Politico Reports on USAID Staff Convening for an 'All Day' Document Destruction
After Secretary of State Marco Rubio took to X on Monday to declare that 83 percent of the USAID programs would be cancelled and contracts rescinded, a curious memo from a USAID senior staffer obtained by Politico, instructed remaining staffers to convene at the former agency on Tuesday for destruction of “classified safes and personnel documents."
Rubio said:
After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.
The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.
In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.
Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.
And now, according to Politico:
A senior official at USAID instructed the agency’s remaining staff to convene at the agency’s now-former headquarters in Washington on Tuesday for an “all day” group effort to destroy documents stored there, many of which contain sensitive information.
The materials earmarked for destruction include contents of the agency’s “classified safes and personnel documents” at the Ronald Reagan Building, said an email sent by USAID’s acting executive director, Erica Carr, and obtained by POLITICO.
“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” the email said. Carr instructed staff to label the burn bags with the words “SECRET” and “USAID/B/IO/” (agency shorthand for “bureau or independent office”) in dark Sharpie.
The email didn’t provide any reason for the document destruction. The building is being emptied out after mass layoffs, which may have disrupted routine document destruction timetables. Customs and Border Protection is planning to move into the USAID facility, having rented 390,000 square feet of office space in the building last month.
ProPublica journalist Brett Murphy also claims to be in receipt of this memo, citing it is from, "the agency's acting executive secretary."
ProPublica just obtained a remarkable directive to those remaining at USAID: Empty the safes with the classified and personnel records and then ... "Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break."
The email came from from the agency's acting executive secretary. I asked Kel McClanahan, a national security attorney, if this was legal. He said: "No it is not," citing the Federal Records Act. "Classified records are still federal records."
However, Fox News contributor and Spectator editor-at-large Ben Domenech alleges that this is nothing out of the ordinary for government.
This is standard. There’s literally a truck that pulls up and does this for agencies (or that was the case in my tenure). Digital records are kept, physical records shredded.
With the fur flying over Elon Musk and DOGE, the Tariff Wars, and the permutations of Ukraine-Russia War, could this be something that has the full approval and awareness of the Trump State Department or is it something that has slipped under the radar? It is after 5:00 p.m., on Tuesday, so any fallout would be felt by now. What Secretary Rubio cited as fraud and waste is only the tip of the iceberg of what was going on with USAID, so no doubt more information will be revealed, or leaked, dependent upon the context.
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