#leaker of classified information

[filosofablogger]

A Couple Of Snarky Snippets

I went in search of some actual news stories that didn’t have the words “Tucker Carlson” in them, and I found a couple that raised my hackles, to say the least … Someone dropped the ball Yesterday I read a couple of articles about the ‘leaker’ of military secrets, Jack Teixeira.  It seems this young man has been nothing but trouble for quite some time, which leads me to ask a few questions,…

[beardedmrbean]

LONDON — A British court gave Wikileaks founder Julian Assange permission to launch a full appeal against his extradition to the United States on espionage charges Monday, after more than a decade of legal battles. 

Two judges at the High Court in London said the Australian-born Assange could have a full appeal to hear his argument that he might be discriminated against because he is a foreign national.

Assange’s legal avenues in the U.K. would have been exhausted if the High Court had ruled the extradition could go ahead. His legal team said last week that Assange could have been put on a plane to the U.S. within 24 hours if they ruled against him.

Assange's lawyer Edward Fitzgerald had told the judges they should not accept the assurance given by American prosecutors that his client could seek the protections given under the First Amendment, as a U.S court would not be bound by this. “We say this is a blatantly inadequate assurance,” he told the court, Reuters reported.

However, Reuters said that he had accepted a separate assurance that Assange would not face the death penalty, saying the U.S. had provided an “unambiguous promise not to charge any capital offense.”

It could be months before the appeal is heard.

Assange, 52, was not in court to hear his fate being debated. Fitzgerald said he did not attend for health reasons.

But hundreds of protesters cheered outside the court as news of the verdict came through.

Assange has been fighting extradition for more than a decade, including seven years in self-exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London before he was jailed in the high-security Belmarsh Prison on the outskirts of London, where he has been held for five years.

Assange has been indicted in the U.S. on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents.

American prosecutors have alleged that he put lives at risk when he helped Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published almost 15 years ago. 

James Lewis, a lawyer for the U.S., argued in written submissions that Assange’s actions “threatened damage to the strategic and national security interests of the United States” and put individuals named in the documents — including Iraqis and Afghans who had helped U.S. forces — at risk of “serious physical harm.”

Assange's attorneys have argued that he engaged in regular journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information and the prosecution is politically motivated retaliation.

They have said he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted, although American authorities have said the sentence is likely to be much shorter than that.

Assange’s many global supporters have criticized the prosecution and there have been calls for the case to be dropped from rights groups, some media bodies and political leaders including  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. 

Document drop site

Wikileaks, which he launched in 2006 as a place for leakers to drop classified documents, rose to prominence four years later when it published a classified video provided by Manning. 

Recorded in 2007, the video showed a U.S. military helicopter killing civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in Baghdad. When a van arrived to pick up the wounded, it was also shot at. More than 10 people were killed. 

Manning was convicted at a court-martial of espionage and other charges in 2013 for leaking secret military files to WikiLeaks. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison but was released in 2017 after President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Assange’s legal troubles began in 2010, when he was arrested in London at the request of Sweden, which wanted to question him about allegations of rape and sexual assault made by two women.

Two years later, he jumped bail and sought refuge inside the Ecuadorian Embassy which put him out of reach of authorities, but effectively trapped him in the building.

After the relationship soured, he was evicted from the embassy in April 2019 and British police immediately arrested him for breaching bail in 2012. He has been in prison ever since although Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in 2019 because of time elapsed.

Although a British district court judge ruled against the extradition request in 2021, citing a real and “oppressive” risk of suicide, U.S. authorities won an appeal the following year, after giving a series of assurances about how Assange would be treated if extradited. This included a pledge that he could be transferred to Australia, to serve his sentence. 

Earlier this year, the Australian parliament called for Assange to be allowed to return to his homeland. Officials have tried to lobby the U.S. to drop the extradition efforts or find a diplomatic solution that would allow Assange to return to his homeland.

Australian authorities have said the case has dragged on for too long and officials have tried to lobby the U.S. to drop the extradition efforts or find a diplomatic solution that would allow his return. 

Asked about Australia’s request last month, President Joe Biden his administration was “considering it.”

[collapsedsquid]

The Air National Guardsman accused of accessing classified information and posting it in an online forum filed a new motion in court on Monday, asking the judge in his case to treat him like former President Donald Trump and not require he remain in jail until trial. Attorneys for Jack Teixeira, are arguing in the new filing that federal prosecutors made a “reasoned decision not to seek pretrial detention in other espionage cases, including most recently for either former President Donald Trump or his personal aid, Waltine Nauta,” who are also charged under the Espionage Act.

Haven't been keeping up with the man, ballsy (He just revealed he will plead guilty yesterday)

[workersolidarity]

🇬🇧🇺🇸 🚨

ADVOCATES FOR JULIAN ASSANGE CALL ON BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TO END EXTRADITION TO US

Advocates for Press Freedoms issued a warnings Tuesday in a last ditch effort to call on the Biden administration to drop all charges against Australian journalist and publisher Julian Assange as he faces his last hearings in the High Court of the United Kingdom to appeal the decision to extradite him to the United States to stand trial on espionage charges.

