March 20, 2025
The Honorable Marco Rubio
Secretary
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520
Dear Secretary Rubio:
We are writing to respectfully recommend a full audit of all USAID grants to Vietnam for disability services and the full recovery of all amounts spent without proper justification. From the latest information available, some $155 million in American tax dollars have been awarded to Vietnam for services to persons with disabilities. For more than ten years, many U.S. citizens and organizations have raised concerns directly with USAID and through their members of Congress about the lack of accountability in how this money was spent – practically none of the over one hundred thousand disabled veterans of the Republic of Vietnam, aka South Vietnam, received any USAID-funded service.
To this day, they are still treated by the communist regime in Vietnam as the enemy for having fought alongside their American allies during the war. Discrimination in the use of federal funds collected from American taxpayers is unlawful. Worse yet, local Vietnamese authorities have routinely gone after those who received donations from U.S. charity groups, robbing them of the small financial gifts they just received and humiliating them in the process. The few religious organizations in Vietnam that dared to help these disabled veterans have been egregiously punished by the government: Lien Tri Buddhist Pagoda in Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City), first to offer services to them, was demolished in 2016. In early 2019, the government demolished shelters that the Redemptorist priests built for disabled veterans, rendering them homeless. Last year, the government ordered this Redemptorist Church to permanently end all its services for disabled veterans of South Vietnam.
Besides the full audit, we recommend a thorough inquiry into USAID regarding:
- The number of disabled veterans of South Vietnam, all former allies of the U.S., having received services supposedly funded by the $155 million in USAID grants to Vietnam.
- The Vietnamese Government’s willingness to allow the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam and the Catholic Redemptorist Church to resume services to these disabled veterans.
- The extent of the Vietnamese government’s retaliation against disabled veterans of South Vietnam for receiving assistance from American citizens or charity organizations.
- The willingness of US diplomatic missions in Vietnam to consult with representatives of the disabled veterans of South Vietnam and religious organizations serving them.
We are not against USAID but believe in improving its operations to ensure that American tax dollars are well spent. Your timely intervention would be greatly appreciated.
Respectfully Yours,
