USAID staff ordered to burn documents
Erica Carr, active executive director for USAID, reportedly sent out an email to the remaining USAID staff. The email called for the staff to convene at the former USAID headquarters to conduct a major document destruction operation. The email instructed them to have burn bags ready in case the shredders either needed a break or were not available.
From 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.
The effort also underscores the tumultuous way in which the Trump administration is dismantling an agency that once managed a $40 billion annual budget and had more than 10,000 staff around the world.
Additional Reading:
Kine, P., & Toosi, N. (2025, March 11). USAID official tells remaining staffers: Shred and burn all your documents. Politico. Link.
Category: DOGE, Government Incompetence, Society
What’s going on with Ret Navy CPT Mark Kelly?
I know he is a gun grabber, bit is he also a traitor?
Yes
I put as much validation in Elon’s comments as I do Kelly’s reply calling Elon “not a serious guy”. Elon is about as serious as they come.
I saw those comments too. Why did the “journalist” not challenge him on that statement? Really? I know because he works FOR the Dems not for the truth.
Let’s see what Elon has done?
Space X has revolutionized the space industry and made it affordable.
Space X will reach the planet Mars in our lifetime.
Tesla sells more EV’s than ALL the other manufacturers combined
Starlink is connecting some of the most remote parts of the world and making in-the-ground-cables obsolete
Neuralink is developing implantable brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to allow people with paralysis to control computers and potentially restore lost functions
The Boring Company is an American infrastructure, tunnel construction service, and equipment company
And of course DOGE
How many lifetimes would it take Mark Kelly to do ONE of those things?
I don’t know that we should sell Sen Kelly short. He’s a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy, a naval aviator who flew combat sorties in the Gulf War, then became an astronaut that flew on four Shuttle missions. He’s got two DFCs, a few Air Medals (one individual w/ “V”), and a Navy Commendation Medal w/ V.
Not that I agree with much of anything the guy says, but he’s lived an exceptional life of high accomplishment.
I don’t think he’d be sitting in the Senate if his wife hadn’t been shot though.
Well McCain had a commendable military career, as a sell out senator, not so much. Him and Teddy Kennedy holding hands clinched it for me. Kelly is pretty much in that boat.
Absolutely. Crenshaw too.
It’s been said that John McCain was a somewhat mediocre naval Aviator that would have been drummed out had his father not been an Admiral. As for McCain himself, I respect his military Career and that’s it, he sold out WAY too many times on Capitol Hill.
No one is deprecating his service or accomplishments prior to gaining elected office. And yes, he trots out the Gabby Giffords doll in order to gain sympathy votes. Giffords was pretty well respected by members of both parties during her time in office. Now her chinese-owned ghoul of a husband uses her for political capital. He’s invisible to Arizona except at election time. Excellent military service does not automatically equate to excellent public service. We’ve all seen that movie before.
He could not do any of them because he is a government worker. He is also a strong supporter of that Deep State we all know is what runs the country.
Kelly is a piece of shit and in it for himself, not the people of Arizona. I live here.
The more I watch politics, the more I think that it’d be a great way to become independently wealthy and get remembered as some sort of pillar of the community. Get my name on a bridge, highway, post office, commissary, parks, etc. All on the taxpayer’s dime.
Sure would! Probably make a movie about you, too! You’d go down in hisstory!
He will likely retire as a multi, multi millionaire, like the rest of his influence peddling ilk.
Nobody knows. He only exists during election season. He’s pretty much a wholly-owned Chinese asset.
Kelly…
A representative from the CIA was quoted as saying; “no comment, but this shit isn’t over” as tears rolled down his cheeks.
What, pray tell, are they worried about being exposed? What are WE not supposed to see?
“You don’t think a hammer really costs $600, do you?”
If it doesn’t say marine or aviation grade on it, the answer would be no.
I heard on the radio that the price of the hammers were $900.00. Speaking about radio, how about
Richard Lanham and the Tempo Tones singing
“On Your Radio” 1957 on the Acme label. Was 12 years old when he sang it, same age as myself.
Remember $600 toilet seats from the 80s Era that the military was being charged for their cargo planes? Think C141 and C5.
Theyre probably worth their weight in gold today.
