Nicholas Enrich served at the U.S. Agency for International Development under four administrations. Then he got fired — after leaking internal memos that detailed plans to shut the agency down.
His account is now a book. Into the Woodchipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID, published by Simon & Schuster, went on sale as Enrich spoke with NPR on Sunday, June 8, 2026.
The book covers two threads that Enrich says are inseparable: the Trump administration’s move to dismantle USAID, and his own role in the agency’s response to a 2025 Ebola outbreak. Enrich doesn’t treat them as separate stories. The gutting of the agency, he argues, played out against an active public health crisis — one that USAID staff were in the middle of managing when the cuts came.
Enrich was a career employee, not a political appointee. Four administrations, both parties. That detail is central to how he frames his credibility — and his decision to leak.
He self-identifies as a whistleblower. Whether federal investigators or courts would apply that label is a separate question the book doesn’t appear to resolve, at least based on what Enrich told NPR.
USAID — the primary U.S. government agency for foreign aid and disaster response — was targeted early in the Trump administration’s second term as part of broader cuts to federal spending. Enrich’s memos, which he leaked before his dismissal, reportedly laid out the scope of those plans before they became public.
NPR’s interview with Enrich aired June 8. Whether any legal proceedings related to his dismissal are ongoing wasn’t addressed in the available material.
Originally reported by NPR. Read the original report.
