USAID officials put on leave as Elon Musk says time for agency to ‘die’

Elon Musk has declared that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) should “die” amid reports that two top security officials at the aid agency were put on leave for refusing his representatives access to classified materials.

Musk, who was appointed by US President Donald Trump to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), on Monday branded USAID a “criminal organisation” after security officials reportedly denied members of his cost-cutting task force access to restricted areas of the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC.

“Time for it to die,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X.

USAID’s director of security, John Voorhees, and his deputy, Brian McGill, were placed on leave after denying DOGE personnel entry to secure areas over their lack of security clearances, multiple US media outlets reported, citing unnamed officials.

The representatives of DOGE, which was created in an executive order by Trump but is not a government department, were ultimately able to access areas with classified information following the confrontation, which was first reported by CNN, according to multiple reports.

Steven Cheung, the White House director of communications, denied that DOGE personnel had attempted to gain access to secure areas, calling a PBS report about the incident “fake news” and “not even remotely true at all”.

“This is how unserious and untrustworthy the media is,” Cheung said in a post on X.

However, Katie Miller, who serves in DOGE, appeared to acknowledge the task force’s attempted entry, writing on X that “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances”.