Details of Pentagon secret document Discord leaker emerge

[wing2000]

A month later, Mr Teixeira's bosses discovered he was "potentially ignoring a cease-and-desist order on deep diving into intelligence" after he went to a classified briefing and posed "very specific questions" about what was discussed. They told him to stop and "focus on his job", the court filing said.

Then, in February 2023, after someone saw the airman viewing intelligence information that was "not related to his primary duty", Mr Teixeira's supervisors were notified, according to the court document. It is unclear if he was disciplined.

...more details:

"On two occasions in September and October 2022, Airman Teixeira’s superiors in the Massachusetts Air National Guard admonished him after reports that he had taken “concerning actions” while handling classified information. Those included stuffing a note into his pocket after reviewing secret information inside his unit, according to a court filing ahead of a hearing before a federal magistrate judge in Worcester, Mass., on Friday to determine whether he should be released on bail.

Airman Teixeira — who until March shared secrets with scores of online friends from around the world on Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers — “was instructed to no longer take notes in any form on classified intelligence information,” lawyers with the department’s national security division wrote in an 11-page memo arguing for his indefinite detention.
.....
The signs that something was amiss seem unmistakable in retrospect. In late January, a master sergeant who was working at the Air Force base on Cape Cod in Massachusetts observed Airman Teixeira inappropriately accessing reports on the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System, the Pentagon’s secure intranet system, the memo said.

“Teixeira had been previously been notified to focus on his own career duties and not to seek out intelligence products,” one of his superiors wrote in a memo on Feb. 4 that prosecutors included in their filing.

Military Caught Airman Mishandling Secrets Before Arrest but Left Him in Job

A Justice Department filing urging that Airman Jack Teixeira be held without bail said his superiors had admonished him for taking notes and conducting deep-dive searches last fall.

www.nytimes.com

Why wasn't his security clearance revoked in September? (!)
Did his boss report these violations to the relevant security agency?

 

[essentialsaltes]

Jack Teixeira, 21, faces six counts of retaining and transmitting classified information on a gaming website.

He initially faced only two charges when he was arrested at his Massachusetts home in April.

Mr Teixeira's lawyers have called the government's claims "hyperbolic" and blamed other Discord users for spreading the documents he is alleged to have shared.

[hahaha]

 

[Hans Blaster]

The indictment can be found at:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.258390/gov.uscourts.mad.258390.48.0_2.pdf

It's a bit of a preview of the US v. Trump case as Teixeira's 6 counts are all 18 USC 793(e), as are the first 31 counts against Trump. (Though Trump isn't charged with dissemination within that paragraph, just retention.) It has all of the procedural issues with classified evidence, etc. Here's the full docket on RECAP:

United States v. Teixeira, 1:23-cr-10159 - CourtListener.com

 

[essentialsaltes]

Jack Teixeira got security clearance despite history of violent threats​

As he tapped anxiously at his computer keyboard one afternoon in early spring, Charles wondered when the FBI would arrest his best friend.
He had last spoken to Jack Teixeira online two days earlier. Teixeira had said to “keep low and delete any information that could even possibly relate to him.” The next day, he “went ghost mode … just went off the internet,” Charles said.

Teixeira was not on the run, but he was frantic. Over the past year, he had shared an enormous amount of highly classified government intelligence with about two dozen friends in a virtual clubhouse that they had set up on Discord, a digital platform especially popular with video gamers.

unbeknownst to the group, one of their members started to post around 50 documents to another space on Discord, known as a server. Someone on that server shared them, too, and soon the documents were spreading across the platform, available to thousands of users.

By early April, the documents had popped up around the wider internet, including on social media channels frequented by pro-Russian propagandists.

The disclosures allegedly from Teixeira were remarkable for their breadth and timeliness. The documents, hundreds of which The Washington Post obtained, touched on seemingly every hot-button issue and global trouble spot that America’s spies were watching. And they were of recent vintage, spanning a period from around February to March, offering deep insights on events that were developing by the day.

[In the 8 months since his arrest, investigators are trying to figure it all out.] 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?

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.

Teixeira’s fascination with warfare translated to the classroom, where, despite generally middling grades, he received A’s in U.S. history, world cultures and civilizations, and a class his junior year on “contemporary world affairs,” according to his transcript from Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School.

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.

Dighton police also took statements from several students who said Teixeira had made violent threats against Black people. ... One student said Teixeira used the phrase “I want to kill all Black people” in his automotive class “a lot.”

