposed program is that the federal agency has requested that the Partner Vetting System be exempt from the Privacy Act, a 1974 law that prevents law-enforcement authorities from maintaining files on Americans not suspected of a crime.

In addition, since the screenings may be based on classified information, “U.S. AID cannot confirm or deny whether an individual ‘passed or ‘failed’ screening,” it said in the July 20 notice.

Samuel A. Worthington, the president of InterAction, a Washington coalition of about 160 charities, said because charities and their employees would be ignorant of their status in the system, it robs them of their legal rights.

“This lack of due process exposes individuals and NGO’s to loss of employment and USAID contracts without effective recourse,” he writes in a letter sent last week to the Agency for International Development.

What’s more, Mr. Worthington said the Partner Vetting System would be an administrative burden on charities, was proposed without consultation with relief and development organizations, and possibly would place aid workers’ lives in jeopardy.

Since charity officials would have to provide information about foreign colleagues and others, they would be seen as an arm of the U.S. government and “terrorist attacks against them can only increase,” he writes.

Mr. Harvey, of DKT, said the new program is reminiscent of the agency’s requirement that organizations that receive money to fight HIV/AIDS abroad sign an antiprostitution pledge.

(DKT sued the agency for the pledge requirement, but a federal appeals court tossed out the lawsuit this year. A separate lawsuit filed by three other nonprofit groups challenging the antiprostitution rule is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York.)

With such requirements, Mr. Harvey said the Agency for International Development is sending a bad message to charities. “It doesn’t want partners,” he said, “it wants lackeys.”

The notice proposing the new program is available on the Federal Register’s Web site by searching under “Partner Vetting System.”