Staff members of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday after Tech billionaire Elon Musk announced that President Donald Trump had agreed to shut down the agency.
According to a notice distributed to the workers, USAID staffers said they tracked 600 employees who reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight.
Those still in the system received emails in the agency system, saying that “at the direction of Agency leadership” the headquarters building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, February 3.”
The developments came after Musk, who’s leading an extraordinary civilian review of the US federal government structure with President Trump’s approval, said on Monday that he had spoken with Trump about the six-decade US aid and development agency and “he agreed we should shut it down.”
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,” Musk said. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.” “We’re shutting it down.”
Musk’s comments online came after the administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government inspection teams, a current and a former US official told The Associated Press (AP) on Sunday.
Members of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) eventually did gain access to the aid agency’s classified information, which included intelligence reports, the former official said.
Musk’s DOGE crew lacked high enough security clearance to access that information, so the two USAID security officials; John Voorhees and Deputy Brian McGill believed themselves legally obligated to deny access.
The current and former U.S. officials knew about the incident and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information.
Musk on Sunday responded to an X post about the news by saying, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”
