Shredding and Burning: A Sure Indicator of Integrity

I don’t pretend to understand what is going on here, but employees at USAID, a key DOGE target, have been instructed to shred and burn their documents:

A senior official at USAID instructed a number of 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.

Hmm. Doesn’t sound good. What is going on here?

The email didn’t provide any reason for the document destruction.

A White House spokeswoman (!) downplayed the order:

Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the White House, downplayed such concerns in a social media post late Tuesday.

“This was sent to roughly three dozen employees,” Kelly wrote. “The documents involved were old, mostly courtesy content (content from other agencies), and the originals still exist on classified computer systems. More fake news hysteria!”

If that is the case, it is not obvious why a comprehensive shredding and burning program needed to be carried out. Personally, I would be interested to troll through USAID files to find out, for example, who made the decision to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a “trans” opera in Colombia. I suppose the more documents are shredded, the lower our odds of ever knowing the answer to that question, and many others.