Multiple U.N. relief agencies continue to stonewall a U.S. probe into their ties to Hamas, withholding key documents and other information that could reveal their employees as affiliates of the terror group, according to U.S. officials and diplomats briefed on the matter.
The ongoing standoff between federal investigators and the United Nations is causing tensions at a time when the international organization is facing intense U.S. pressure to shutter the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the largest relief organization in Gaza, which critics say is fully infiltrated and controlled by Hamas.
A senior American diplomat tells the Washington Free Beacon that the United Nations must cut the cord “once and for all” from “the cancerous UNRWA” for the Gaza reconstruction effort to be successful.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) inspector general’s office, a statutorily independent law enforcement entity separate from the largely defunct USAID, in December 2025 sent letters to six separate U.N. agencies that purport to do humanitarian work in Gaza. The letters asked these groups to name all their employees “who worked on U.S.-government funded awards” and provide their contact information and “date and place of birth.” The office also asked the agencies to detail their “interactions with Hamas,” among other requests that went largely unanswered, the Free Beacon first reported in April.
More than three months later, none of the six organizations have furnished the full list of documents requested by the USAID inspector general, a source briefed on the USAID inspector general’s investigation confirmed to the Free Beacon.
“This administration will not allow the U.N. to evade accountability in its handling of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” a senior State Department official told the Free Beacon. “The UN’s failure to cooperate with the USAID IG investigation into Hamas diversion and interference of aid to Gaza is totally unacceptable.”
Hamas has long been accused of infiltrating and asserting control over—and embedding their own soldiers inside—the U.N. “humanitarian” groups operating in Gaza in order to control the flow of foreign aid and sometimes redirect this aid from needy civilians to its own soldiers. The Free Beacon confirmed that the USAID inspector general has now identified at least 100 Hamas members whose salaries were paid by UNRWA, which has repeatedly been caught allowing its facilities to be used by Hamas to store weapons, station personnel, and conduct terror attacks on Israel. The U.S. probe recently expanded to include at least 1,500 UNRWA-linked individuals suspected of terror ties, leading to increased calls for the United States to designate UNRWA as a foreign terrorist organization, the Free Beacon first reported in May.
The USAID inspector general’s investigation—dubbed Operation Stop the Carousel—was initiated late last year to root out Hamas-linked UNRWA staffers and stop them from migrating to other U.N. agencies that perform work in Gaza with U.S. taxpayer funds. The United Nations’ stonewalling of the investigation has only inflamed tensions further with the Trump administration as the administration works to dismantle UNRWA and slash U.S. support to multiple agencies known for pushing an anti-Israel agenda, such as the International Criminal Court.
“As we have said many times, UNRWA is a subsidiary of Hamas and aided and abetted terrorist activity, including on October 7,” the senior State Department source said. “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 involved with the Board of Peace, a Trump-created international coalition established to oversee Gaza’s reconstruction, said that the United Nations knows that it must shutter “the cancerous UNRWA” and sever that “cord 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,” the official said, speaking only on background about the matter. “The U.N. knows UNRWA has been corrupted as an institution and its days are over, but they need to take the final step of severing the cord once and for all.”
The official added that the Board of Peace is seeking to “maintain and enhance” its humanitarian partnership with the U.N. and will do so “as we wind down UNRWA’s operations in Gaza and transition to more appropriate partners. We see the U.N., ex UNRWA, as allies in rebuilding a new Gaza that delivers for the people, not for Hamas.”
The USAID inspector general’s investigation into six other U.N. agencies beyond UNRWA was first disclosed by the Free Beacon earlier this year, and the Free Beacon has since obtained a full, unredacted copy of that nonpublic investigatory report, which was also transmitted to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and both chambers’ appropriations committees by the inspector general.
It confirms that the World Food Programme did not send a final response to the inspector general and that the U.N. Development Programme did not respond at all. Four others under investigation—the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the U.N. Children’s Fund, the International Organization for Migration, and the World Health Organization—offered only “partial responses,” according to the full report. “None of the responding UN recipients provided the requested information pertaining to their personnel,” a key prong of the USAID inspector general’s investigation into Hamas ties.
The report further notes that since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror spree, “no UN agency has self-reported to USAID or USAID OIG any instance in which Hamas interfered in the delivery of aid”—even though a mounting body of evidence, including most recently from the United Nations itself, confirms that Hamas is interfering with aid delivery and looting supplies.
The Free Beacon‘s reporting on the matter was raised by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) during an April congressional hearing with U.N. ambassador Mike Waltz, who described the United Nations’ failure to cooperate with the USAID inspector general as concerning. It also prompted House lawmakers to include a provision in the 2027 national security funding bill that conditions all U.S. support on the recipient cooperating with federal investigations, like the one being conducted by the USAID inspector general.
The International Organization for Migration said it “communicates regularly with all our donors, including the U.S. Government,” and is “fully responding to all inquiries.” A spokesman for OCHA said that agency maintains “a strong and constructive relationship with the USAID Office of Inspector General and have responded to their requests.” The U.N. Development Programme said that it never received a document request from the USAID inspector general, though the report states that the agency never responded. None of the other organizations mentioned in the USAID inspector general’s report responded to a comment request.
A USAID inspector general spokesman declined to comment on the “active and ongoing investigation.” A second State Department official said the administration expects “all organizations that have received U.S. funding to cooperate with the appropriate U.S. authorities to facilitate the proper administration of justice and prevent the occurrence of abuse.” The official made clear that “UNRWA staff members were involved in Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack on Israel on October 7” and that the embattled aid agency “will not be part of the future of Gaza” or receive American funding while President Donald Trump is in charge.
A spokesman for the House Oversight Committee, which is chaired by Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.) and has aggressively investigated UNRWA, confirmed to the Free Beacon that both the United Nations and UNRWA have stonewalled Congress’s own oversight efforts.
“The UN has routinely stonewalled—delaying, withholding, or producing incomplete information—frustrating Congress’s ability to conduct legitimate oversight,” the spokesman said, noting that Comer’s committee has issued “repeated formal demands to both the United Nations and the Department of State for investigative records on UNRWA staff implicated in terrorist activity.”
“By contrast,” the committee spokesman added, 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.”
The Free Beacon additionally obtained a “strictly confidential” U.N. probe into its staffers’ involvement in October 7 that dismissed the allegations and, in many cases, did not attempt to corroborate the evidence against its staffers. While the Free Beacon first reported on the existence of this investigation by the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services late last year, it has now reviewed a full unredacted version of that confidential report.
It confirms that U.N. investigators dismissed key intelligence—including intercepted audio recordings and cell phone data—that connected its staffers to Hamas. The report also makes clear that the United Nations only considered involvement in October 7 during its investigation, wholly ignoring whether any staff members are members of Hamas. The United Nations, the report makes clear, “has not drawn conclusions regarding [UNRWA staff’s] alleged membership of the military wing of Hamas or other militant groups.” The narrow scope of the investigation has fueled accusations that the U.N. probe was intentionally structured to let accused Hamas members off the hook.
Both the U.N. report and USAID inspector general’s findings are likely to fuel fresh oversight initiatives on Capitol Hill, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) confirmed to the Free Beacon.
“These newly reported 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,” said Grassley, the chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. “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.”
“These new documents,” Grassley added, “demand bipartisan follow up from Congress.”
Update 5:15 p.m.: This piece has been updated since its original publication.
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