Musk’s DOGE agents access sensitive personnel data, alarming security officials
The highly restricted data includes personally identifiable information for millions of federal employees maintained by the Office of Personnel Management.
Agents of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have gained access to highly restricted government records on millions of federal employees — including Treasury and State Department officials in sensitive security positions — as part of a broader effort to gain control over the government’s main personnel agency, according to four U.S. officials with knowledge of the developments.
The officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, expressed alarm about potential breaches or abuses of such records by members of an administration whose senior-most officials, including President Donald Trump, have threatened to retaliate against federal workers accused of disloyalty.
The records maintained by the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, amount to a repository of sensitive information about employees of most federal agencies — including addresses, demographic profiles, salary details and disciplinary histories. The moves at the OPM by members of Musk’s pseudo-governmental DOGE have coincided with similar efforts to gain access to sensitive systems at other agencies, including a Treasury Department system responsible for processing trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments — a development reported last week by The Washington Post.
Records obtained by The Post show that several members of Musk’s DOGE team — some of whom are in their early 20s and come from positions at his private companies — were given “administrative” access to OPM computer systems within days of Trump’s inauguration last month. That gives them sweeping authority to install and modify software on government-supplied equipment and, according to two OPM officials, to alter internal documentation of their own activities.
The DOGE team’s demand for access to OPM files and networks came as Musk deputies arrived at the agency promising to wipe out 70 percent of its staff, officials said. A senior OPM official, during a team meeting Wednesday, said that core units focused on modernizing the agency’s network and improving accountability are “likely to go away,” according to a recording of the session obtained by The Post. Those who have been reassigned at the agency include the chief information officer and the chief financial officer.
Meanwhile, morale has plummeted, said three OPM officials, as DOGE agents have clashed with senior career personnel. One official recalled a recent meeting in which a young DOGE team member began screaming at senior developers and calling them “idiots.”
A halt to IT upgrades — along with fresh access by outsiders with the power to install new programs — could create novel vulnerabilities at an agency that has been repeatedly hacked by foreign intelligence services. The worst came in 2014, when China is believed to have obtained the background investigations of more than 20 million people seeking security clearances.
“It’s like you’re defending some medieval castle and someone comes in and starts firing all the archers who are positioned to defend it,” a former U.S. intelligence official said. “You let your defenses down. It’s a perfect time to strike.”
A DOGE representative did not address questions about data access and other permissions. Emailed questions to the OPM went unanswered. A U.S. official maintained that everyone with access to sensitive systems is a government employee with the appropriate clearances.
The Trump administration has suggested that members of the DOGE team have the authority to review sensitive government files but has refused to provide details about whether security clearances have been issued. The speed with which any clearances would have been supplied suggests they may have skipped customary precautions, including FBI background checks, U.S. officials said.
Trump issued an executive order last month that bypasses the normal procedure for White House staff security checks, though DOGE went unmentioned.
At least six DOGE agents were given broad access to all personnel systems at the OPM on the afternoon of Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration, according to two agency officials. Three more gained access about a week later, they said.
The data that the DOGE team can access includes a massive trove of personal information for millions of federal employees, included in systems called Enterprise Human Resources Integration and Electronic Official Personnel Folder. It also includes personal information for anyone who applied to a federal job through the site USAJobs, the people said. Last year alone, the people said, there were 24.5 million such applicants.
The two OPM officials said the level of access granted to DOGE agents means they could copy the Social Security numbers, phone numbers and personnel files for millions of federal employees.
“They could put a new file in someone’s record; they could modify an existing record,” one said. “They could delete that record out of the database. They could export all that data about people who are currently or formerly employed by the government, they could export it to some nongovernment server, or to their own PC, or to a Google Drive. Or to a foreign country.”