this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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186
U.S.A.I.D. Official Orders Employees to Shred or Burn Classified and Personnel Records (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 1 week ago by TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A senior official at the main U.S. aid agency, which is being dismantled by the Trump administration, told employees to clear safes holding classified documents and personnel files by shredding the papers or putting them into bags for burning, according to an email sent to the staff.

The email, sent by Erica Y. Carr, the acting executive secretary, told employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development to empty out the classified safes and personnel document files on Tuesday. “Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” Ms. Carr wrote, according to a copy of the email obtained by The New York Times.

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[–] hansolo@lemm.ee 36 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This is the year 2025, and you all are worried about paper records?

Stop to think...where does a paper classified record come from? If "printed from a classified computer" didn't cross your mind, I suggest you check your underinformed outrage. Anything old enough to be historical should already be at the National Archives.

USAID is moving out of all its offices, so getting rid of paper copies of records falls squarely into Federal records retention policies.

[–] Idontevenknowanymore@mander.xyz 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

And you think Elmo hasn't already purged the computer records? Sweet summer child.

[–] hansolo@lemm.ee 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Lol, not without Rubio authorizing it and a lot of tedious legwork in Virginia data centers. Friendo, you clearly don't understand these systems and for some reason think you do.

Also, why would he even purge anything of he could? His people wanted to see what was in the paper records 5 weeks ago and got pissed they were denied access. They came, they saw, they didn't get anything they wanted, and they left. Meanwhile, Peter Marocco is still there with read access all along. All the financial records are still there, still public.

[–] Idontevenknowanymore@mander.xyz 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And your trust in systems is admirable but flawed.

[–] hansolo@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago

Experience =/= trust.

[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

NARA's got it's own air-gapped servers to store the classified stuff. And Lightbrite can't get in the door there.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

There's likely a ton of shit from before personal computers were ubiquitous, that was never digitized.

[–] hansolo@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That was all digitized during the Obama administration. NAR has it all.

FOIA your face off, see how much you end up with. It'll be plenty.

[–] grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Specifically USAID classified files? I ask because I worked with a different segment of the US government during the Obama years and we sure as shit didn't have everything digitized.

[–] hansolo@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My understanding was nearly everything that wasn't digitized internally by around 2013ish was with the Archives and in their remit to digitize as of was already with them anyway. Everything after that is all electronic so it can fill out the Development Clearinghouse (DEC). It's a whole lofty academic library aspiration, except that the DEC is a black hole because the search function sucks. Sucked. It's gone now.

Also, let's not divulge too much personal info in public by asking the right questions, OK? It'll be worth it.

Is USAID large enough that, being co-located with another large agency in 99% of its overseas locations, and working closely with that agency which manages numerous annexes with scifs around DC, that it should warrant its OWN classified system? Can you find any documents supporting that?

Is there already a well-established practice and policies of formal reporting from USAID using that other agency's system for unclassified documents?

Hint: https://fam.state.gov/fam/05fah02/05fah020440.html

What is the name of the classified system that other large agency, large enough to be a department, uses? Hint: it's a basic portmanteau in the document above.

Is that the same name as is found in this public document as showing that a small agency with only a few hundred or maaaaybe a thousand staff with S or higher clearances, producing very few classified documents per year per this same document, might be using? https://oig.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/2018-06/9-000-16-001-p_0.pdf

Anyone who knows about this stuff in detail has zero feelings about shredding documents because they had to do that anyway to clean out their desks over the last month.

[–] grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 week ago

Thanks for the thorough response. It makes sense that different groups do things differently and the group I was working with was less forward-thinking/forward-mandated.

Also, shout-out to Archives for doing the thankless task of storing, organizing, and making accessible everyone's collective history.

[–] supernicepojo@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Isnt this something that should regularly happen? Its not an embassy under attack…

[–] in4apenny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Probably to hide the decades of evidence of US foreign interference and deliberate instability they helped create or facilitate. Do the CIA, NSA, and Pentagon next plz.

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 16 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I... don't think USAID is the one doing those things.

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 12 points 1 week ago

Don't worry, someone will be along to claim it's always been a CIA front.

[–] Erasmus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Not a Trump or Musk fan but it’s safe to assume all government agencies do this to some degree even if minor.

The issue here is Trump and Musk will take whatever they find, however minor that is, and exploit it. They’ve been blowing everything waaay out of proportion and exposing every government secret they can in an effort to try and make themselves look good and others in the government look BAD.

In reality it’s only making the US in general look extremely untrustworthy to everyone else in the world.

But then again that may be the whole purpose of their little exercise.

[–] OccamsRazer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Why wouldn't they be? International development sounds exactly like the kind of agency that would/could be concerned with those things.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 12 points 1 week ago

More likely they're trying to keep sensitive documents out of the hands of Trump and Musk, because any foreign interference wouldn't be a bad thing to them.