It seems USAID security was trained for every contingency except that of an American citizen showing up at an American government agency — an agency, mind you, that is supposed to be something like the governmental equivalent of Samaritan’s Purse — and asking mundane questions.

One of the two receptionists invited me to sit down to prevent me from overhearing the phone conversation. As the security guard spoke quietly and nervously on the phone, a host of people came and went through the foyer. Whatever they were doing here, shut down they were not. //

This accusation was quickly dropped in favor of another: espionage.

I freely admitted it to the NSA man: “Yes, I am spying. On my government, not yours” — a cheeky reply but one that clearly caused some consternation.

“Do you have an Egyptian government permit to take photos of Egyptian government buildings?” he asked.

“No.” He briefly looked triumphant. “But I’m not taking photos of Egyptian government buildings. That,” I pointed in the direction of USAID, “is an American government building, and I am an American.”

Annoyed, he left again, pacing on the phone. They clearly did not know how to proceed, and while being charged with espionage is a terrifying prospect, I knew it was problematic for them because it would be a tacit admission that there was more than pallets of rice and canned goods behind the high spiked walls of USAID in Egypt. //0

Safely out of the country, there are several takeaways from this incident. The first is that this is how an intelligence agency behaves, not a benevolence arm of the United States. USAID security guards had been embarrassed by my previous visit where I had breached their security, not by force but with their assistance. This was, for them, a kind of payback. But neither Cairo police nor the NSA had any interest in that. Indeed, they treated USAID security contemptuously.

The second is that I was, I think, dealing with three governments: the authentic U.S. government represented by the naïve fellow who took my call at the U.S. Embassy, the Egyptian government represented by Cairo police and the state security apparatus, and the shadow government represented by whoever it was inside USAID that had the NSA on speed dial. President Trump doesn’t yet have all his own people in place, and the deep state, as real as any branch of government, is deeply embedded. Nowhere is that truer than in the corrupt USAID.

The third is the desperate attempts to get me to enter the USAID compound. One had the feeling they were trying, to quote Fox, to “Jamal Khashoggi” me. Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, entered a Saudi consulate in Istanbul of his own accord and was there murdered by his own government.

Finally, this was a monumentally stupid response. Had the USAID office, on my first visit, simply said something like, “Yeah, President Trump is slashing the USAID, and we are in the process of closing shop,” there would be no story here. But the fearful, reactionary response smells of corruption. This was the Streisand effect, initiating calls from high in our government to ask: What the hell is going on at USAID in Egypt?

I will leave that question unanswered. But with war in Gaza, Trump’s plan to resettle Palestinians, and mounting evidence that USAID has been funding not only the invasion of the United States by illegal aliens but the very demise of our republic and even terrorism, the destruction of this rogue agency cannot come soon enough.