Paper Shredders and Burn Bags: The Vandalism of USAID Is Nearly Complete
Tim Dickinson Rolling Stone
Flowers are left at the USAID headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7. (photo: Astrid Riecken/WP/Getty Images)
A new Trump administration directive calls on remaining USAID staff to purge the agency’s classified safes and personnel records
The Elon Musk-led destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that began in early February, with a freeze of federal grants and an order for personnel to cut-and-run from their posts administering life-saving international aid, has apparently accelerated to vandalism of the agency’s sensitive records.
A new memo from acting Executive Secretary Erica Carr, first surfaced by ProPublica and the tech reporter Eoin Higgins, designates Tuesday as a “clearing” event, with the agency’s skeleton staff of essential personnel instructed to join in an act of mass document destruction.
Carr’s memo calls for purging of “our classified safes and personnel documents” at USAID’s longtime headquarters at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C.
The remarkable directive insists that the agency’s store of paper records should be ripped apart or designated for incineration: “Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” it reads.
Carr instructs employees not to overfill burn bags, ensuring they can be stapled shut, and adds that the “only” labeling required on the burn bags, in Sharpie, are the words “SECRET” and a USAID designation.
The shredding of classified documents puts a capstone on Musk’s infamous vision of sending USAID to the “wood chipper.” USAID has long been an essential arm of the “soft power” of the United States, but has emerged as a bugbear for Musk, who is leading Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Trump administration has folded the shattered remains of USAID into the State Department.
The document-destruction directive is raising alarms among good-government advocates and former employees. Kel McClanahan, a national security attorney interviewed by ProPublica, asserted the wholesale purge violates the Federal Records Act. (McClanahan has represented Rolling Stone in an unrelated matter.)
A USAID employee who is on administrative leave, like the majority of the agency’s workforce, tells Rolling Stone the directive left him slack-jawed: “In a world of insane things, this is absolutely bonkers.” The employee adds: “I would question whether or not the essential staff who’ve been called in to do this have legal access to handle these documents. DOGE certainly doesn’t!”
Carr did not immediately respond to questions from Rolling Stone.
The document purge already has the attention of members of Congress. “This is an unfolding scandal,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) posted on X, “because so many of these actions are plainly illegal.”
