The Treasury Department was warned in a confidential assessment that U.S. DOGE Service access to a sensitive payment network represented an “unprecedented insider threat risk,” according to internal correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post.
The review, delivered Monday to Treasury officials by a contractor that runs a threat intelligence center for Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, said that DOGE’s access to the payment network should be “immediately” suspended. It also urged Treasury to scour the payments system for any changes approved by affiliates of DOGE, which is overseen by billionaire Elon Musk, the correspondence shows. DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency.
A Treasury employee told The Post that the threat center is run by Booz Allen Hamilton, a large federal contractor. The company confirmed it runs the threat center, which it said is embedded within Treasury.
In a separate communication a week ago, a high-ranking career official at Treasury also raised the issue of risks from DOGE access in a memo to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, including the potential breach of information that could lead to exposure of U.S. spies abroad, according to five people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect government deliberations. The memo included recommendations to mitigate risks, which Bessent approved, said another person familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The two memos highlight the degree of concern among government officials and cybersecurity experts over access to the payment system, which disburses more than $5 trillion annually and includes huge troves of sensitive personal information.
On Friday, Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive with ties to DOGE but no prior government experience, was appointed as fiscal assistant secretary of the treasury. In that role, he will head the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which oversees the payment system. He replaces David A. Lebryk, who resigned after objecting to Krause’s demands to stop payments on foreign aid, a measure Lebryk resisted as illegal.
A second DOGE staffer assigned to Treasury - Marko Elez, a 25-year-old who has worked for several of Musk’s firms - left the administration Thursday after the Wall Street Journal surfaced his racist posts. On Friday, however, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Musk all called for Elez’s reinstatement, leaving his fate uncertain. Musk also said Elez would be rehired, but whether he would return to Treasury was not clear.
The internal threat warning from Booz Allen Hamilton was written after the Treasury Department said it had given Krause and Elez “read-only” access to the payment system; a federal court order later enforced that limitation. The warning memo was sent to dozens of senior Treasury officials, including senior leadership of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
Even with the “read-only” limitation, “this access still poses an unprecedented insider threat risk,” the memo states. “If DOGE members have any access to payment systems, we recommend suspending that access immediately and conducting a comprehensive review of all actions they may have taken on these systems.”
Treasury has said that Krause will be in touch with veteran career officials and comply with security, safety and privacy standards. But Musk’s team has moved to consolidate a surprising amount of sensitive personal information from the federal government, including data maintained by the Office of Personnel Management.
Several current and former Treasury staffers said they were stunned that Bessent had appointed Krause to replace Lebryk, a lifelong career servant who served throughout numerous previous administrations, including during Trump’s first term. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service ensures that, among many others, Pentagon contractors, software vendors and U.S. spies overseas are paid. With spies, the means of payment are varied and generally indirect to avoid revealing any U.S. government connection or ultimate recipients, according to former national security officials.
“Efforts are made to obfuscate,” said one former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. “There are reasons we don’t let just anyone peer into the fiscal machinery.
“Our adversaries would love to get to the headwaters of the money flows so that they can try to trace out who is receiving payments.”