--

Suspicious workplace activity like Teixeira’s [peeking at classified stuff that wasn't part of his duties] is supposed to be reported to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, as part of a policy of continuous vetting meant to ensure people are abiding by their agreements to protect classified information. There is no indication that the incidents or the memos were shared with the agency. Defense officials did not respond to several requests for comment on the matter.

Mark Zaid, the security clearance expert, said Teixeira’s behavior bore the hallmarks of “an insider threat concern.”

 

[essentialsaltes]

Air Force disciplines 15 people in Discord leaks investigation​

The Air Force disciplined 15 members of the Air National Guard after an internal investigation found that a “lack of supervision” and a “culture of complacency” helped enable a 21-year-old airman to share hundreds of classified documents online in the sprawling leak of U.S. military secrets that rocked the national security establishment this spring.

The Air Force completed its investigation in August, but notified Congress and disclosed the findings Monday after being informed that The Washington Post was publishing a multipart investigation into the Discord leaks.

“three individuals in the unit who understood their duty to report specific information regarding A1C Teixeira’s intelligence-seeking and insider threat indicators to security officials, intentionally failed to do so.” Some feared that security officials might “overreact,” the summary added.

Air Force officials said in a statement that the 15 who were disciplined range in rank from staff sergeant to colonel. Air National Guard leaders began the disciplinary process Sept. 7, removing some personnel from their positions and filing administrative action known as nonjudicial punishment against others, the service said.

Among those punished, Air Force officials said, is Col. Sean Riley, who was commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing, a Massachusetts Air National Guard unit to which Teixeira reported. [He was relieved of command.]

[Those in the lower ranks] have been “permanently removed” from those jobs [and are painting towers on remote Aleutian Islands, I trust]

 

[wing2000]

“three individuals in the unit who understood their duty to report specific information regarding A1C Teixeira’s intelligence-seeking and insider threat indicators to security officials, intentionally failed to do so.” Some feared that security officials might “overreact,” the summary added.

wow...

 

[RDKirk]

Jack Teixeira got security clearance despite history of violent threats​

As he tapped anxiously at his computer keyboard one afternoon in early spring, Charles wondered when the FBI would arrest his best friend.
He had last spoken to Jack Teixeira online two days earlier. Teixeira had said to “keep low and delete any information that could even possibly relate to him.” The next day, he “went ghost mode … just went off the internet,” Charles said.

Teixeira was not on the run, but he was frantic. Over the past year, he had shared an enormous amount of highly classified government intelligence with about two dozen friends in a virtual clubhouse that they had set up on Discord, a digital platform especially popular with video gamers.

unbeknownst to the group, one of their members started to post around 50 documents to another space on Discord, known as a server. Someone on that server shared them, too, and soon the documents were spreading across the platform, available to thousands of users.

By early April, the documents had popped up around the wider internet, including on social media channels frequented by pro-Russian propagandists.

The disclosures allegedly from Teixeira were remarkable for their breadth and timeliness. The documents, hundreds of which The Washington Post obtained, touched on seemingly every hot-button issue and global trouble spot that America’s spies were watching. And they were of recent vintage, spanning a period from around February to March, offering deep insights on events that were developing by the day.

[In the 8 months since his arrest, investigators are trying to figure it all out.] 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?

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.

Teixeira’s fascination with warfare translated to the classroom, where, despite generally middling grades, he received A’s in U.S. history, world cultures and civilizations, and a class his junior year on “contemporary world affairs,” according to his transcript from Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School.

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.

Dighton police also took statements from several students who said Teixeira had made violent threats against Black people. ... One student said Teixeira used the phrase “I want to kill all Black people” in his automotive class “a lot.”

--

Suspicious workplace activity like Teixeira’s [peeking at classified stuff that wasn't part of his duties] is supposed to be reported to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, as part of a policy of continuous vetting meant to ensure people are abiding by their agreements to protect classified information. There is no indication that the incidents or the memos were shared with the agency. Defense officials did not respond to several requests for comment on the matter.

Mark Zaid, the security clearance expert, said Teixeira’s behavior bore the hallmarks of “an insider threat concern.”

Yes. Balls were dropped.

 

[RDKirk]

Air Force disciplines 15 people in Discord leaks investigation​

The Air Force disciplined 15 members of the Air National Guard after an internal investigation found that a “lack of supervision” and a “culture of complacency” helped enable a 21-year-old airman to share hundreds of classified documents online in the sprawling leak of U.S. military secrets that rocked the national security establishment this spring.