Julian Assange (52) faces hearings Tuesday and Wednesday determining whether the journalist, who's health is rapidly deteriorating, can appeal a previous decision approving his extradition to the United States where he faces 175 years in an American penitentiary for his role in releasing classified information detailing criminality by the intelligence agencies and militaries of the United States and allied Western powers.

Among classified information published by WikiLeaks, which was founded by Julian Assange in 2006, were criminality by US intelligence agencies and war crimes committed by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange himself was unable to attend the first day of hearings due to his failing health. The journalist has been held in Belmarsh Prison in the UK for over 5 years after the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had been holed up since 2012, revoked his amnesty in 2019, after which he was arrested and imprisoned without bail in Belmarsh Prison in the UK.

The United States under the Trump administration charged Assange, who is an Australian citizen, with 17-counts of violating the Espionage Act, a more than 100 year-old draconian law used by US authorities to counter leaks of military operations and classified information. However, Assange's case represents the first time the Espionage Act is being used against a publisher rather than the leaker of classified information.

Advocates say this represents a clear and present danger to press freedoms and accuse US authorities of suppressing freedom of speech and association.

Speaking at a rally during the hearing, Reporters Without Borders Director of Campaigns, Rebecca Vincent is quoted as saying "we're not letting the U.S. government off the hook today no matter what happens here in London," adding that "the responsibility still lies with the U.S. Department of Justice," said Vincent. "At any point, they could drop the charges, they could close this case, they could let Julian Assange free."

With concerns over Assange's state of health adding to an already contentious hearing, Assange's wife Stella Assange attended the rally which was held outside the courthouse in London, telling the crowds that "We don't know what to expect, but you're here because the world is watching. They just cannot get away with this. Julian needs his freedom and we all need the truth."

In a later speech at the rally, Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation emphasized that "as Assange inches closer to extradition, the danger to press freedom grows."

"An Espionage Act trial and conviction of Assange in an American court would be a disaster for journalists and for journalism," said Stern. "If the Biden administration cares as much about press freedom as it claims, it wouldn't wait for the U.K. to send this dangerous case to American courts. The Department of Justice should drop the Assange case now."

Also speaking after Assange's hearing, his attorney, Edward Fitzgerald is quoted as saying that Assange was being "prosecuted for engaging in ordinary journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information, information that is both true and of obvious and important public interest."

Fitzgerald further argued Tuesday that Julian Assange's extradition to the United States would be direct violation of the US-UK Extradition Treaty, which states that a person cannot be extradited on "political charges," which Assange's lawyer says is directly applicable to Julian's case.

Assange's attorneys are expected to appeal his case to the European Court of Human Rights should the judge in this week's hearing rule against the publisher, arguing that Assange's life is in danger should he be extradited to the United States.

Advocacy groups say they are deeply alarmed by the case against Julian Assange. Speaking to their concerns, Stella Assange said at Tuesday's rally that this "is the case that has been brought against Julian."

"Journalism has been re-classed as espionage. An unprecedented prosecution has been taken against a publisher for the very first time in the more than 100-year history of this Act and it is going to set a precedent. It already is setting a precedent that can then be used against the rest of the press anywhere in the world."

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[odinsblog]

In the eight months since his arrest, federal law enforcement investigators and top intelligence officials, as well as Teixeira’s online friends, have struggled to understand what may have driven him to carry out one of the biggest classified intelligence disclosures in years. Nothing about Teixeira fit the profile of the traditional leaker. He wasn’t trying to expose official misdeeds. He wasn’t a principled whistleblower. Why would he give classified documents to a bunch of teenagers?


Documents and interviews by The Post in partnership with “Frontline” with more than four dozen people, including those who knew Teixeira online and in real life, as well as national security officials and experts, offer the most detailed account yet of his motivations, how he allegedly obtained so many national security secrets and how he was caught.

The answers are alarming and at times bewildering. They expose how vulnerable the Pentagon is to a threat from within and the vast proliferation of top-secret information across the government. Teixeira used his privileged access to read intelligence documents and reports that had nothing to do with his assigned duties. His superiors caught him in the act several times but did not remove him from his job.

His online world was a hothouse of racist and violent rhetoric, suffused with conspiracy theories. He sought out classified information to validate his baseless suspicions that federal law enforcement was complicit in mass violence as part of a plot to subdue and control the [white] citizenry.

Intelligence officials said the trove Teixeira is accused of revealing was extraordinarily damaging, full of details about the course of the Russia-Ukraine war, including troop casualty numbers that neither Moscow nor Kyiv had publicly shared. They discussed Ukrainian planning for sabotage operations and demonstrated that the United States was monitoring the communications of the Russian military, as well as Ukrainian generals and political leaders.

