The top security official at the U.S. Agency for International Development was put on administrative leave on Saturday night after refusing to give representatives of Elon Musk access to internal systems, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.
John Voorhees, U.S.A.I.D.’s director of security, is the latest senior official at the agency to be put on administrative leave. Last week, Trump administration appointees suspended about 60 senior officials and fired hundreds of contractors. There has been talk among current and former agency employees and lawmakers that the agency could be subsumed within the State Department in a drastically reduced form.
The deputy security official working under Mr. Voorhees was also put on leave, one U.S. official said.
U.S.A.I.D., which is funded by Congress and takes some guidance from the State Department, has otherwise operated independently. Mr. Voorhees could not immediately be reached for comment.
“USAID is a criminal organization,” Mr. Musk wrote on Sunday in a social media post that many aid workers saw as confirmation the agency would soon be absorbed into the State Department and that some viewed as a potential threat to their personal safety. “Time for it to die.”
U.S.A.I.D., which spent about $38.1 billion on health services, disaster relief, anti-poverty efforts and other foreign assistance programs in fiscal year 2023, makes up less than 1 percent of the federal budget.
Multiple people who identified themselves as representatives of Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency were on site at U.S.A.I.D. last week, demanding access to the agency’s financial and personnel records, according to two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the activity and the agency’s inner workings.
The cost-cutting effort led by Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, is not a department but rather a task force that nevertheless has been granted unusual power. An executive order signed by President Trump gives its workers unfettered access to government agencies. But in theory, the employees would still need to get proper security clearances to access classified material.
The employees working for Mr. Musk’s task force who clashed with Mr. Voorhees were seeking to enter a secure area of the agency’s offices to get at classified material, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the incident said. It is not clear exactly what exchange took place between them and Mr. Voorhees.
Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for the Musk initiative,
responded on Sunday to the reports of security officials being put on leave. “No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances,” she said on X. The clash involving Mr. Voorhees was first
reported by CNN on Sunday.
A sense of despair was settling in on Sunday among employees remaining at U.S.A.I.D. as they learned of the new suspensions and braced for the potential of even more sweeping layoffs and a dismantling of the agency.
The
U.S.A.I.D. website went dark on Saturday, and a smaller, scaled-back version of the aid agency’s online presence appeared on the State Department’s website — a possible indication of a looming loss of the agency’s independence that employees anticipated Mr. Trump would soon make official with an executive order. Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
Lawmakers and aid workers also learned that at least some of the signs at the agency’s headquarters had been removed.
The State Department and U.S.A.I.D. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The changes underway have jarred nonprofit organizations that are supported by U.S.A.I.D. Those groups were already reeling from the Trump administration’s decision to freeze nearly all foreign aid programs, a move that was slightly modified by a subsequent vague waiver for programs that administer lifesaving humanitarian aid.
“An abrupt collapse of the agency would put the rights of millions of people around the world at greater risk as a result,” Paul O’Brien, the executive director of Amnesty International, said in a statement. “What dismantling USAID doesn’t do is make anyone safer or more prosperous. Congress should immediately step in to challenge this.”
