Reports that Donald Trump’s top national security officials accidentally shared their Yemen attack plans with The Atlantic in real-time drove the news in official Washington in recent days. But it wasn’t the only damaging leak of information held by the administration this week.
Two Trump administration spreadsheets — which each include what numerous advocates and government officials say is highly sensitive information on programs funded by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — were sent to Congress and also leaked online.
The leak, which sent a variety of international groups and nonprofits scrambling to assess the damage and protect workers operating under repressive regimes, came after the organizations had pressed the Trump administration to keep the sensitive information private and received some assurances it would remain secret.
Reached for comment, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly says: “These documents were transmitted to Congress and not publicly released by the State Department.” She urged Rolling Stone to contact “whoever leaked it and in turn, made it public.”
The episode is just the latest blow to America’s foreign partners and international aid organizations, many of which have seen their funds targeted and frozen by Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Trump administration has also effectively shuttered USAID, America’s foreign aid bureau; its scraps are being folded into the State Department.
The State Department, led by Marco Rubio, informed a variety of international nonprofits and longtime implementing partner organizations last week that upcoming payments of their congressionally approved grant funds came with some conditions that the Trump administration wanted to clarify.
As part of their campaign to eliminate what they’re calling “waste, fraud, and abuse,” Team Trump and DOGE had demanded comprehensive grant recipient information — and State Department officials let the organizations know that Musk’s lieutenants were likely planning on turning this information into a public spreadsheet or database.
The message — according to three sources familiar with the matter, as well as written communications reviewed by Rolling Stone — was abundantly clear: If you’re not OK with providing all this information or with having it all posted online, let us know; however, that decision could, or will, lead to your expected funding being halted.
The pushback was swift from a number of international groups that have spent years, if not decades, working with the State Department, USAID, and the U.S. government. (Rolling Stone has agreed not to name these groups, given their leaders and staff justifiably fear retribution from Trump and his senior officials.)
The nonprofit leaders and others reminded State Department personnel — some of whom are career officials aghast at what Team Trump and Musk are doing, and wished to contain unnecessary damage — that various programs that the department had on file had long been marked “sensitive,” and that their information was not meant for public consumption.
A number of these programs, which rely at least in part on State Department and USAID grants, operate in countries run by repressive regimes or authoritarian governments. Exposing key details of those programs, and effectively linking them to the U.S. government, would likely make it easier for those foreign governments to identify citizens or local activists who are associated with those groups and programs.
Such a move would open up staff and local allies to intimidation, harassment, prosecution, or worse, and provide fodder for officials in these foreign nations who would want to paint dissidents or other political enemies as tools of the United States.
After a flurry of phone calls and messages, State Department officials reported back to their partners with a note of reassurance: Though other information would likely be posted online in the near future, the closely held, highly “sensitive” information on certain grants and nonprofit organizations would be left off the table. The officials promised these groups that that information would stay under lock and key, and the grant recipients would still get their money.
A few short days after these assurances were made, two different documents — one was a spreadsheet about State Department grants, the other concerned USAID — were shared with Congress, and they were leaked to several mainstream media outlets and elsewhere. Today, it’s easy for just about anyone to find much of this information online.
The leaked documents, the sources say, include some of the very same information that multiple nonprofits and international partners had been promised would not be made public. Senior executives and other staff working at these groups were particularly alarmed, for instance, by the inclusion of certain details pertaining to programs and non-governmental organizations operating in China, Russia, Iran, Uganda, Cuba, and elsewhere.
From Wednesday and well into Thursday, this led to a mad dash among these different groups to work up damage assessments on what had just happened; frantically reach out to an array of staffers and local activists to warn them and to confirm that they were safe and OK; and to game out what they were all prepared to do in worst case scenarios, according to the sources familiar with the situation and the written communications and internal memos reviewed by Rolling Stone.
“Please do not share the spreadsheet that was circulating yesterday with terminated awards listed and if possible remove it or ask it to be removed from anywhere you’ve seen it,” reads one message shared in a private USAID chat late this week. “It contains information about partners who are working in unsafe environments with restricted civil society space or terrible LGBTQ laws etc. A few of our friends already had to pull staff on an emergency basis yesterday due to threats and unwanted attention from their governments. Please pass along to anyone you think needs to see this.”
One top executive at an international nonprofit and U.S. government implementing partner that’s been grappling with the fallout bluntly tells Rolling Stone: “In all our years of receiving grants from a range of governments, we have never seen the safety of government partners treated with such reckless abandon. People will lose their liberty, and possibly even more, because of this.”
Another source with knowledge of the situation — a State Department career official — says: “Lives are in danger that did not have to be.”
From Rolling Stone US
