Multiple United Nations relief agencies have refused to hand over employee records demanded by a federal investigation into Hamas infiltration of humanitarian operations in Gaza, even as U.S. diplomats call UNRWA a "cancerous" institution that must be severed from the UN system.
The USAID Office of Inspector General, a law-enforcement body independent of the now largely defunct USAID, sent letters to six UN agencies in December 2025 requesting the names, contact information, dates and places of birth, and details on any Hamas interactions involving their personnel. More than seven months later, not one of the six has turned over the full set of documents. The Washington Free Beacon obtained unredacted copies of both the inspector general's nonpublic investigatory report and a confidential UN internal-oversight report on staff involvement in the October 7, 2023 terror attack on Israel.
The six agencies, the World Food Programme, the UN Development Programme, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UNICEF, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the World Health Organization, each failed the investigation in a different way. The inspector general's report states that the World Food Programme never sent a final response. The UN Development Programme did not respond at all. OCHA, UNICEF, IOM, and WHO submitted only partial answers.
Put plainly: none of the six provided what federal investigators asked for.
The investigation, dubbed "Operation Stop the Carousel," grew out of a finding that at least 100 Hamas members had their salaries paid by UNRWA, the UN's largest relief operation in Gaza. The probe has since expanded to cover at least 1,500 UNRWA-linked individuals suspected of terror ties, the Free Beacon previously reported. That earlier reporting confirmed that at least one UNRWA school principal participated in the October 7 attacks as a member of Hamas's East Jabaliya Battalion.
A New York Post report identified one operative by name, Hafez Mousa Mohammed Mousa, both a UNRWA school official and a Hamas member who helped coordinate communications during the October 7 massacre. Fourteen UNRWA employees have been referred to the State Department for potential suspension or debarment from U.S. funding.
The inspector general's report also notes a broader silence: no UN agency has self-reported to USAID or the inspector general a single instance in which Hamas interfered with aid delivery since October 7, 2023. Zero. That gap stretches across nearly three years of conflict in a territory where even the UN's own officials have acknowledged Hamas obstructs humanitarian operations.
The Free Beacon also obtained a full unredacted copy of a "strictly confidential" report by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, the body that conducted the UN's own investigation into staff involvement in October 7. That report dismissed key intelligence, including intercepted audio recordings and cell phone data, that connected UNRWA staffers to Hamas.
The UN's internal investigators limited their inquiry to whether staff participated in the October 7 attack itself. They did not investigate whether any employees were members of Hamas. The report's own language concedes it "has not drawn conclusions regarding alleged membership of the military wing of Hamas or other militant groups."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the internal UN report an exercise in evasion.
"I'm also deeply troubled by the U.N. report on its so-called investigation, which bends over backwards to avoid taking responsibility for UNRWA staff's involvement with Hamas and October 7."
Grassley added that the newly surfaced documents "shine even more light on the Biden administration's failure to prevent Americans' hard-earned money from going to terrorists who hate America and who murder our allies." He said the disclosures "demand bipartisan follow up from Congress."
Senior State Department officials did not hold back. One told the Free Beacon that "UNRWA is a subsidiary of Hamas and aided and abetted terrorist activity, including on October 7." That same official said the administration "will not allow the U.N. to evade accountability in its handling of U.S. taxpayer dollars."
"It is incumbent on all UN agencies to provide requested information to ensure that taxpayers never pay the salaries of terrorists. Never again will the United States accept U.N. agencies' failure to screen employees who dual hat as terrorists."
A second U.S. diplomatic official, described as involved with the Board of Peace, a Trump-created international coalition overseeing Gaza's reconstruction, delivered an even blunter message. He said the UN must sever ties with UNRWA "once and for all."
"Our message to the U.N. is simple: it's time to rid yourself from the cancerous UNRWA that has become a liability and a sinking ship."
That official said the administration sees the broader UN system, minus UNRWA, "as allies in rebuilding a new Gaza that delivers for the people, not for Hamas." But UNRWA itself, the official said, "will not be part of the future of Gaza" and will not receive American funding under President Trump.
The stonewalling has drawn sharp responses from Capitol Hill. House lawmakers included a provision in the 2027 national security funding bill that would condition all U.S. support on the recipient cooperating with federal investigations, a direct response to the UN agencies' refusal to comply with the inspector general's requests.
Rep. James Comer's House Oversight Committee has issued repeated formal demands to both the UN and the State Department for investigative records on UNRWA staff implicated in terrorist activity. A committee spokesman confirmed that the UN's response has been inadequate.
"The UN has routinely stonewalled, delaying, withholding, or producing incomplete information, frustrating Congress's ability to conduct legitimate oversight."
The spokesman added that the USAID inspector general's "ongoing investigative work has independently confirmed serious concerns about UNRWA personnel and supplied Congress with unredacted evidence that the U.N. itself has refused to transmit directly."
Sen. Ted Cruz raised the issue at an April congressional hearing with UN Ambassador Mike Waltz, describing the UN's failure to cooperate as "concerning." Growing momentum in Congress now includes calls to designate UNRWA as a foreign terrorist organization, a step that would strip it of diplomatic protections and open it to sanctions.
The inspector general's concerns about Gaza are not new. The USAID OIG formally designated Gaza a high-risk area for "potential diversion and misuse" of U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance, Just the News reported. The watchdog drew explicit parallels to Afghanistan, where the Taliban diverted American aid through fraudulent NGOs, taxation of aid workers, and direct theft from UN facilities.
Hamas has employed similar tactics. The terror group has used UNRWA schools as rocket depots, tunneled beneath UN facilities, dismantled EU-funded water pipes for rocket fuselages, and stolen fuel and food from UNRWA premises. In 2022, Mohammed Halabi, the head of World Vision's Gaza office, was convicted of diverting up to $50 million in humanitarian donations to Hamas.
Against that backdrop, the UN agencies' refusal to hand over basic employee records looks less like a bureaucratic delay and more like institutional resistance to accountability.
Not every agency accepted the inspector general's characterization. A spokesman for the International Organization for Migration said IOM "communicates regularly with all our donors, including the U.S. Government" and is "fully responding to all inquiries." An OCHA spokesman claimed the agency maintains "a strong and constructive relationship with the USAID Office of Inspector General and have responded to their requests."
The UN Development Programme went further, asserting it never received a document request from the inspector general at all, a claim that sits awkwardly beside the inspector general's report listing UNDP among the six agencies that received letters in December 2025.
The USAID inspector general's office declined to comment beyond calling it an "active and ongoing investigation." The World Food Programme, UNICEF, and WHO did not respond to the Free Beacon's requests for comment.
The inspector general transmitted the full nonpublic investigatory report to four congressional panels: the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the appropriations committees in both chambers. That distribution ensures the findings will feed directly into upcoming budget fights and oversight hearings.
Grassley signaled that fresh congressional investigations are likely. Cruz has already pushed the issue in public hearings. And the House Oversight Committee's track record of formal demands, met with what its own spokesman calls routine stonewalling, suggests the pressure will only increase.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, is working to dismantle UNRWA entirely and has slashed U.S. support to international bodies it accuses of pushing an anti-Israel agenda, including the International Criminal Court.
When six UN agencies cannot, or will not, tell American investigators who works for them, the question stops being whether UNRWA is compromised and starts being why any of these organizations still expect a check from U.S. taxpayers.
