Elon Musk: “USAID is a criminal organization”

Young staffers from Musk’s government-efficiency initiative gained access to sensitive information to cap a weeklong effort that puts the aid agency’s fate in question, writes Bloomberg.

With the headquarters of the US Agency for International Development nearly empty on Saturday, a small group of Elon Musk aides arrived at Washington’s Ronald Reagan Building and demanded access to the agency’s suite of offices, including a secure room designed to store classified and sensitive documents.

The team from the Department of Government Efficiency, an effort led by the world’s richest man to cut government spending, was comprised of at least four young men under 30 with backgrounds in tech – “the DOGE kids,” as they’d come to be known among some USAID staffers. They’d been seeking information from the more than 60-year-old foreign-aid agency’s officials for several days, and according to a message sent to senior USAID officials that recounted Saturday’s events, they weren’t taking no for an answer. Four people familiar with that message described it to Bloomberg News.

What followed, according to their descriptions, was a confrontation between the DOGE workers and a security official at USAID who refused the Musk aides’ request to enter a highly secure room. The DOGE employees visited several floors and went from office to office, searching desks.

Before the episode ended, one of the DOGE employees made a call to Musk, who informed the agency’s security officials that he would involve the US Marshals Service if his team wasn’t given access to even sensitive information. Eventually, the team received access to at least some of what it was after.

The episode, which capped a week of tension between Musk’s budget-cutting department and the foreign-aid agency, came as more than 100 USAID employees were placed on administrative leave – including, on Saturday, personnel from the offices of the inspector general, legislative and public affairs, and the office of security.

The personnel moves and attendant controversy – President Donald Trump essentially shut down USAID’s primary mission when he froze foreign aid on his first day in office – have roiled an agency established in 1961 to help other countries alleviate poverty and disease, rebuild after war or crisis and use American funding to push back on Chinese and Russian influence.

On Saturday, the standoff centered on access to a secure room that’s designed for reviewing classified and sensitive information. Called a “secure compartmented information facility,” or SCIF, the room on the second floor of the Reagan Building houses some of USAID’s most sensitive documents and personnel information. While the personnel documents they were seeking are not classified, according to people familiar with them, entry to the SCIF requires a top secret/sensitive compartmented information security clearance. It’s unclear whether the DOGE team held security clearances at that level.

Trump’s allies have placed USAID under intense scrutiny. The influential Project 2025 document, a plan from the Heritage Foundation that appears to have guided the Trump administration thus far, said that the agency had become a “platform to pursue overseas a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism.”

DOGE’s review of the agency began in earnest last week, when the new administration asked detailed questions during meetings about organizational charts, contractors and aid programs, according to five people familiar with the discussions. Leading many of these sessions was Peter Marocco, who previously worked at USAID and the State Department during Trump’s first administration. Marocco’s wife once worked as USAID’s White House liaison.

Throughout the week, people familiar with the chain of events said, meetings centered around obtaining a list of people who work for USAID and preparing memos about moving the agency under the State Department’s foreign assistance bureau. The DOGE team had another task, according to five people with direct knowledge: to collect details from USAID databases about the people who work for the agency and the aid programs they are assigned to. That information is housed within the agency’s office of security, and it is considered sensitive but unclassified because it contains personal identifiable information.

They also wanted information about when employees logged into computers and used their badges to enter conference rooms – the sort of information held in the secure area, according to five people with direct knowledge of the situation. Through the end of the week, they weren’t given access to that, however.

The next day, the DOGE team worked late into the evening and, with Marocco, took steps to change the agency’s offices. For example, artwork that depicted how USAID supported the LGBTQ community or that contained a mention of diversity, equity and inclusion were removed from the walls. Eventually, everything was taken down, according to eight people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Tensions had escalated that day because the DOGE team had still failed to secure access to the badging information it wanted from the security office, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

When they finally gained access, USAID’s website was taken down. A slimmed down webpage was moved to the State Department’s website. “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” Musk posted.

On Monday morning, USAID employees received a mass email saying the headquarters would be closed for the day and instructing most of them to work remotely. Kliger, one of the DOGE team members, was copied on the email. "Further guidance will be forthcoming," it said.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is a “criminal organization” that financed bioweapon research, including projects that allegedly led to the emergence of Covid-19, according to Trump-ally Elon Musk.

The tech was responding to a post that alleged that  USAID funds were used to support gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, potentially leading to the creation of Covid-19.

“Did you know that USAID, using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people?” Musk wrote.

Musk did not elaborate on the allegations, but the post he was responding to said, “the CIA’s deception regarding COVID-19 origins becomes much clearer when considering USAID’s long history of serving as a CIA front organization.”

Did you know that USAID, using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people? https://t.co/YVwyKA7ifs — Elon Musk (@elonmusk).

“USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk wrote in another post, replying to a video about alleged USAID involvement in internet censorship and “rogue CIA work.” USAID is a criminal organization https://t.co/FY7P52XTYC — Elon Musk (@elonmusk).

EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based nonprofit organization, has been at the center of controversy due to its work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The organization has denied that its work involved gain-of-function research, but in May 2024, the US Department of Health and Human Services suspended all federal funding to EcoHealth Alliance, citing concerns over the organization’s oversight of high-risk experiments and failure to report research activities promptly.

The CIA believes it is “more likely” that Covid-19 originated from a lab leak rather than a natural source, the agency’s spokesman said last month after the confirmation of John Ratcliffe as CIA director.

Ratcliffe, President Donald Trump’s nominee for director, has been a vocal supporter of the lab-leak theory, calling it “the only theory supported by science, intelligence, and common sense.” Following the confirmation, Ratcliffe also said the CIA’s assessment of Covid’s origins would be a “day-one thing for me.”

USAID has a history of funding global health initiatives, including the PREDICT program, which aimed to identify viruses with pandemic potential and ran from 2009 to 2020 in partnership with EcoHealth Alliance. In 2021, USAID launched a $125 million follow-up program known as the Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens – Viral Zoonoses – but it was shut down prematurely in 2023, RT stresses.

Russia has raised concerns about biological research laboratories supported by the Pentagon and other US agencies around the world, particularly in Ukraine and other countries near its borders, alleging that these facilities are involved in bioweapon research.

Reporting about US biolab activities was one of the main priorities of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the Russian military’s top official on the hazards posed by weapons of mass destruction. He was murdered along with his assistant in Moscow in December in a bombing attack allegedly ordered by Kiev.

In recent reports, the Russian Defense Ministry has drawn attention to the transfer of unfinished Ukrainian projects to post-Soviet states and Southeast Asia, and said that Africa has become a focal point of interest for the US government, which views the region as an unlimited natural reservoir of dangerous pathogens and a testing ground for experimental medical treatments.

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