The Air Force completed its investigation in August, but notified Congress and disclosed the findings Monday after being informed that The Washington Post was publishing a multipart investigation into the Discord leaks.

“three individuals in the unit who understood their duty to report specific information regarding A1C Teixeira’s intelligence-seeking and insider threat indicators to security officials, intentionally failed to do so.” Some feared that security officials might “overreact,” the summary added.

Air Force officials said in a statement that the 15 who were disciplined range in rank from staff sergeant to colonel. Air National Guard leaders began the disciplinary process Sept. 7, removing some personnel from their positions and filing administrative action known as nonjudicial punishment against others, the service said.

Among those punished, Air Force officials said, is Col. Sean Riley, who was commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing, a Massachusetts Air National Guard unit to which Teixeira reported. [He was relieved of command.]

[Those in the lower ranks] have been “permanently removed” from those jobs [and are painting towers on remote Aleutian Islands, I trust]

"It's time to come to Jesus," as they say in the military. I'm not sure about the Guard, but in active duty Air Force, all of those non-judicial punishment actions would amount to "end of career." The NCOs will be "disinvited" from re-enlistment. The officers (depending on rank) will be "negatively incentivized" to resign or retire.

 

[Arcangl86]

"It's time to come to Jesus," as they say in the military. I'm not sure about the Guard, but in active duty Air Force, all of those non-judicial punishment actions would amount to "end of career." The NCOs will be "disinvited" from re-enlistment. The officers (depending on rank) will be "negatively incentivized" to resign or retire.

What does "negatively incentivized" mean in practice?

 

[RDKirk]

What does "negatively incentivized" mean in practice?

"You'll never be promoted...we've already got more people with spotless records than we have promotion slots. You'll never get a good assignment...those go to officers with promotion potential. You're skating on thin ice from now on...no more benefit of the doubt, you're going to be dismissed with prejudice first chance we get. You've got no future in my Air Force."

 

[wing2000]

"Need to Know" was ignored....it seems.


Investigators found that another direct contributing factor to the leak was an effort by commanders at Otis to share unnecessary U.S. military intelligence with relatively inexperienced airmen like Teixeira, who enlisted in 2019 while in high school and turns 22 this month.

“This ‘know your why’ effort was improper in that it provided higher level classified information than was necessary to understand the unit’s mission and created ambiguity” for Teixeira’s colleagues to question his need to know access classified information, the summary report said.

Dovalo, one of the officers disciplined, had touted that effort in a video posted by the 102nd Intelligence Wing to Facebook in October 2021. He and other commanders with the 102nd, he said, would be “rolling out classified threat briefings for all cleared wing members, so you can better understand the depth and breadth of the global security environment for which we must be prepared.”

The investigation found several other “indirect contributing factors” as well. They include a lack of supervision on overnight shift operations, during which Teixeira, who turns 22 this month, carried out his job on a three-member team. When there were no nighttime intelligence missions, the summary said, Teixeira and his colleagues “were the only personnel” in a facility handling information labeled top-secret, sensitive compartmented information, or “TS-SCI.”

“Their primary role was to ensure the Heating, Ventilation and Air Condition (HVAC) system was operating properly and answer the phones,” the Air Force found. “At times, members were required to perform preventative maintenance inspections and other tasks, which required individuals to be on their own for hours, unsupervised in other parts of the facility.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/12/11/air-force-investigation-discord-leaks/

 

[RDKirk]

"Need to Know" was ignored....it seems.


Investigators found that another direct contributing factor to the leak was an effort by commanders at Otis to share unnecessary U.S. military intelligence with relatively inexperienced airmen like Teixeira, who enlisted in 2019 while in high school and turns 22 this month.

“This ‘know your why’ effort was improper in that it provided higher level classified information than was necessary to understand the unit’s mission and created ambiguity” for Teixeira’s colleagues to question his need to know access classified information, the summary report said.

Dovalo, one of the officers disciplined, had touted that effort in a video posted by the 102nd Intelligence Wing to Facebook in October 2021. He and other commanders with the 102nd, he said, would be “rolling out classified threat briefings for all cleared wing members, so you can better understand the depth and breadth of the global security environment for which we must be prepared.”

Umm, I'm not opposed to that thought, and I don't think it was an inappropriate effort in this case.

In a free society such as ours, where military members are all volunteers frequently called to contribute beyond their compensation, being shown "why we fight" is a real consideration for commanders. They need to do it.

