I cannot believe that this classified information leak originated with a 21-yr old Air Force National Guard employee working in “IT” at the local Air Force base. The kid lives in the town that I was raised in. Graduated from the high school that I went to. Lived not far away from where I was brought up as a kid. Not good global publicity for North Dighton, the little town in MA.
'38Packard
It is not clear why he did it or why he had any access. He was not pontificating in anyway.
He is ultra right wing. Maybe he was pontificating but had few written words out there in public.
My worry is this is about the war in Ukraine. Then again if it is the public will be outraged as we should be. It is treason.
News reports tonight said he was a member of a social net sight popular with gamers. He was older than most members and posted the info to impress the others. But it got copied to other sites.
How do you keep this from happening? Severe prison sentences? Very limited access? Traceable fingerprints in all documents.
Keep 21 year old kids from top secret material. The kid was trying to impress people and wasn’t mature enough to look 5 feet in front of his nose.
Andy
During the cold war people at Los Alamos turned state secrets like water. The reason was a fear the US would go fascist if it was the only super power. The idea was to aid Russia in balancing global power. Only the Rosenbergs get punished but there were several others. Theodor Hall was one of them. The youngest scientist at Los Alamos at that time he turned secrets on the Fat Boy Plutonium Bomb. He admitted it on CNN in the late 1990s before his death.
The problem with this act today is it is much worse. This was not about anything constructive no matter how far flung. There was no rational. Ignorance is not an excuse before the law. The kid that did this has to go away for much of his life. People who have this access to these records can not simply say lets show my sort of friends on SM what I have. That aint important.
It is speculated by experts that Theodor Hall was not prosecuted because he knew too much. At trial more would have come to light. The Rosenbergs were kind of unknowing and hung out to dry.
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
The last I heard on social media was that the leaked info was out of date (February) and of not much practical use. Initially there was a barrage of pro Ukrainian posts and recently a barrage of pro Russian posts. There seem to be parallel wars on the ground and in the media. Excepting maps of the war zone it is hard to tell truth from fiction.
There are other parallel wars, to fund or not to fund Ukraine, to bait or not to bait the Russian bear. Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines? The Swedes say they know but are not talking. All part of the fog of war.
Life goes on in Portugal as if there is peace on earth.
The Captain
The damage is multi fold, and perhaps exponential. Some of the documents are the first “actual assessments” that the Russians have seen about the real situation, as opposed to the rumors and propaganda as inhabits much of wartime information. Worse, it gives a situation report on Ukrainian stockpiles and preparedness, figures that are not likely to change in a short period of time, especially with a Spring Russian offensive expected.
It also opens windows to sources and methods of collection, demonstrating just how granular some of our intel is whether from satellites, Ukrainian requests for certain types of arms, and so on. It is a treasure trove for Moscow, and a disaster for the Ukraine - and for the US as our allies hold back, knowing how porous our “secrets” armed and how little protection any information they might share with us has.
What I do not understand is why a freaking low level 21 year old in the National Guard would have access to any classified intelligence in the first place, how it was so easy for him to spirit actual documents out, and how it rested on a gaming site for so long without anyone saying “Hey, you know this might not be so cool.”
I’m sure the heads of state of our allies are wondering all the same things, and more.
What bothers me is that this fellow was leaking classified info for years on the Discord gamer board and nobody said anything.
DB2
Hey DB2,
From the linked article…bolding mine
In April 2023, two sets of classified documents of the United States began circulating on Twitter, Telegram, and 4chan. The documents primarily related to the Russo-Ukrainian War, but also included foreign intelligence assessments concerning nations including North Korea, China, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. Jack Teixeira, an airman first class of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, allegedly photographed printouts of the documents at his parents’ home in Dighton, Massachusetts and posted them to the instant messaging platform Discord on a server named “Thug Shaker Central”. A subset of documents were sent to Discord servers for a British-Filipino YouTuber and the sandbox video game Minecraft in late February and early March. In April, a 4chan user posted several documents on the website’s political imageboard /pol/. The documents were then spread throughout pro-Russian Telegram channels; at least one image was crudely altered to show more Ukrainian casualties than Russian casualties.