…Teixeira had warned the boys that federal authorities were “nefarious,” Charles said, capable of fiendish abuses. He claimed without evidence that “the feds” knew in advance of the racist May 2022 mass killing in Buffalo, among other massacres, and let them happen to create a pretext for tightening gun-control laws, Charles said.

…In March 2018, his sophomore year, a group of students reported Teixeira to the administration after they heard him “talking about Molotov cocktails and guns,” according to a copy of a Dighton police report that The Post and “Frontline” obtained following an official records request. Teixeira allegedly told one student, “I’ve got a moly [molotov cocktail] in my bag!” and asked, “What would you do if I threw one down the hall?” Another student said Teixeira made a similar statement to him about throwing the explosive at school.


Two teachers who had been trained on how to respond to a school shooter, and to spot warning signs of violence in their students, also expressed concerns about Teixeira “because of how much he talks about guns,” according to the police report.


A month earlier, Teixeira had shown classmates at a lunch table a video of someone apparently killed in battle in the Middle East. “Look at this!” Teixeira said “with a smile, almost as if he was excited,” the police report said.


Dighton police also took statements from several students who said Teixeira had made violent threats against Black people. They told investigators that Teixeira said, “I want to kill all Black people,” “Black people don’t exist,” and “I hate n-----s,” according to the police report. One student said Teixeira used the phrase “I want to kill all Black people” in his automotive class “a lot.”


One female student who reported Teixeira to administrators told police that he “makes racist comments and is always talking about guns or war and that she had also heard about him killing animals,” according to the report. The student also noted that Teixeira was attempting to obtain a firearms identification card “and that someone should know about it.” In the state of Massachusetts, the card permits the possession of “non-large-capacity rifles, shotguns, and ammunition.”

(continue reading)

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A former Ontario cabinet minister is suing the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and unidentified employees who he alleges leaked classified information with the intent of harming his reputation.

Michael Chan alleges the anonymous employees' actions were influenced by "a stereotypical type-casting of immigrants born in China as being somehow untrustworthy."

Chan, a former cabinet minister in the former Ontario Liberal government and now a deputy mayor in Markham, Ont., is also suing the Crown, the attorney general of Canada, the CSIS director, and two journalists who have written stories on Chan based on leaked classified information.

Chan says the stories inaccurately implicated him in allegations of election interference and he is seeking a total of $10 million in damages. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Alleged Pentagon leaker and former Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira was indicted by a federal grand jury in Massachusetts on Thursday, charged with six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information.

Investigators said in court documents that the 21-year-old Teixeira used his position as a systems administrator in the 102nd Intelligence Wing in the Massachusetts Air National Guard to obtain and then illegally disseminate classified military information to members of an online messaging platform. Since July 2021, Teixeira held a TOP SECRET/SCI security clearance, the indictment said, and received training on the proper handling of classified information.

Teixeira was arrested in April and charged via criminal complaint after dozens of classified documents — including many reviewed by CBS News — were discovered in a Discord group, an invitation-only forum where members can post anonymously. Those records were later widely shared online.

Teixeira pleaded not guilty to the charges on the criminal complaint earlier this year, but has yet to be arraigned on the newly unsealed indictment.

The indictment revealed he allegedly retained and transmitted classified documents including information "regarding the compromise by a foreign adversary" that was marked top secret, material related to the provision of equipment to Ukraine, and "a government document discussing a plot by a foreign adversary to target United States forces abroad." That document allegedly included specific information about where and how the attack on U.S. forces would occur.

Prosecutors say in some instances, Teixeira transcribed the information he was leaking, and in other instances, posted photographs of the documents.

In arguing for Teixeira's pretrial detention in April, prosecutors alleged in court documents that Teixeira sent more than 40,000 messages on Discord between Nov. 1, 2022, and April 7, 2023, some of which contained sensitive government records. He allegedly began accessing the classified information in February 2022 and later posted the information online.

Investigators said Teixeira acknowledged on multiple occasions in Discord messages that he had posted classified material and had even asked other members to specify which countries or topic areas interested them most.

In November, a member of the group asked him, "Isnt that shit classified," referring to information Teixeira had posted on the forum. Teixeira allegedly replied, "Everything that ive been telling u guys up to this point has been…this isn't different," court documents revealed. The next month, investigators allege he wrote about the sensitive information he obtained from work: "I tailor it and take important parts and include as many details as possible."

Investigators also captured conversations that showed Teixeira instructing others in the Discord group in April to "delete all messages," alleging he took a series of steps to obstruct the investigation into the leaked Pentagon records.

"[i]f anyone comes looking, don't tell them shit," he is accused of writing to one user.

Prosecutors revealed earlier this year Teixeira was suspended from high school in 2018 after a classmate heard him talking about weapons and Molotov cocktails. He entered the Air National Guard in September 2019 and worked as a "cyber transport systems journeyman," according to Pentagon records.

