Six United Nations agencies failed to give American investigators the personnel records needed to identify employees with ties to Hamas, the USAID inspector general's office reported in a non-public document sent to Congress this week. The March 31 report, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, lays out a pattern of non-cooperation that leaves American taxpayers with no reliable way to know whether their money funded terror-linked workers in Gaza.
The inspector general's office sent letters in December 2025 to the World Food Programme, the U.N. Development Programme, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UNICEF, the International Organization for Migration, and the World Health Organization. The letters requested names of employees who worked on U.S.-government funded awards, contact information, dates and places of birth, and details about any interactions with Hamas.
Not one agency fully complied. The report states plainly: "None of the responding UN recipients provided the requested information pertaining to their personnel." Four agencies, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UNICEF, the International Organization for Migration, and the World Health Organization, sent what the report calls "partial responses." The World Food Programme confirmed it received the letter but never sent a final reply. The U.N. Development Programme did not respond at all.
The investigation, dubbed "Operation Stop the Carousel," was launched late last year in an attempt to prevent Hamas-linked U.N. staffers from working on U.S.-funded projects. The concern is not hypothetical. The U.S. government has already blacklisted one former UNRWA school principal who participated in the October 7 attack, and the inspector general's report says the office is "in the process of referring numerous additional UNRWA-affiliated personnel for suspension or debarment consideration in the near future."
That expanding scope tracks with reporting from the New York Post, which reported that the USAID inspector general is investigating more than 100 UNRWA officials for ties to Hamas and possible involvement in the October 7 massacre. Fourteen UNRWA employees have already been identified as affiliated with Hamas and referred to the State Department for possible suspension or debarment. One of those identified, Hafez Mousa Mohammed Mousa, was described as both a UNRWA school official and a Hamas operative who helped coordinate communications during the attack.
Staffers found to have Hamas affiliations could be blacklisted from U.S.-funded foreign aid projects for ten years.
The report exposes a structural problem that predates the current investigation. USAID policies, the inspector general found, "exempted UN organizations from the vetting process that the Agency required of NGOs and contractors." The result, in the report's own words: "the U.S. government has relied on the UN to vet its own staff responsible for performing U.S. taxpayer-funded activities and programs on the ground."
That arrangement, trusting international bureaucracies to police themselves with American dollars, is the kind of policy that sounds reasonable in a conference room and collapses the moment it meets reality. The inspector general's office has not been quiet about the problem. The report notes that "OIG has consistently raised concerns about UN cooperation, transparency, and willingness to provide information to investigators who request UN records pertinent to U.S.-funded awards."
The pattern of institutional obstruction is familiar to anyone watching Republicans' ongoing battles with agencies that resist accountability. When institutions control the records and set the terms of disclosure, outside oversight becomes nearly impossible.
The inspector general also identified what it called "vulnerabilities that limit the assurance that terrorist-affiliated staff have not been onboarded." That is a careful, bureaucratic way of saying the system cannot guarantee Hamas operatives are not drawing paychecks from programs funded by American taxpayers.
Several of the named U.N. agencies offered responses to the Free Beacon that sit uneasily alongside the inspector general's findings. A spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the agency "maintain[s] a strong and constructive relationship with the USAID Office of Inspector General" and has "responded to requests for information." The report, however, classified that agency's response as only "partial."
The International Organization for Migration told the Free Beacon it "works and communicates regularly with all our donors, including the U.S. Government, fully responding to all inquiries with timely replies." Again, the inspector general categorized its reply as partial.
The U.N. Development Programme, the one agency that did not respond at all, according to the report, told the Free Beacon it never received an inquiry from investigators. That claim, if true, raises its own questions about internal mail handling at one of the world's largest development organizations.
None of these responses address the central finding: no agency handed over what investigators actually asked for.
The probe into U.N. employee records sits within a larger investigation into whether American humanitarian aid was diverted to Hamas. Fox News reported that the USAID inspector general is investigating "credible allegations of Hamas interference, diversion, and theft of humanitarian aid in Gaza." A U.S. diplomatic official told Fox News Digital that the office "received and continues to receive reports directly from aid workers and other parties on the ground" challenging claims that Hamas was not involved in aid theft.
Congressional scrutiny has intensified alongside the inspector general's work. House Oversight Chairman James Comer launched his own investigation into UNRWA staff participation in the October 7 attacks and requested documents from the U.N. to verify that U.S.-funded entities do not employ terrorist-linked individuals.
Former senior USAID official Max Primorac put the stakes in blunt terms when he told Congress in February 2025 that "vast sums of U.S. money have been diverted to fund terrorists in Gaza, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan." Primorac also told lawmakers that under the Biden administration, USAID scrapped vetting reforms from Trump's first term, a decision that, in hindsight, looks reckless given the scale of the problem now being uncovered.
The scope of the vetting failure was documented even before the current investigation gained momentum. Just The News reported that a late-January 2025 USAID inspector general memo warned the agency had created serious vulnerabilities in accountability and transparency within its foreign aid programs. That memo identified three major problems: resistance from U.N. agencies and foreign NGOs to sharing misconduct information, limits on vetting aid groups for terrorist ties or corruption, and poor visibility into USAID-funded sub-awardees. One striking detail: the World Food Programme disclosed 519 instances of potential misconduct to USAID, but the inspector general was notified of only 29 of them.
The U.N. maintains its own sanctions list, which includes 730 individuals and 272 entities. But the inspector general's findings suggest that cross-referencing employees against such lists, and conducting meaningful background checks, has not been standard practice for U.N. agencies spending American money. The exemption from USAID's normal vetting requirements meant these organizations operated under a lighter standard than even private contractors working on the same programs.
That double standard is worth pausing on. An American NGO bidding for USAID work must submit to the agency's vetting process. A U.N. body receiving the same money does not. The rationale, presumably, was diplomatic deference to international organizations. The consequence was a system in which Hamas-affiliated employees could cycle through U.N. programs, hence the investigation's name, "Operation Stop the Carousel."
The fight over who controls information and who gets to investigate is not unique to foreign aid. Congressional battles over blocked federal actions have become a recurring feature of Washington, and the U.N. agencies' refusal to cooperate fits a familiar pattern: institutions that benefit from American funding resist the oversight that should come with it.
President Donald Trump dismantled USAID in 2025, but the inspector general's office has continued its work. The March 31 report makes clear that the investigation is expanding, not winding down. Additional UNRWA-affiliated personnel face referral for suspension or debarment. The inspector general's office is still receiving information from aid workers and whistleblowers on the ground.
The open questions are significant. What exactly did the four agencies that offered "partial responses" actually provide? Which employees worked on U.S.-funded awards? How many of them appear on terror watch lists or sanctions databases? The U.N. agencies have, so far, declined to answer those questions in full.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described USAID as "a completely unresponsive agency" that "refuses" to follow policy directives from the State Department. The U.N. agencies that received American money through that same system now appear equally unresponsive, not to their own leadership, but to the investigators trying to determine whether U.S. taxpayer dollars ended up in the hands of a designated terrorist organization.
The pattern of institutions resisting executive or investigative authority is now well established in Washington. But the stakes here are different. This is not a policy disagreement or a funding dispute. This is a question of whether people who participated in or supported the deadliest attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust drew paychecks from programs bankrolled by the American public.
When U.N. agencies take billions in U.S. aid but refuse to tell investigators who they hired, the word for that is not diplomacy. It is obstruction. And Congress should treat it accordingly.
