WASHINGTON — Nearly seven months after a published report said billionaire Elon Musk had repeatedly held phone conversations with Vladimir Putin and other high-level Russians, there is no sign the Defense Department is reassessing Musk’s role as a major defense contractor with a top-secret security clearance.
Senior Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee called last November for the Biden administration to review Musk’s clearance and consider whether he should continue to be involved in SpaceX contracts. They reiterated those calls in interviews this week.
If any other U.S. defense contractor with a top-secret clearance — or any Defense Department employee — had repeatedly spoken by phone with leaders of arguably America’s principal foreign adversary, it would raise serious questions, at a minimum, several senators said.
“Typically our defense contractors, and that’s what Musk wants to be, do not deal with Russia in any way, shape or form — and the same rule should apply to him,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, in a May 14 interview. “The primary responsibility of the president is to protect the people of the United States. A large part of that is ensuring that adversaries don’t get information they should not have. So if you’re willing to ignore that to take care of a major donor, that’s absolutely wrong and unethical.”
‘Serious questions’
After The Wall Street Journal reported last October that Musk had spoken repeatedly with Putin and senior Russians between 2021 and last year, Reed and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the second-most senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, called in November for the Biden administration to investigate Musk’s reported contacts and to review his clearance and whether suspension or debarment were warranted.
Reed and Shaheen requested the probe in a publicly released letter addressed to both then-Attorney General Merrick Garland and Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch, who was fired by President Donald Trump on Jan. 24 as part of a larger purge of inspectors general at multiple departments.
“These relationships between a well-known U.S. adversary and Mr. Musk, a beneficiary of billions of dollars in U.S. government funding, pose serious questions regarding Mr. Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a clearance holder,” Reed and Shaheen wrote at the time.
Reed and Shaheen also wrote then Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall last November about the reported calls between Musk and Putin.
Kendall, in a previously unreported December response to the senators obtained by CQ Roll Call, said: “The Department of the Air Force takes security matters very seriously, and I share your concerns.”
No signs of probe
It is unclear, however, whether any investigation has ensued.
Storch, in a previously unreported January letter to Reed and Shaheen obtained by CQ Roll Call, said his Office of the Inspector General investigators would not be looking into Musk’s contacts with Putin.
Instead, Storch wrote, it would be up to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency to assess the relevance of the reports to Musk’s security clearance.
And Storch said the military services and Defense Logistics Agency are in charge of weighing suspension or debarment of contractors.
“After carefully reviewing the concerns in your letter and how they relate to the oversight responsibilities of the DoD OIG, we determined that other organizations in the DoD are better suited to address your concerns,” Storch wrote.
The Space Force, part of the Air Force, is SpaceX’s main U.S. government customer for billions of dollars worth of launch services, satellites and more.
The Air Force said this week it is not reviewing SpaceX for suspension or debarment.
“The Department of the Air Force has received no evidence that would warrant a debarment action against SpaceX,” an Air Force spokesperson said via email.
A spokesman for the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency said it would not comment on whether or not it is conducting a review of Musk’s clearance.
“Consistent with the Privacy Act of 1974, we do not comment on any individual’s security clearance, review or status, or about personnel security policy matters in the context of reports about any individual’s actions,” the official said in a statement.
Current and former Defense officials, requesting anonymity, suggested that a probe of a presidential confidante who owns a leading defense firm — even if it might be warranted — may be too touchy for any executive branch investigative body to pursue.
Musk’s tilt toward Moscow
The Wall Street Journal reported in October of last year that Musk had repeatedly talked with Putin, with the first known call happening in 2021, a conversation that Musk publicly acknowledged.
But there were others with Putin and senior Russians, the paper said.
Musk has also spoken with Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, the story said.
Kiriyenko has been an architect of Russia’s global disinformation campaign, creating some 30 internet domains to promote Kremlin views, including on Musk’s social media platform, X, the Justice Department said in an affidavit last fall.
On one occasion, the newspaper reported, Putin asked Musk if he would consider not activating Starlink over Taiwan, a request that Putin characterized as a favor to his allies in Beijing, The Wall Street Journal article indicated. Starlink does not currently operate in Taiwan.
During the years of his reported contacts with Putin, Musk increasingly took actions that were widely seen as favoring Moscow.
After making supportive statements about Kyiv in the early months of the war, Musk increasingly has echoed Russian talking points about Ukraine on X.
And after providing his Starlink satellite internet service to Ukraine from the early days of the conflict, Musk switched his approach to Ukraine’s military use of Starlink in late 2022. He prohibited the use of Starlink by Ukrainian forces in or near Crimea, a former territory of Ukraine that Russia annexed in 2014.
Then, in 2024, reports emerged that Russia was using Starlink terminals in its invasion of Ukraine, though Musk and other SpaceX officials said the company did not enable this.
Partisan perspectives
Several senators in both parties, asked about Musk’s ties to Putin, were not familiar with or did not recall The Wall Street Journal report.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R- Okla., a member of the Armed Services Committee, suggested that if Musk had done anything wrong, he would have already lost his security clearance.
“He had the highest clearance within the DOD and within the U.S. than any defense contractor we have,” Mullin said. “I can assure you we were paying attention to what he was talking about. It’s obviously not a concern, because he didn’t lose this clearance.”
But Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., also a member of the Armed Services Committee, said there is “a serious question about whether or not Elon Musk could even get a security clearance” if he were to apply afresh today.
“And here he is playing the role of co-president, advancing his own personal interests and whatever conspiracy theory he has latched onto this week,” Warren said. “That’s corruption, and it presents a danger to the American people.”
Shaheen said that “Americans with security clearances ought to understand the importance of classified information, and there shouldn’t be a conflict of interest to get those clearances.”
Reporting foreign contacts
Kendall, in his response to Reed and Shaheen, also noted that the Space Force has given Musk a “Top Secret Facility Clearance.”
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Kendall said, works closely with the counterintelligence agency and other federal agencies “to conduct appropriate reviews of vendors that work with the Air Force and Space Force to properly protect national security information and maintain the DoD’s high security standard for the Defense Industrial Base.”
Kendall added that the counterintelligence agency “requires cleared persons, including contractors, to report unofficial foreign travel and foreign contacts.”
But Kendall did not say whether or not Musk had cleared his calls with high-level Russians with authorities.
Reed, meanwhile, suggested this week that Musk was probably talking to Putin in an effort to serve the billionaire’s corporate interests. Reed said any Russian access to protected SpaceX information could have serious security implications.
“If the Russians have access to his satellite Starklink [system], they’re pretty clever and they might be able to exploit the connection to get information and monitor communications,” Reed said. “All that has to be considered.”
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