The violent rhetoric continued after Teixeira began his military service, prosecutors said, alleging that during this period, he posted that if he had his way, he would "kill a [expletive] ton of people" because it would be "culling the weak minded."

Court documents said that in February, he told a Discord user that he was tempted to make a type of minivan into an "assassination van."

In previous court filings, Teixeira's legal team called the government's allegations "hyperbolic" and blamed other members of the Discord chat for the widespread dissemination of the documents.

"The government's allegations in its filings on the evening of April 26, 2023, offer no support that Mr. Teixeira currently, or ever, intended any information purportedly to the private social media server to be widely disseminated," his public defender wrote.

Teixeira has since obtained another attorney, Michael Bachrach, who declined to comment.

[mariacallous]

A decision by US House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) chair Mike Turner to sound the alarm over space-based Russian military research was far more extraordinary than previously reported.

A WIRED review of an internal messaging system used by the United States Congress shows that HPSCI rarely sends members invites to review classified documents and has not—in at least 15 years—alarmed lawmakers by announcing an “urgent” threat against the United States.

The Dear Colleague system is widely used by congressional committees and lawmakers individually to circulate internal memos, invites, and other announcements. This week, WIRED obtained all messages sent House-wide by HPSCI since 2009. Copies of Dear Colleague messages sent since then are backed up by the system. The source of the messages was granted anonymity because their disclosure was not authorized.

The messages reveal that only on a handful of occasions has HPSCI sent letters informing members of classified documents available for review. Of those, none had previously demanded “urgent” attention.

The urgency with which Turner and other HPSCI members characterized the disclosure—only later revealed to concern Russian military research—has been downplayed by fellow lawmakers and Biden administration officials. As a result, criticism has fallen on Turner over the announcement, which generated a slew of provocative headlines and gave life to vague concerns by US officials over the protection of classified sources and methods.

A Washington Post headline that remains visible to users on Google wildly declares: “U.S. officials say Russia has deployed a nuclear weapon in space.” Covering the story for CNN, national security reporter Jim Sciutto was far more tempered, telling TV viewers: “This is something that Russia is experimenting with, looking into designing. This is not a clear and present danger.”

Democratic representative Seth Moulton, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, lambasted Turner during the same CNN segment, labeling him an “intelligence leaker.” Moulton added that two years had passed since he’d first been briefed on the Russian research. “I haven’t had a problem keeping it a secret,” he said.

WIRED reported on Friday that sources on Capitol Hill had begun accusing Turner and his Democratic counterpart on HPSCI, Jim Himes, of issuing the disclosure to influence a vote happening simultaneously to reauthorize a controversial surveillance program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Turner and Himes, after both signing the “Dear Colleague” message the night before, failed to appear at a Rules Committee hearing on Wednesday just as news of the Russian threat went viral.

House speaker Mike Johnson abruptly canceled the vote shortly after, under what sources describe as intense pressure from Turner.

HSCPI spokesperson Jeff Naft—who did not respond to an inquiry prior to WIRED’s story on Friday—later refuted the allegation, calling the implication of ties between the surveillance vote and the Russian intel “way off base.”

The spokesperson said it was a screenshot of HPSCI’s Dear Colleague letter—posted by reporters online less than a day after it was sent—that forced Turner to issue a press release about the supposed Russian threat.

Turner’s press release notably went further than HPSCI’s letter, pressing US president Joe Biden to personally “declassify all information” concerning the threat. The next day, Turner issued a second statement declaring he’d worked closely “with the Biden administration” before notifying Congress. Naft, the HPSCI spokesperson, clarified by email that Turner had worked with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the language describing the threat contained in the Dear Colleague letter. (Naft stressed Turner had “NEVER” stated he’d cooperated with the White House.)

Turner’s second statement added that HPSCI had voted 23–1 to make the disclosure. According to the committee’s own rules, a vote is not required to bring classified material to the attention of the chairmen and ranking members of other committees; only House-wide alerts require a vote. It is unclear which HPSCI member voted against the disclosure, as no official roll call was taken.

A senior congressional source tells WIRED the Dear Colleague letter was always destined to cause panic. It is widely understood that the letters are not a secure form of communication and are often disclosed to reporters and others working off the Hill.

Only four times in the past decade and a half, according to WIRED’s review of the system, has HPSCI used a Dear Colleague letter to draw attention to classified material—outside of routine budgetary concerns.

The first such message is dated March 2009 and pertains to two classified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports. The subject of the reports is undeclared. A second letter was issued by HPSCI and signed by former congressperson Devin Nunes on January 10, 2017, informing members of a classified report on “Russian activities and intentions in the recent US election.”

Neither letter is marked urgent.

A third letter informing members about the option to review classified material is dated February 24, 2010; however, it makes clear the material was made available at the request of the intelligence community (IC). It is one of numerous letters in which HPSCI is seen lobbying on the spy agencies’ behalf—in this case, to support a renewal of the 9/11-era USA PATRIOT Act, today defunct due to a lack of support in Congress.

