CNN
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Two senior security officials of the United States Agency for International Development were placed on administrative license on Saturday night after trying to deny the officials of the Elon Musk government efficiency department access to agency’s systems, even After Doge’s staff threatened to call the police, several sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
According to the sources, the office staff created by Musk tried to physically access the USAID headquarters in Washington, and was arrested. Doge’s staff demanded that they let him in and threatened to call the US Marshals to be allowed access, two of the sources said.
Doge’s staff wanted to get access to USAID security systems and personnel files, three sources said. Two of these sources also said that Doge personnel wanted to access classified information, which only those with security authorizations and a specific need can access.
Three sources told CNN that Doge staff could finally access the headquarters.
The incident, which had not been previously informed, is the most recent confrontation in which Doge, affiliated with Trump, seeks to exercise increasing authority over the federal government in his eagerness to cut the expense.
“The reports that people without adequate authorization may have accessed Usaid classified spaces, as well as personal information from US citizens, are incredibly serious and unprecedented,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen on Sunday. “We seek immediate answers about any involvement for our national security and we will gather a group of bipartisan senators about this as soon as the Senate returns tomorrow,” Shaheen, a new Democrat of Nueva Hampshire and a high -ranking member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Commission, .
Katie Miller, whom Trump named Doge in December, seemed to confirm on Sunday that Doge staff had accessed classified information.
“No classified material was accessed without adequate security authorizations,” he published in X.
On Sunday, in response to the CNN report on the incident, Musk said that “Usaid is a criminal organization.”
“It’s time to die,” he published in X. It was one of the many publications and reposts of the owner of X who attacked the agency on Sunday.
The condemnation of the technological billionaire underlines the growing reports that President Donald Trump intends to Abolir Usaid, an independent federal agency, and integrate it into the US State Department of the United States other senior Trump officials, such as Stephen Miller, who He plays as a vice secretary general of the White House for politics, they have also signed up for USAID, accusing his workforce of being overwhelmingly a democratic.
On Saturday, the USAID website went out and a new page appeared for the agency on the State Department website. USAID’s X was also disconnected on Saturday.
Shortly after his investiture last month, Trump issued a decree that stopped all foreign aid for 90 days, which generated generalized confusion, dismissals and programs closures.
Usaid Security Director John Voorhees, and his deputy is among the dozens of USAID officials who have been licensed in the midst of fears that the agency will be an intentionally dismantled, a measure that some help officials maintain that It would have huge negative implications.
Democratic legislators have argued that it would be illegal for Trump to unilaterally eliminate a federal agency without consulting Congress.
USAID was established in 1961 under the administration of President John F. Kennedy and is the humanitarian arm of the United States government. It distributes billions of dollars annually worldwide in an effort to relieve poverty, treat diseases and respond to famine and natural disasters. It also promotes the construction and development of democracy.
USAID is a key tool of soft power in the United States to promote relations with communities around the world, officials say, pointing out that the National Security of the United States is addressed with the pillars of the “Tres D”: Defense, diplomacy and development, led, respectively, by the Department of Defense, the State Department and USAID.
Aid officials argue that the State Department is not equipped to take care and sustain the large number of USAID development projects. They would also eliminate, argue, a unique and essential soft power that cannot be replicated.
The State Department does not “have the capacity, experience, training to do such work. It is a completely separated effort line that runs on the ground, ”said a high -ranking former user of the USAID.
“The only element of the United States government bureaucracy in the field in foreign places that has been able to transcend the limits and really have a deeper knowledge of the places where we work is Usaid,” continued the former official, who requested the anonymity due to the growing and generalized fears of being target of the Trump administration.
“That ability to work that way, that culture – and it is a culture, I believe – is lost. And with it, I think we lose a huge and incredibly valuable tool of US foreign policy, ”said the person.
CNN has communicated with the White House and USAID to obtain comments.
Around 60 high -ranking officials of USAID were suspended last week by accusations of trying to avoid the decree on foreign aid. Another high -ranking official was suspended for trying to reverse that measure after not finding evidence of irregularities.
A source said that the entire USAID Public Affairs Office was suspended and blocked from its systems.
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