The head of NASA is calling for a probe into a reported series of secret conversations between billionaire Elon Musk and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The space agency’s Administrator Bill Nelson said Friday that the allegations published by the Wall Street Journal “should be investigated,” according to Semafor.
“I don’t know if that story is true,” Nelson said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit in Washington, D.C. “If it’s true [that] there have been multiple conversations with Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then that would be concerning, particularly for NASA and the Department of Defense.”
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Musk’s privately owned SpaceX company has billions of dollars in contracts with the U.S. space agency and the Pentagon, and the world’s richest man has said he has a security clearance that gives him access to certain classified information.
On Thursday, the Journal reported that Musk — a big-spending supporter and campaign surrogate for former President Donald Trump — has been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022.
They’ve reportedly discussed geopolitical tensions, business and personal matters, according to the Journal, which cited several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials.
During one conversation, Putin reportedly asked Musk to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, two people briefed on the request told the Journal.
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Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment, but has previously denied accusations that he had become an apologist for Putin and said his companies “have done more to undermine Russia than anything,” the Journal said.
Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told the Journal that the Russian leader and Musk had a single phone call prior to 2022 during which they talked about “space as well as current and future technologies.”
The Pentagon declined to discuss the matter, with a spokesperson saying: “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.”
In January, Fox Business reporter Charles Gasparino said on social media that Musk’s security clearance was going to be reviewed in the wake of a Journal report that alleged he used illegal drugs including LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms at private parties around the world.
A Musk lawyer told the Journal that he is “regularly and randomly drug tested at SpaceX and has never failed a test” and Musk said on his social media site X that he underwent and passed three years of random drug testing requested by NASA after he smoked marijuana during a 2018 interview by podcaster Joe Rogan.
