Three House Democrats published an open letter addressed to NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro on Tuesday (April 8), stating that they have identified three of Elon Musk’s DOGE staffers who have been given an “extraordinary and alarming degree of access to highly sensitive facilities and personnel systems at NASA.”
According to the letter, the staffers have been given “unrestricted physical access, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week,” to NASA facilities, including Petro’s suite on the 9th floor of NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The named individuals are Scott M. Coulter, Riley J. Sennott and Alexander Simonpour. The letter’s authors — Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (CA-18), Ranking Member Valerie Foushee (NC-4) of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, and Ranking Member Emilia Sykes (OH-13) of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight — found Coulter to be a Senior Advisor and the most senior member of the DOGE team, Sennott to be a Senior Advisor as well, and Simonpour to be an Advisor.
“None of these three individuals possess the slightest background or experience in space policy or government service,” the letter states, also mentioning that Sennott and Simonpour previously worked for Musk’s car company, Tesla. “Mr. Coulter is a failed hedge fund manager. His hedge fund, Cowbird Capital, opened in 2017 and managed hundreds of millions of dollars at its peak, but the firm’s investment portfolio declined until it was forced to close in the summer of 2024.”
DOGE, which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, is an initiative organized by the Trump administration and run by SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, the richest person in the world. Its goal is to make huge cuts to the budgets and workforces of government organizations in order to save what the administration considers “wasted” taxpayer money.
So far, for instance, DOGE has spurred layoffs of over 800 employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), about 700 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) department focused on dementia research; it has also cancelled projects such as 89 independent research contracts worth nearly $900 million at the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. DOGE is also the driving force behind a government-wide removal of programs and efforts committed to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA). In response, NASA has wiped its websites of many of these efforts, which the agency once championed.
“DOGE may not currently answer to the law or the best interests of America’s civil space program, but we intend to do everything we can to make sure they answer to Congress,” the committee’s letter states.
This newly published letter also addresses some back-and-forth that has been happening between NASA and the authors; the April 8 memo was actually the third letter sent to the agency with the authors’ worries about DOGE. The first letter, sent on Feb. 6, outlined many of the committee’s concerns about DOGE having access to NASA’s data — including conflicts of interest that may be posed due to Musk’s affiliation with SpaceX, which holds many contracts with NASA — and basically asked the agency to be transparent about its relationship with the department and what kind of information is being released in the interest of security.
Marc A. Hone, NASA’s acting associate administrator for the agency’s Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, responded on Feb. 13, stating the following:
“I have confirmed with NASA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer and the Office of Protective Services that DOGE has identified an individual who will be employed by NASA. As such, he will have all necessary access to NASA owned or managed resources as required for his duties, in compliance with all laws and regulations regarding the protection of IT resources and classified information. NASA also complies with all applicable Executive Orders and associated supplemental guidance.”
Another letter was sent to the agency on Feb. 21, again reiterating and explaining several of the committee’s concerns about the nature and workflow of DOGE, this time also inquiring more about who actually works for DOGE. The authors pointed out a few staffers they found questionable for the job:
“A 19-year-old DOGE employee named Edward Coristine has been linked to multiple web domains with questionable foreign associations and was previously fired by a cybersecurity firm after being accused of leaking company secrets to a competitor,” the Feb. 21 letter states. “A second DOGE employee named Gavin Kliger promoted white supremacists and misogynists on his social media account as recently as the fall of 2024. A third DOGE employee named Marko Elez was linked to a social media account that ‘advocated racism and eugenics’ before it was deleted.”
Petro responded to this letter on March 12, stating that DOGE-associated persons working at the agency are operating in the capacity of civil servants and will serve in “an advisory role to NASA leadership and will be aligned with the Office of the Administrator, reporting directly to me.” Among other items, Petro also states that none of the DOGE-associated persons serve in a position that requires classified access, and she ensures that all NASA-affiliated personnel and partners comply with things like federal laws, security protocol and ethics outlined by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. But she also says that NASA doesn’t have a specific vetting process for DOGE employees.
The April 8 letter addresses Petro’s March 12 response as well, thanking Petro for her clarification about the general structure of DOGE at the agency and legal obligations of DOGE-associated personnel.
The authors, however, also call out a few ambiguities in Petro’s response. For instance, they take issue with a change in the way DOGE staffers are addressed when compared to the previous NASA letter, question why Petro says DOGE-associated persons don’t serve in any position that “requires” access to classified information at the agency without specifying whether any have been “granted” access to that information, and wonder about a lack of clear response about whether sensitive information belonging to SpaceX competitors is available to the department.
“The information we have reviewed of NASA’s vulnerability to DOGE-related threats is chilling,” the April 8 letter states. “The agency has allowed unvetted and untrained individuals to obtain unprecedented access, seemingly in defiance of standard agency protocols and simple common sense. If the agency has vetted these DOGE-associated persons for their questionable professional histories or apparent conflicts-of-interest, we are not aware of it.”
NASA has yet to provide a response to this final letter. Space.com reached out to the agency for comment, to which a NASA spokesperson said “Any communication on these points will be directed to the Members.”