In this case, Teixeira held his clearance for good objective reason: His job was to maintain the equipment in real time operations. That meant they couldn't sanitize it, remove it from the SCIF, and carry it to a repair shop for maintenance. Nor could they shut down SCIF operations and sanitize the SCIF for him to enter and do his work. He had to have access to the SCIF while SCI operations continued...that meant he needed the clearance.

Yet, the commander could have done better...even though Teixeira held an SCI clearance, the "know your why" briefing needn't be at that clearance level. Fighter and bomber pilots, for instance, need to "know their why" as much as anyone, but they seldom have SCI clearances. It's rare that such a briefing can't be reduced to the SECRET level. Creating a "know your why" at the SCI level was just laziness. I get it...this was an intelligence wing, not an operational wing, so they were all one big SCI-cleared family...but that was still just laziness. They should never get into the lazy habit of producing an intelligence product of higher classification than absolutely required for its purpose, even if everyone expected to see it has SCI clearance.

The investigation found several other “indirect contributing factors” as well. They include a lack of supervision on overnight shift operations, during which Teixeira, who turns 22 this month, carried out his job on a three-member team. When there were no nighttime intelligence missions, the summary said, Teixeira and his colleagues “were the only personnel” in a facility handling information labeled top-secret, sensitive compartmented information, or “TS-SCI.”

“Their primary role was to ensure the Heating, Ventilation and Air Condition (HVAC) system was operating properly and answer the phones,” the Air Force found. “At times, members were required to perform preventative maintenance inspections and other tasks, which required individuals to be on their own for hours, unsupervised in other parts of the facility.”

Age isn't really a "thing" in this consideration. Who else is actually going to do the work? It's been noted that the average age of an infantry soldier is nineteen...but that's not just true of the infantry, that's true of who is doing the work across the board in the military. The military is essentially a "young man's game."

To be fair, there was almost certainly a somewhat older shift leader (probably a staff sergeant in his mid-twenties) somewhere in the building, but it wouldn't be expected that he'd personally continually shadow every person under his management as they performed their maintenance tasks all over the building. That level of trust is why they had security clearances in the first place.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Jack Teixeira got security clearance despite history of violent threats​

As he tapped anxiously at his computer keyboard one afternoon in early spring, Charles wondered when the FBI would arrest his best friend.
He had last spoken to Jack Teixeira online two days earlier. Teixeira had said to “keep low and delete any information that could even possibly relate to him.” The next day, he “went ghost mode … just went off the internet,” Charles said.

Teixeira was not on the run, but he was frantic. Over the past year, he had shared an enormous amount of highly classified government intelligence with about two dozen friends in a virtual clubhouse that they had set up on Discord, a digital platform especially popular with video gamers.

unbeknownst to the group, one of their members started to post around 50 documents to another space on Discord, known as a server. Someone on that server shared them, too, and soon the documents were spreading across the platform, available to thousands of users.

By early April, the documents had popped up around the wider internet, including on social media channels frequented by pro-Russian propagandists.

The disclosures allegedly from Teixeira were remarkable for their breadth and timeliness. The documents, hundreds of which The Washington Post obtained, touched on seemingly every hot-button issue and global trouble spot that America’s spies were watching. And they were of recent vintage, spanning a period from around February to March, offering deep insights on events that were developing by the day.

[In the 8 months since his arrest, investigators are trying to figure it all out.] 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?

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.

Teixeira’s fascination with warfare translated to the classroom, where, despite generally middling grades, he received A’s in U.S. history, world cultures and civilizations, and a class his junior year on “contemporary world affairs,” according to his transcript from Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School.

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.

Dighton police also took statements from several students who said Teixeira had made violent threats against Black people. ... One student said Teixeira used the phrase “I want to kill all Black people” in his automotive class “a lot.”

--

Suspicious workplace activity like Teixeira’s [peeking at classified stuff that wasn't part of his duties] is supposed to be reported to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, as part of a policy of continuous vetting meant to ensure people are abiding by their agreements to protect classified information. There is no indication that the incidents or the memos were shared with the agency. Defense officials did not respond to several requests for comment on the matter.

Mark Zaid, the security clearance expert, said Teixeira’s behavior bore the hallmarks of “an insider threat concern.”

Good thing they slipped in the hearsay of him being a racist. That seems entirely relevant and totally not something that was fished for.

His behavior of being caught accessing classified materials he didn't have access to is pretty wild and extremely irresponsible of his superiors to ignore.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Umm, I'm not opposed to that thought, and I don't think it was an inappropriate effort in this case.

In a free society such as ours, where military members are all volunteers frequently called to contribute beyond their compensation, being shown "why we fight" is a real consideration for commanders. They need to do it.

