Fresh out from The Washington Independent: a lot of internal worries about the commitment of Rajiv Shah, the brand-new nominee to head USAID, to the agency’s development and governance missions.

[S]ome USAID program managers and contractors, the people whom Obama tapped Shah to oversee as USAID’s next administrator, aren’t happy. In a series of emails forwarded to The Washington Independent on condition of anonymity by a USAID contractor concerned about the Shah nomination, those within the agency who focus on its core mission of helping impoverished countries improve their governance and foster economic growth wondered whether Shah’s background makes him the best fit person to lead the troubled development agency.

“Looks as though food security and agriculture are the key new directions for both AID and DFID,” said a USAID official, referring to Britain’s development agency, which works closely with USAID, in a forwarded email. “This is a huge pendulum swing from the past 20 years, which were dominated by democracy and economic growth.” The official worried that a White House statement heralding “fresh ideas” for the agency meant that “there is concern the decision will be unpopular among the ‘career men and women of the agency,’ since the President has chosen someone who has never worked for AID and is so very young.”

To be clear about something, these aren’t contractors in the “bloodthirsty money-sucker” sense. (You read me for my subtlety, I know.) USAID is horrendously, woefully understaffed, and so is to a degree dependent on contract employees for its valuable work. But there’s sort of no journalistic shorthand for “the good kind of contractor, or at least not the obviously evil kind.”