A plurality of HPSCI’s Dear Colleague letters are aimed at whipping support for bills that reauthorize or advance US spy powers. Others urge lawmakers to vote against legislation that would enhance Americans’ privacy protections. One such letter reads simply: “Don’t Handcuff the FBI and Intelligence Community.”

Six other letters are invitations to classified briefings held by intelligence agencies. HPSCI routinely acts as a mediator between the agencies and members of Congress, arranging briefings and other events on the intelligence community’s behalf.

HPSCI sent an additional three Dear Colleagues letters the morning after its “urgent” warning about Russia went out: Each asked members to support various amendments to a FISA bill during an upcoming vote that HPSCI’s chair was, simultaneously, working to get called off.

Sources told WIRED that Johnson’s decision to delay the vote on FISA came amid a sudden threat by Turner to kill the bill the moment it got to the floor. Turner was motivated to stop the bill’s progress at any cost, they said, due to the growing odds of a rival committee passing amendments of their own—to dramatically curtail the FBI’s domestic surveillance abilities.

[theculturedmarxist]

Three British journalists I know personally – Johanna Ross, Vanessa Beeley and Kit Klarenberg – have each in the last two years been detained at immigration for hours on re-entering their own country, and questioned by police under anti-terrorist legislation.

This is plainly an abuse of the power to detain at port of entry, because in each case they could have been questioned at any time in the UK were there legitimate cause, and the questioning was not focused on their travels.

They were in fact detained and interrogated simply for holding and publishing dissident opinion on foreign policy, and in particular for supporting a more collaborative approach to Russia – with which, lest we forget, the UK is not at war.

These detentions have taken place over the period of a couple of years. All were targeted for journalism and this is plainly a continuing policy of harassment of dissident British journalists.

I have three times in that same period been questioned by police in my own home in Edinburgh for journalism, over three separate matters. I spent four months in jail for publicising essential information to show that a high level conspiracy was behind the false accusations against Scottish Independence leader Alex Salmond.

Julian Assange remains in maximum security jail for publicising the truth about war crimes. Meanwhile a new National Security Bill goes through the Westminster parliament, which will make it illegal for a journalist possess or publish classified information.

This has never been illegal. The responsibility has always lain with the whistleblower or leaker, not the journalist or publisher. It seeks to enshrine in UK law precisely what the US Government is seeking to achieve against Assange using the US 1917 Espionage Act. This is a huge threat to journalism.

It is also worth pointing out that, if Evan Gershkovich was indeed doing nothing more than he has claimed to have been doing in Russia, that action would land him a long jail sentence in either the USA or the UK under the provisions which both governments are attempting to enforce.

On top of that, you have the Online Safety Bill, which under the excuse of protecting against paedophilia, will require social media gatekeepers to remove any kind of content the government deems as illegal.

When you put all this together with the new Public Order Act, which effectively gives the police authority to ban any protest they wish to ban, there is a fundamental change happening.

This is not just a theoretical restriction on liberty. Active enforcement against non-approved speech is already underway, as shown by those detentions and, most strongly of all, by Julian’s continued and appalling incarceration.

To complete the horror, there is no longer a genuine opposition within the political class. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party opposes none of this wave of attacks on civil liberties. The SNP has been sending out identical stock replies from its MPs on Julian Assange, 100% backing the UK government line on his extradition and imprisonment.

I feel this very personally. I know all of these people affected – Julian, Alex, Kit, Vanessa, Johanna, and view them as colleagues whose rights I defend, even though I do not always agree with all of their disparate views.

Two other people I know personally and admire are under attack. The campaign of lies and innuendo against Roger Waters this last few weeks has been astonishing in both its viciousness and its mendacity, recalling the dreadful attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.

More mundane but also part of the same phenomenon, my friend Randy Credico has had his Twitter account cancelled.

To be a dissident in the UK, or indeed the “West”, today is to see, every single day, your friends persecuted and to see the walls close in upon yourself.

A unified political class, controlled by billionaires, is hurtling us towards fascism. That now seems to me undeniable.

[naturalrights-retard]

Gerald Celente and Judge Andrew Napolitano discussed the alleged Pentagon document dump during their weekly “Celente & the Judge” meeting, and agreed that the leaked U.S. documents are the equivalent of the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers.

Napolitano said there are essentially two sides to the debate in Washington: Is the alleged leaker a hero or is he a mastermind or a pawn?

(Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old from the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was charged last Friday inside a Boston federal court for allegedly producing the classified documents and other national defense information.)

VICTORIA NULAND: BILLIONS FOR UKRAINE PROTECTS AMERICANS

“Many of my intelligence community friends believe he is a pawn,” Napolitano said. “That somebody much higher up in the intelligence of military hierarchy got this stuff to him without him knowing how they got it, and knowing that he had a penchant for sharing documents with his chatroom.”

