USAid has put two senior security officials on administrative leave after a tense standoff with members of Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency (Doge) seeking access to sensitive data from the agency, five current and former USAid officials have told the Guardian.
USAid director of security John Voorhees and a deputy have been put on administrative leave after they blocked efforts by Doge members to physically access restricted areas, the people said. The demands led to a tense standoff during which a senior deputy to Musk threatened to call the US marshals in to grant access to the building.
The confrontation and Voorhees’ suspension was first reported by CNN and confirmed by the USAid officials. The Doge officials gained control over the access control system, which would allow them to lock out employees and read emails. They also sought personnel files and turnstile data, two people said.
Musk’s deputees may also have sought access to Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, or SCIFs, and servers used to access sensitive cables with top-secret classifications. Four members of Doge have been granted regular access to USAid as the administration has suspended dozens of senior staff and furloughed hundreds more at the bureau for humanitarian assistance who help the agency respond to urgent crises around the world.
USAid spokesperson Katie Miller wrote on X that “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances,” following an AP report that Doge officials did manage to access the materials, which included intelligence reports.
The Doge crew lacked high enough security clearance to access that information, the newswire reported.
USAid continued to abruptly suspend career staffers through Sunday, with the majority of staff in the legislative and public affairs bureaus cut off from their email. More than 100 career staffers at USAid have now been put on administrative leave, according to reports confirmed to the Guardian by one current and one former USAid official.
“We’re literally coming to work each day waiting to get the email that we’re supposed to go,” said one current USAid official who has not been suspended. “It is very much a terror feeling in that building right now.”
Musk has said that USAid should be shut down as the Trump administration is said to be mulling various strategies to downsize the agency or potentially fold it into the state department. CBS News reported that JD Vance has been put in charge of figuring out next steps for USAid reform.
“USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk wrote on X, the social network that he owns. “Time for it to die.” In another post, he referred to the agency in the past tense, saying it “was a viper’s nest of radical left-marxists who hate America”.
After the confrontation, Matt Hopson, USAid’s new chief of staff, resigned from his position, according to two of the officials. Hopson was one of eight Trump administration political appointees who have taken over the leadership of USAid and have sequestered themselves at the agency’s headquarters at the Ronald Reagan Building. They have rarely interacted with career staff. Hopson’ resignation was first reported by Reuters.
The efforts resemble those at other agencies such as the treasury department and the Office of Personnel and Management where Doge officials have sought direct access to sensitive servers with data on millions of Americans, often over the protests of serving staff and leadership.
Wired on Sunday reported that Musk’s Doge had detailed six young engineers between the ages of 18-24 to carry out the agency’s takeover of USAid’s computer systems. Several of those individuals have regularly accessed USAid headquarters.
The Doge account on X has crowed about cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and Donald Trump has repeated an unsubstantiated claim that the agency was sending $50m in condoms to Gaza where they were being repurposed as bombs.
US media have reported that the president is planning to either roll up or subsume the organisation into the state department, challenging Congress’s authority over the agency. He has also placed campaign ally Pete Marocco in a senior position at the state department’s office of foreign assistance, where he has overseen the ruinous freeze on foreign aid that has paralysed the organisation.
Around the time of the confrontation at USAid, the organisation’s website, including decades of grant records and financial reports, suddenly went offline. For a brief period, it redirected to the White House’s website, a Guardian reporter confirmed on Saturday evening. Now it is simply inaccessible.
On Friday evening, senior Senate Democrats warned that the Trump administration’s decisions to place senior USAid officials on leave and freeze foreign assistance without engaging with Congress “have created a maelstrom of problems that have put our nation at risk and undermined American credibility around the globe”.
They warned Trump away from reported plans to downsize or even subsume the agency into the state department. “It is imperative that we maintain an independent development voice and capability within the US government,” wrote the senators. “USAid is, by statute, an independent establishment outside of the State Department. Any proposal to modify that structure would require an Act of Congress.”
