Union representatives demanded that the aid agency follow the law stated in the Federal Records Act. Defense lawyers argued that officials had not destroyed personnel records and would not destroy any more documents without notification.

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.

  • @[email protected]English
    26•21 hours ago

    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.

      • @[email protected]English
        -2•18 hours ago

        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.

    • @[email protected]
      3•16 hours ago

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

      • @[email protected]English
        0•14 hours ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]English
          3•10 hours ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]English
            1•31 minutes ago

            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.