I’m not sure where you get that this has been going on for years. Sounds like the kid just got his hands on the docs back in February and thought he could share pics of them with his friends on the discourse site.
Please post a link to the source that he has been doing this for years. Thanks.
'38Packard
Well, maybe not years, but certainly earlier than February. From the Washington Post:
" United by their mutual love of guns, military gear and God, the group of roughly two dozen — mostly men and boys — formed an invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers
. But they paid little attention last year when the man some call “OG” posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon…The young member read OG’s message closely, and the hundreds more that he said followed on a regular basis for months."
DB2
A fear that seems to be valid given the rise of certain political attitudes and the success of their candidates in the US. Doesn’t happen all at once…
How do you know that what you think is true is in fact true and not purposeful mis-dis-information planted to screw the Russian intelligence apparatus? As Churchill called it. “A bodyguard of lies?”
That was the intention of my post, how do we know that what we hold as true is, in fact, the truth and not a shroud of fabricated lies?
My cousin’s father in law was a specialist in military intelligence specializing on the KGB and its predecessors. He told me of one incident where they got a new report on the KGB and on examination it turned out to be a rehash of the report his group had written years earlier. Once on paper it became fact when in reality it was just the best guess several years earlier.
Neil deGrasse Tyson refuses to do jury duty because he holds that eyewitness testimony is unreliable yet it is the gold standard in the judicial system.
Be skeptical!
The Captain
Doesn’t matter. The damage is not whether or not the details of the documents are factual (we will likely never know), the damage is the fact that our secrets are so porous that they allowed an E-3 (low level grunt) 21 yr old weekend warrior either authorized or unauthorized to so much secret info. There seems to be no compartmentalization. No “need to know” scrutiny.
Even worse, imagine just how many more Jack Teixeira’s are out there with such access.
The important thing here is to lay down a marker about what happens to people who scamper off with classified documents.
Steve
Have to disagree.
To use an analogy, it is less important that we punish a guy that set off a dirty bomb than it is to find out how he was so easily able to gain access to restricted materials to make it - and who else may have that same access.
You can’t punish the guy enough to make other 21 year old kids take such seriously. They don’t think that way.
Teixeira is a Portuguese surname! 
Ever heard of Operation Mincemeat?
The Captain
So, you are saying that all the laws, police, courts, and prisons have no deterrent effect? We could shut all that down, save a pile of money, and there would be no increase in crime?
Steve
Incredibly, news reporters (apparently) got to him before law enforcement. There was an article in the WaPo two days ago where they had tracked down and interviewed one of his gaming buddies. Then yesterday the NYT identified him by name and tried to contact him. Not long after that the cops rolled him up.
One of the craziest parts is the NYT reporters identified him by matching the granite countertops in his home using photos available online.
You are building a strawman. I am saying the consequences (not the laws, nor the police, nor the courts - but you could include the prisons), are not much of a deterrent for your typical 20 year old male.
I know it has been a while since you were that age but you can probably recall just how dangerous your own behavior may have been on occasion. I know mine was - and that the threat of punishment after the fact was often the farthest thing from our minds.
None of that is to say that the kid should get a pass. It is to say that removing the ability for others to do the same will do far more to reduce the incident rate of another occurrence than putting this kid in jail for 400 years. Heck, six months after he is in jail, no 20 year old will likely be able to remember his him - so no deterrence impact.
Hawkwin
Who would bet real money that less than half of all Americans know Chelsea Manning, who coincidentally was also an E-3.
I am again reminded that if someone this sloppy has such unfettered access to our secrets, just how exposed are we to someone that is smart, savvy, and private with their deception.
My fear is that we will be right back here talking about this again in a few years because all the attention is on the criminal and not the open access to our data.
