The security officials argued that DOGE staff did not have the necessary clearances to view the information, forcing them to legally deny access.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) clashed with senior security staff at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) after the agency denied the DOGE team access to classified systems.
According to Bloomberg, the assistance agency’s operations seemed to be entirely halted, and the senior security staff members were placed on leave.
The security officers argued that they were legally bound to refuse access since DOGE employees did not have the necessary clearances to view the information.
The majority of USAID’s top career leadership, over 50 senior officials at the Washington office, were recently placed on administrative leave, and the agency’s website was taken offline over the weekend. Across different countries and devices, attempts to access usaid.gov were met with a network error or a blank page.
USAID has been governed “by a bunch of radical lunatics and we’re getting them out,” according to President Donald Trump’s Sunday statement.
The move comes amid a weekend-long barrage from Musk, who on Saturday and Sunday launched scathing attacks on USAID. At one point, he accused the agency of funding bioweapon research, including COVID-19, and later described it as “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.”
The recent broadsides from Trump and Musk — who earlier referred to USAID as a “criminal organization” — mark the latest in a series of stunning attacks that have left US-funded foreign assistance overseas nearly paralyzed in recent days. This escalating conflict is shaping up as a test of Trump’s influence, with Musk playing a supporting role, in an effort to undermine an agency that was established by Congress in 1998.
According to Elon Musk’s DOGE, it did nothing improper.
The DOGE team led by Elon Musk resisted the notion that they had committed any wrongdoing at USAID. No classified material was accessed without the required security clearance, according to DOGE member Katie Miller.
Miller was appointed to the position in December of last year. Miller served as Vice President Mike Pence’s communications director throughout Trump’s first term.
The swift actions come after Trump issued an executive order last month to suspend and review US foreign aid. Several senior officials were suspended, and US aid worth billions of dollars, normally coordinated by the independent organisation, was frozen.