NAPOLITANO: These documents revealed that Ukraine’s air defenses have been horrifically degraded by the Russians, and by the end of next month — which is just six weeks away — the Ukrainian air defenses will be worthless. It also declared their collective view is that Ukraine is losing this war.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin lied when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that things are going well and it will be a good spring for Ukraine. They expect the exact opposite.

(Newsweek noted that Austin told the committee that Ukraine has a "very good chance" at launching a successful counteroffensive during the spring.)

NAPOLITANO: Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland told a press conference the location of drones, the origins of drones, the location of Russian troops, the movement of Russian troops…all of this is top secret information. So we have Victoria Nuland revealing top secret information with the government’s blessing, we have Jack Teixeira revealing government information, he’s in jail charged with espionage. We have Lloyd Austin, the secretary of defense, lying under oath to the Congress, we have Jack Teixeira telling his buddies the truth. So, which will serve the American public better when they decide whether or not to believe the government?

[filosofablogger]

Tales From An Alternate Universe ... I Wish

It doesn’t take a whole lot to raise my hackles and make me growl these days.  Here are just a few of the things that succeeded in doing both within about an hour yesterday … {this is the stuff ulcers are made of} Say WHAT???? I want you all to hear this statement made by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem speaking of her grandchildren at the NRA convention yesterday … make sure you’re sitting…

[maswartz]

The more we learn about this guy the more obvious it is that the military REALLY needs to re-examine how it gives out access to top secret information

[uboat53]

The news of the last week regarding former President Trump's possession of classified and sensitive national security documents really struck home for me, as I'm sure you've noticed from all I've been posting about it, and I thought I'd write up a bit of context for everyone as to why that is.

As some of you may know, I worked for the first three years of my career as a defense contractor developing documents and doing training for operations and maintenance on an army radar system at one of the largest defense companies in the country. In that capacity I never held a security clearance, but I did work with documents that were considered sensitive for national security.

While I was there, the video of a 2007 helicopter strike in Iraq that had killed several civilians including two Reuters journalists was leaked through Wikileaks. It was a major event for us and a good deal of changes were made to tighten up control of sensitive and classified information in the company including a good deal of additional training in properly handling such information.

(I should briefly mention my personal opinion which is that, though I agree with the things that certain leakers like Mr. Snowden and Ms. Manning leaked, the government's response is also correct legally. In my opinion, what they did was morally correct and legally incorrect, which is exactly the situation for a presidential pardon if we could ever get a President with the courage to do so.)

That's how I can tell you with absolute certainty that, had I chosen to take any of the information I worked with there home with me, I would probably have been arrested and served many years in jail and rightly so. I was very aware of this the entire time I worked there as was everyone else I worked with and we were very careful to ensure that we did not do anything that would have risked revealing the information we worked with. We would travel for work quite often, and when we did we would be given fresh laptops with only the minimum required stuff installed on it. They would then be encrypted and we would be given the access codes which we were only to use when in a secure environment such as an army base.

I also recall that we had a contractor come by for a site visit. He stayed for about a week and had not been fully cleared even for sensitive information, so our information security was extremely strict during that time. If he entered a room or cubicle, we had to immediately power off any screens so that he couldn't see any information. While he was on site, one of our employees was assigned to shadow him, basically be attached at the hip. If the guy went somewhere, our guy went with him, if he went to the bathroom, our guy went too.

So I'm not sure exactly how clear it is from the outside, but the government really does not mess around with national security documents. And from the outside I'm sure all of that sounds crazy, but you have to understand the kind of information we're dealing with. The radar system I worked on was capable of tracking and plotting the trajectory of artillery shells (this information is public, don't worry that I'm giving away things here, I wouldn't do that). To the best of my knowledge, no other country has such a system and it's definitely something we don't want Russia or China getting a hold of.

As you can see, when I heard that former President Trump had not only had possession of documents with the top classification in the United States government but had, for some reason, kept those stored in a poolside supply room without so much as a lock on the door for well over a year… well… yeah… my eyebrows literally raised when I heard that.

There's been a bunch of excuses offered for why he did it and why it's okay that he did it, but they're so far from covering all the bases that it's truly shocking. I mean, even if he had somehow declassified the documents while he was still in office (though there's no record that he did) it wouldn't matter. These are clearly marked documents and, even if the markings had been updated, they contain sensitive national security information.

As President, sure, he absolutely had the authority to do whatever he wanted with them, but he hasn't been President for over a year and a half now. President Biden hasn't even seen fit to extend him a security clearance as former President, so his ability to view and possess such information is literally the same as yours and mine. If a private citizen has marked classified documents (regardless of whether they were declassified, a document must be treated as classified until the markings are updated) and especially if they store them in an insecure location, there are severe penalties for that, usually involving multiple years in jail per document.

