'Insider risk': How DOGE might have revealed CIA secrets

24 February

Elon Musk leaves after a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 13, 2025.

Several incidents associated with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to slash government budgets could expose secrets from the top spy agency, CNN reported Monday.

“The administration’s efforts to cut the workforce and audit spending at the CIA and elsewhere threaten to jeopardize some of the government’s most sensitive work, current and former US officials familiar with internal deliberations say,” write CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis, Phil Mattingly, Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen.

Earlier in the month, an unclassified email that was “extraordinarily unusual,” according to CNN, was sent to the White House about possible layoffs may have divulged people slated to work undercover by first name and last initial. The CIA, led by former Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), is conducting a formal investigation into the matter, and the incident could impact international diplomacy.

“There is … a concern that some US embassy positions that are actually filled by CIA officers under cover may now be at risk of being revealed — potentially angering the host nation and exposing companies or endangering CIA assets who are known to have met with past occupants of the role,” according to the report.

There is also concern that giving a worker at Elon Musk’s "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE (which is not yet an official federal agency authorized by Congress) access to the government’s payment system could expose “highly classified CIA payments.” The government quickly built security infrastructure for the worker, building him "read-only" access.

“Literally every payment the US government makes goes through that system. Every. One,” a source told CNN.

Some CIA agents are also worried that firings could lead to resentful former employees who could divulge government secrets to foreign governments like Russia or China. More than 20 officers have already been fired due to their work on diversity. While this security risk is not new, officials told CNN the current circumstances make the fear more immediate.

“Terminating someone who works for Department of Agriculture — even if they’re disgruntled, if they’re not accessing classified information, what’s the risk?” One of the network's sources said.

They added with intelligence agencies, “you take whatever number of employees who are gonna get cut loose and they have knowledge of sensitive programs — that by definition is an insider risk," they said. "You’re just rolling the dice that these folks are gonna honor their secrecy agreement and not volunteer to a hostile intelligence service."

“Taken together, those actions highlight the depth of unease among career officials that Trump’s efforts to speedily slim down the US government may be putting American secrets within the grasp of foreign spies and hackers,” the authors write.

“I’m not sure the administration really understands [that risk] and moreover, even if they understand, it’s not clear they care,” the official said. That risk is “real.”

Click here to read CNN's report in full.

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