My former father-in-law (retired civil service logistician) explained how that happens. Let’s say the Army needs a 12 oz claw hammer. The smart thing would be to run down to Ace Hardware and grab a 12 oz Estwing. Can’t do that. We have to have an engineer design a hammer, have a draftsman draw it up, send the blueprints out to companies to bid on it, giving precedence to minority owned, female owned, or Ability One companies. A majority of those companies won’t even be able to build a hammer, but they still get the request. Next, we get prototypes from all the companies, we spend years testing them and award the contract to the best one. What do we get? A 12 oz Estwing. That we spent $500 million on before we have the first one in our hands.
I’ve seen it done.
About 25 years ago when I taking command of an HHC there were…. shortages in there and in the maintenance company. About $3,000,000 in tools. I told the Brigade Commander that this being my second command and all he was going to have to find someone else to do it because I wasn’t going to be on the hook for all that. He told me to hold his beer.
He went to the CG and they came up with a plan. The next week a semi-trailer from Sears showed up and everyone was told to take their tool box shortages over to the guy inside. There were two clerks annotating everything and and two Sears guys handing out tools. They straight up covered decades of losses and bought everything they could with great quality Craftsman tools and added them to the hand receipts. Change of Command went smoothly.
You can’t do that today though. Sears got taken over by Indians who ran the place into the ground like an interstate exit hotel. They then sold off the Craftsman brand and the tools are now made in China.
Shredding and burning official Gooberment documents? Sounds like rope and woodchipper time for the miscreants.
https://clip.cafe/silverado-1985/were-gonna-give-a-fair-trial-s1/
“We’re gonna give you a fair trial followed by a first class hangin’.”
Just a long sturdy wall and an M134 or two
Gee, that’s not shady, is it?
While I love a good conspiracy theory, this sounds like above the board routine action necessary to clean out the building for future occupants. If it for some reason also included destroying hard drives, then I would believe it was illicit!
If I were doing academic research for a paper that I intended to submit for peer review, and for publishing in an academic journal, I would most certainly be interested in those documents being burned. This is especially the case when DOGE uncovered a lot of shenanigans regarding USAID disbursements.
That brings up the question… If it was a “routine action”, why would the send out an email directing how to dispose of? If a reminder on how to dispose of, there should be a trail of emails stating such going back xx number of years.
The “personnel documents” are the most important IMHO. The “proof” of the existence, or rather lack thereof, of all those ghost employees would be in those files.
As far as saving the hard drives, yes, critically important. But the most important, read damning, stuff will never be on a computer, anywhere, ever.
“…this tape will self destruct in five (5) seconds…” poof! (IYKYK…full disclosure hint…A young Gun Bunny had the HOTS for “Cinnamon”)
The hard drives of individual workstations absolutely would be destroyed, but there’s a tracked process for that. It’s one of many services we offer. When a workstation is turned in at end-of-life, the property book manager turns it in on a trackable work order. That work order is then assigned to a guy like me, who removes the hard drive, documents the removal of said hard drive by manufacturer, model, serial number and work order, electronically signed by me. This is archived until the second coming. The drive is then degaussed three times and destroyed via hydraulic punch. The workstation then goes back to the owner, who turns it into DRMO or some other similar government resale operation. Any other means of destruction is pretty much a felony.
HEY you just described a bunch of my jerb too.
although, I just get a huge box of degaussed hard drtives and ship them to excess and then THEY get to call the shred truck.
(Property Manager & year round inventory sucks!!)
Our destroyed drives go to DRMO and go in the scrap metal pile.
In fact, the Trump people came out today and said they agreed to it, that is exactly why this is being done. Many of the documents are still classified and copies are on other servers with other agencies, so the are not being disappeared.
Routine activities for USAID has been illegal shit the CIA wanted them to do. So, yeah, it makes sense they want to destroy it all so there’s less evidence.
Should already be in custody, by now. It’s nice to have access to such a cultivated list of government subversives within the most corrupt agency in the federal system.
They should bury ole Erica under the jail, seems she missed the Biden pardon list.
Be a real shame if the Epstein Book/JFK Files, An Artist’s Laptop, or a buncha missing emails happened to fall into those shredders or burn bags. Hard to release what doesn’t exist any more.