I watched it happen with Sandy Berger, again with Chelsea Manning, again with Edward Snowden, and again with Reality Winner, just to name a few. The government does not mess around when it comes to national security and there's far less ambiguity with regard to the handling of sensitive and classified information than there is with most of the other crimes that former President Trump is suspected of.

That's why my eyebrows raised when I heard about this. It may seem like a small thing if you've never worked in the national security field, but this is easily the most dangerous legal issue that Mr. Trump faces and, if they're at the point of publicly searching his personal residence, the investigation is pretty far along.

Hope you enjoyed this or at least found it interesting.

[beardedmrbean]

The 21-year-old arrested in connection with the leaked documents probe has been charged with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and willful retention of classified documents, which collectively carry a maximum of 15 years in prison.

Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard, made his initial appearance before a federal magistrate in Boston on Friday morning.

Teixeira walked into court in a beige smock and pants with a black T-shirt underneath. He entered in handcuffs, which were removed before he sat at the defense table with his attorney. Teixeira appeared to briefly scan the crowd while in his seat.

Three people sat on a bench in the front row reserved for relatives of the defendant.

As Teixeira was re-handcuffed and led from court, someone in the front row called out, "Love you, Jack." The 21-year-old responded, "Love you, too, dad."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nadine Pellegrini sought pretrial detention, which was granted pending the outcome of a hearing on Wednesday.

Teixeira was taken into custody in Massachusetts on Thursday "in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information," Attorney General Merrick Garland announced.

Media reports have described the U.S. intelligence documents -- which seem to contain top-secret information about the Ukraine war and other parts of the world -- as being shared among a small group of users on Discord before getting wider notice.

MORE: Discord admins describe 'hyperactive kid' who they say helped spread images of classified docs

The criminal complaint alleges Teixeira "improperly and unlawfully retained and transmitted national defense information to people not authorized to receive it."

On Monday, the FBI interviewed an unidentified member of the Discord chatroom where Teixeira allegedly posted classified documents, according to the charging documents. That individual provided the FBI with information that the alleged leaker went by "Jack," appeared to live in Massachusetts and had claimed he was a member of the Air National Guard. He also said he'd chatted with him on video and that the suspect was "a white male who was clean-cut in appearance and between 20 and 30 years old," according to the charging documents.

While Discord is not mentioned by name, the complaint indicates the platform helped the FBI by providing the credentials behind the account associated with the leak.

According to the complaint, Teixeira accessed a government document on Feb. 23 and posted it the following day. It’s the disclosure of that document that forms the basis of the initial charges.

[mariacallous]

Even before U.S. Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was arrested on Thursday as the leaker of dozens of classified government documents that have made their way around the internet in recent weeks, the inevitable comparisons with Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden suggested that he was the latest in a long line of mass leakers of intelligence. As one journalist reported on the most generic of similarities, “Like Manning and Snowden, Teixeira has a military or intelligence tie as a member of the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard.”

Indeed, in the last decade, a new digital generation of insider threat has emerged to challenge secrecy in the U.S. intelligence community, a phenomenon that author James Bamford has described as a “uniquely postmodern breed of whistleblower.” That’s true as far as it goes, but Teixeira should not be thought of in this vein. It would be like saying a Yugo is like a Mercedes because they both have four wheels and an engine. Sure, everyone working in the U.S. Defense Department’s sprawling intelligence apparatus is part of that bureaucracy, but that’s a tautology. It would also be correct to observe that nearly every spy in American history has had a “military or intelligence tie” as well, but that doesn’t explain much in the Teixeira case.

The real but superficial comparisons to leakers like Snowden and Manning classify Teixeira as a mass leaker on a personal crusade. But this is incorrect. Snowden and Manning leaked classified documents to journalists and activists to help bring about the kind of world they wanted to live in—one of citizen-enforced governmental transparency where states have less power. While foolish and misguided, they were ideologically motivated in taking their reckless actions.

In contrast, it seems that Teixeira simply displayed terrible judgment and was showboating his access to privileged information to increase his street cred with pals on the internet. In that sense, he was more like an irresponsible teenager who took his parents’ Ferrari out joyriding with his gearhead friends. Teixeira isn’t a “new breed” of insider threat, and he certainly isn’t a whistleblower seeking to publicize some perceived wrong.

Snowden’s mass leaks in 2013 were not the first digital challenge to the U.S. intelligence community. Three years before, then-U.S. Army Private Manning provided 500,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks, which published them to great fanfare for transparency advocates and caused much consternation in Washington. These are not isolated cases; if anything, the tempo of such mass public disclosures seems to be increasing. In March 2017, the CIA fell victim to what is known as the “Vault 7” series, in which sensitive computer tools for digital surveillance and cyber operations were given to WikiLeaks and published online.

Disgruntled former CIA software engineer Joshua Schulte was found guilty of the breach (and also of possessing child pornography, again suggesting an anemic background investigation). Although Manning, Snowden, and Schulte represent the most significant mass leakers of classified information, others have played smaller roles. For instance, National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Reality Winner printed a sensitive document from the NSA computer system and sent it to the self-described publisher of “adversarial journalism,” the Intercept, run by journalist-activists originally linked to the Snowden leaks.