In this case, Teixeira held his clearance for good objective reason: His job was to maintain the equipment in real time operations. That meant they couldn't sanitize it, remove it from the SCIF, and carry it to a repair shop for maintenance. Nor could they shut down SCIF operations and sanitize the SCIF for him to enter and do his work. He had to have access to the SCIF while SCI operations continued...that meant he needed the clearance.

Yet, the commander could have done better...even though Teixeira held an SCI clearance, the "know your why" briefing needn't be at that clearance level. Fighter and bomber pilots, for instance, need to "know their why" as much as anyone, but they seldom have SCI clearances. It's rare that such a briefing can't be reduced to the SECRET level. Creating a "know your why" at the SCI level was just laziness. I get it...this was an intelligence wing, not an operational wing, so they were all one big SCI-cleared family...but that was still just laziness. They should never get into the lazy habit of producing an intelligence product of higher classification than absolutely required for its purpose, even if everyone expected to see it has SCI clearance.

Age isn't really a "thing" in this consideration. Who else is actually going to do the work? It's been noted that the average age of an infantry soldier is nineteen...but that's not just true of the infantry, that's true of who is doing the work across the board in the military. The military is essentially a "young man's game."

To be fair, there was almost certainly a somewhat older shift leader (probably a staff sergeant in his mid-twenties) somewhere in the building, but it wouldn't be expected that he'd personally continually shadow every person under his management as they performed their maintenance tasks all over the building. That level of trust is why they had security clearances in the first place.

At this point we should just consider deliberate and misleading leaks to achieve foreign policy objectives.

It's probably easier than tightening intelligence to a level of silence considered acceptable or even necessary. Spew enough garbage out there that it's too difficult to determine what is true. Seems to work on our own population...why not everyone else's?

 

[essentialsaltes]

Jack Teixeira will plead guilty in massive leak of documents on Discord​

Teixeira, 22, was arrested last April and charged with six counts of illegal retention and transmission of national defense information. If he had been found guilty at trial, he would have faced a prison sentence of 30 years to life, according to federal sentencing guidelines. A guilty plea suggests Teixeira will serve substantially less time.

 

[Arcangl86]

Hey @RDKirk I was wondering if you had some insight into a question I have. I know you weren't a JAG, but do you have any idea why he was prosecuted in a civilian court instead of just court marshalled? I'm sure what he did was against the UCMJ.

 

[BCP1928]

Well, unless that unit was preparing to deploy to Europe, that was also a lapse in "need to know" as well as proper intelligence sanitization. Data that would compromise the sources should be fully "sanitized" to remove that possibility before it's released at the "operational" level...that is, down to operational units. If it can't be so sanitized, it's not supposed to be disseminated that far down the chain.

It's possible that Teixeira held a clearance unusual (maybe even unique) for his position in a wing intel office...but his age would indicate not, because unique clearances in a unit go to higher ranking persons. So, the system has just gotten too loose.

You know, with all of these secret documents lying around loose, one might begin to think that perhaps the people who are supposed to keep track of them might be held at least partly responsible.

 

[RDKirk]

Hey @RDKirk I was wondering if you had some insight into a question I have. I know you weren't a JAG, but do you have any idea why he was prosecuted in a civilian court instead of just court marshalled? I'm sure what he did was against the UCMJ.

Because the federal law carries a higher penalty than the military regulations. But that doesn't mean he escapes court-martial. The two laws are mostly different, so he can probably be court-martialled for military offenses that aren't exactly the same as the civilian offense without running into double jeopardy. I have no doubt he's going to get tried by both jurisdictions.

 

[RDKirk]

You know, with all of these secret documents lying around loose, one might begin to think that perhaps the people who are supposed to keep track of them might be held at least partly responsible.

The purpose of a SCIF is that documents can be left out in the workspace without having to be locked into the safe every time you get up from your desk. The SCIF is essentially (and physically) a huge office-sized safe. The door is a vault door and there are no restrooms in a SCIF, for instance.

 

[Tinker Grey]

The purpose of a SCIF is that documents can be left out in the workspace without having to be locked into the safe every time you get up from your desk. The SCIF is essentially (and physically) a huge office-sized safe. The door is a vault door and there are no restrooms in a SCIF, for instance.

N.b., there were, in fact, restrooms in the SCIF at my last defense contractor job. Our primary customer was the Air Force. My new employer, also defense, has no bathrooms. It's main customer is Navy.

I mention the customer because that may account for the difference ... but maybe not.