“These documents are being destroyed to protect the guilty.” You know…for National Security reasons.
You don’t hate them enough.
Prepare…it ain’t over by a long shot.
Just wondering if Donald Trump will have FBI agents stationed in front of the building, with every entry draped in “Do Not Enter; Crime Scene”? At least kill power to the building, no power, no shredders.
So let me get this straight… You send out an email via an official US Government system that is archived until the second coming, ordering the illegal destruction of official US Government document that are supposed to be archived until just before the second coming… Dtupidity at its highest level. At least HIllary had the brains to do that stuff over an illegal server. Nicest thing I ever said about her.
just a heads up on this story. This has the original e-mail on it, “supposedly”. But it looks like they were destroying the old courtesy copy Secret level and below paper documents, because they’re moving out of the building. Nothing nefarious. Let’s keep the hysteria to a gentle simmer. There’s plenty of heat, we’ll add a little water, flavor with some spicy anecdotes, our favorite words, a little liberal sauce and tears. You know, Make America.
https://x.com/AnnaKelly47/status/1899596521558945988 forgot the link darn it.
No dice, especially after what was discovered with USAID spending. That level of fraud makes every document in that building important, especially if justice is going to take action on the criminal or civil front.
I’m not going by claims that these hard copies are matched by what is on the servers, and even then, there are procedures in place to destroy classified documents that don’t involve an email instructing people to label things as classified. Given what has been discovered on USAID, it would’ve been better had these documents been boxed up and moved elsewhere where it could be determined if they’re not relevant either to national security or to any pending court cases.
After Kayleigh McEnany, Mark Milley, Mike Pompeo, etc., I’d take what Anna Kelly and the others say with a grain of salt.
On a side note, I remember when folks insinuated that “nothing nefarious” was to be had.
The frustration with ALL of the dtuipidity is strong. “Trust no one” Agent Mulder
TL Davis’ take on “frustration”…that many of us have.
https://tldavis.substack.com/p/the-accumulation-of-frustration
Aren’t they supposed to get permission from the National Archives?
We need to remember the official government employee mantra, “It’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.” When found out that you knew better all along, you use the Clinton defense; “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
“That depends on what is “is””
“That depends on what is “is””
Ole Billy misspelled/typo’d…..
“It depends on what the meaning of the word “jizz”, is.
That looks like Bills after dinner Hummer dress.
Gotta shred the documents so they’re not called for in discovery. If there is no evidence of a crime, it’s difficult to prosecute for one.
I suspect some of those documents point to activities that are illegal, and the deep state can’t have that.
IIRC, certain types of documents must be retained and can only be destroyed after receiving approval from the National Archives.
Pretty much any document produced by the government has a shelf life and has to be retained for a specified number of years before destruction is required. If they’re shredding documents, it better be copies and even then its sketchy.
We have videos aplenty of leftbots burning themselves at: ‘fiery yet mostly peaceful protests’, general destruction of property events, cute terrorisms, etc.
I say let them see how far they can get, but change over buildings’ water supply to AvGas first.
Including the standpipe.
Follow me for more common sense solutions to big-gay government problems!
Here’s one solution…
Giggle
Werhner von Braun has entered the chat…
“In my days before NASA, I was shooting off a different kind of rocket…”
I had a I.A teacher with a suspicions accent and a V2 picture on the wall.
Wasn’t from “Paraguay” was he?
Brown shirt supporters in America have a big D in front of their name. They project their fascism on to others, while they are the fascist.
Thanks to Trump the demon-crates have been stopped in their tracks…freedoms bell rings again!
It’s not Fascism when they do it, of course. Triumph of the Will just gives them a boner for purely coincidental reasons. /sarc
Damn! You beat me to it.
‘ “When the rockets go up who cares where they come down?—
That’s not my department” says Werhner von Braun ‘
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio
You hit my Tom Lehrer nerve.
My take on the final paragraph.
“The effort also underscores the tumultuous way in which the Trump administration is dismantling an agency that once managed a $40 billion annual
budgetgrift and had more than 10,000staffgrifters around the world.”So just how many documents being destroyed show members of a certain group getting lavish kickbacks from “helping” certain people? Asking for a friend.
40 Billion that was publicized. Not counting all the other shady shit they were funding.