Yet treating Teixeira as another in an increasingly long and embarrassing line of leakers impedes the lessons that can and should be learned from this case, which is marked by social adherence to a gaming community more than a cause. What these leakers do have in common with Teixeira is that—as far as anyone has proven—not one of them carried out the intelligence breach acting as a recruited agent on behalf of a foreign power. They are thus not “spies” in the traditional sense of the word.

Instead, they are what we have described in our academic research as self-directed insider threats: intelligence professionals who chose to betray their oath to protect classified information and did so on their own initiative. Some acted on their political or ideological beliefs, others for disgruntlement, to show off, or even to win arguments in gaming chat rooms. As the Teixeira charging documents allege, his intent was to “discuss geopolitical affairs and current and historical wars.” It was not some kind of misguided protest about U.S. domestic or foreign policy. Washington is apparently not yet prepared to understand such a vector of counterintelligence vulnerability.

To be sure, Teixeira otherwise shares much in common with leakers such as Snowden and Manning. They were all young people of junior rank (despite Snowden’s ludicrous claims that he was some kind of “senior advisor”) in sensitive positions in the U.S. intelligence community who abused their access to classified information to share it with people who had no right nor reason to know it. They were all grandiose enough to think that they wouldn’t get caught (or, if they were, would be lionized enough to avoid criminal penalties), and none of them realized the broader geopolitical or diplomatic ramifications of their actions.

In practice, whatever the motivations, the damage is just as real as if they were spies. As long-serving Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles explained in 1963, providing secrets for public consumption has the same net effect as “betraying it to the Soviets just as clearly as if he secretly handed it to them,” and it is thus reasonable to charge Teixeira under the same criminal codes as the other mass leakers. But that’s where the similarities end.

Ideologically driven betrayal is a well-trodden path in the annals of espionage, from the communism-inspired “Cambridge Five” spy ring during the Cold War to the Cuban sympathies that motivated Ana Montes, who was recently released from prison after serving 20 years for spying for Cuba. Preventing those with divided loyalties from accessing state secrets has given rise to the modern system of periodic background checks, invasive polygraph testing, and the requirement that those with security clearances document any foreign travel or meaningful foreign associations. Yet very few of these measures seek even to identify, much less prevent, self-directed insider threats such as Winner, Manning, Snowden, and the like.

Effective frameworks for personnel security and counterintelligence require understanding the varied (and often multiple) motivations for insider threats. In this case, it seems that Teixeira’s access to classified systems far exceeded his professional remit. Further, it seems clear that the counterintelligence vetting process failed to pick up some rather radical and distasteful views, but these views do not seem to be his motivation for leaking. It seems more likely that Teixeira’s narcissism, bad judgment, and arrogance got the best of him, although some of these traits can be hard to uncover in a traditional background investigation that is often more concerned with blackmailable behaviors than judgment. The U.S. intelligence community will almost certainly conduct a thorough post-mortem of the Teixeira case for lessons learned, and it may be prudent to look beyond his recklessness to discern not only how he got a clearance and why he had such unfettered system access, but also why the government was unaware that its secrets were circulating around the dark corners of the internet for months before he was arrested. The task of counterintelligence trolling of the internet for loose secrets will doubtless require new protocols and legal authorities. In the meantime, the Band-Aid of “security refresher training” will be urgently added to the schedule for the hundreds of thousands of clearance holders—the vast majority of whom already understand the responsibility that comes with a clearance.

Such a post-Teixeira study may suggest that it is time to revisit the post-9/11 collaborative framework of “need to share” and revert to the Cold War’s stricter “need to know” principle. Perhaps the Defense Department will close off intelligence as an initial career thrust for the most junior personnel in the same way that certain specialties (such as working in embassies or in special operations) requires a higher rank and more professional experience. Could the intelligence community differentiate accesses to intelligence between those who need to use the information for their jobs and, on the other hand, those who just need to keep the systems running? For instance, while Manning, Winner, and Schulte had substantive roles dealing with classified intelligence as part of their jobs, Snowden and Teixeira were essentially system administrators. Further, might access to national secrets prudently require an age minimum, just as the Constitution requires for officeholders in the Senate or presidency? After all, the prefrontal cortex responsible for judgment and restraining impulses develops well into one’s mid-to-late 20s.

Or perhaps there is simply an irreducible minimum of bad apples and poor judgment in an enormous—by international comparison—U.S. intelligence community that is comprised, after all, of people. Important decisions will need be made about insider threat protocols, and further actions need to be taken in light of this event. It does no one any good to peddle in false comparisons, such as painting Teixeira as another crusading mass leaker. Only with clarity can the intelligence community hope to learn from this unfortunate event.

This is the analysis of the authors alone and represents no official U.S. Defense Department or government position.