WASHINGTON – The 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member who posted highly classified Pentagon documents online was privy to weekly intelligence briefings, even though he was only assigned to maintain HVAC units and answer phones, according to an explosive Air Force investigation.
The access given to Jack Teixeira was just one of several egregious errors that led to disciplinary action against 15 of his fellow Guard members (including his former unit commander) for failing to sufficiently supervise troops and alert appropriate authorities to concerning activities. espionage type.
Teixeira was charged in June with six counts of intentionally withholding and transmitting domestic military information after illegally obtaining and sharing dozens of classified documents online, including some documents related to Ukrainian troop positions. Teixeira pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Monday’s report found that failures by Teixeira’s colleagues and superiors at the 102nd Intelligence Wing allowed the private to collect and disclose sensitive information for more than a year without detection.
Jack Teixeira, member of the Air National Guard.
“Evidence indicates that some members of Teixeira’s unit, the reporting chain, and leadership had information about up to four separate instances of his questionable activity,” the report says. “A smaller number of unit members had a more complete picture of Teixeira’s intelligence-seeking behaviors and intentionally did not report all the details of these security incidents/concerns as outlined in DoD security policies, for fear that security officials could ‘overreact’.
“If any of these members had come forward, security officials would likely have facilitated the restriction of access to the systems/facilities and alerted the appropriate authorities, reducing the duration and depth of the unauthorized and illegal disclosures by several months,” he added.
Although Teixeira was arrested in April, he allegedly began posting rewritten “paragraphs of texts” containing classified information on Discord, a social media platform for gamers, as early as February 2022.
After lying low for nearly a year, Teixeira’s leaks escalated in January, when he began “publishing photographs of documents containing top-secret classification marks and describing the status of a current military conflict, including troop locations.”
Law enforcement officers guard a road leading to the home of Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira, Thursday, April 13, 2023, in North Dighton, Massachusetts. James Keivom
‘Questionable activity’
While the report found that Teixeira acted alone in leaking the material, investigators also revealed “a number of factors, both direct and indirect, that contributed to the unauthorized disclosures.”
Among them was an “incorrect” initiative by the Teixeira unit that “encouraged [IT specialists] receive weekly intelligence briefings to better understand the mission and the importance of keeping classified networks operational.”
The problem, the report notes, is that lower-ranking airmen like Teixeira were allowed access to sensitive national security information that they had no “need to know.”
The 21-year-old posted highly confidential Pentagon documents online. WBZ
“This ‘know why’ effort was inadequate because it provided higher-level classified information than was necessary to understand the unit’s mission and created ambiguity regarding questioning an individual’s need to know,” the report states.
During one of those briefings in October 2022, Teixeira “asked very detailed questions and even attempted to answer questions using suspicious TS-SCI information” that he should not have known, according to the report.
While the suspicious activity raised red flags among leaders at the briefing, the airman brushed off their questions by stating that the information was “also available through ‘open sources.'”
“Contrary to his assertion, the information was not believed to be publicly available and Teixeira’s supervisor was again informed of his suspected intelligence-seeking behavior,” the report says.
This image contained in the Department of Justice’s motion to continue Jack Teixeira’s pretrial detention shows electronic items recovered from a dumpster at his mother and stepfather’s home in North Dighton, Massachusetts. AP
In response, leaders ordered Teixeira “to ‘cease and desist’ intelligence ‘deep dives’,” but did not report the incident to the “appropriate security official,” according to the report.
However, the October incident was not the first time the soldier was caught knowing too much.
In “July or August 2022,” a member of Teixeira’s unit noticed him viewing top-secret documents on the military’s private, secure intranet. But while the incident was reported to Teixeira’s supervisor, “the incident was not documented in writing.”
In September of that year, Teixeira was caught again “viewing intelligence products and… writing information on a post-it note,” according to the report.
The affidavit in support of a criminal complaint and arrest warrant against Jack Teixeira is photographed on Friday, April 14, 2023. AP
“Teixeira was confronted about the note and ordered to destroy it,” investigators said. “However, it was never verified what was written in the note or whether it was shredded.”
While that incident was documented in a memo written to Teixeira’s service record and he was ordered to “cease all investigation when he did not need to know,” the appropriate security officer in charge of reviewing insider threats was once again not informed. .
The behavior continued until late January of this year, when a fellow Guard member again caught Teixeira “viewing intelligence content again after he had previously been ordered to cease and desist.” Again, a supervisor was informed and another memo was added to the soldier’s file, but this time “senior members of the squad leadership” were also notified and “were informed of three of the four previous incidents.”
Teixeira, right, appears in U.S. District Court in Boston, Friday, April 14, 2023. AP
While that information was reported to security officials, they were given “a substantially downplayed version of the concerns” and did not provide copies of the memos “nor an accurate description of the security concerns.”
“As a result, no additional security measures were available and no further investigations were conducted,” the report said. “After interviewing higher up the chain of supervision, it appears that knowledge of these security incidents was not fully disclosed above the squad level.”
Investigators further noted that the allegations against Teixeira had been downplayed “after some internal discussions.”
“Three individuals in the unit who understood their duty to report specific information regarding Teixeira’s intelligence search and insider threat indicators to security officials did not do so intentionally,” he said.
Teixeira, 21, is an enlisted member of the 102nd Intelligence Wing located at Joint Base Cape Cod. James Keivom
Contributing factors
Investigators also identified several political and cultural failures – from misconceptions to poor supervision – that allowed Teixeira to carry out his crimes.
For example, in addition to the unit’s repeated failure to follow Pentagon and Air Force guidelines that “actual and potential engagements…should be reported to the appropriate security official,” some troops “mistakenly believed they could Report violations to your supervisors.”
Investigators further alleged that some in the unit conflated the ability to access confidential documents with the authority to do so. While Teixeira’s position as IT support granted him access to secure networks, he did not have approval to view their secret contents.
“Mistakenly, many staff ignored the requirement to have a valid need to know and failed to ensure that the information was adequately determined to be essential to effectively carry out their official duties and assignments,” the report says. “Computer science/IT specialists require access to the system to maintain it, but do not require access to content or intelligence products to maintain the system.”
Additionally, there was a lack of supervision during Teixeira’s night shift that allowed him to take advantage of his network access, according to the report, which found that “anyone” who worked overnight at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod “ample opportunity to access [secure] sites and print a large volume of products without supervision or detection.”
A complex surrounding what is believed to be the home of Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira. New York Post
“When there were no intelligence missions at night, members of a three-person crew, like Teixeira’s, were the only personnel in the open warehouse. [top-secret/sensitive compartmentalized information] installation,” he said. “In addition, there were no permission controls to monitor printing jobs and there were no business rules for printed products.”
Although the IT specialists’ “primary role was to ensure that the HVAC system was operating properly and to answer phones,” they were sometimes “asked to perform preventive maintenance inspections and other tasks, which required people were in their respective places.” own for hours, without supervision in other parts of the facility.”
While the names of the 15 people punished for the failures were not publicly available Monday, former 102nd Intelligence Wing commander Col. Sean Riley was removed from command as a result of the investigation.
Additionally, the unit’s subordinate Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group commander, Col. Enrique Dovalo, was issued a citation “for concerns with the unit’s culture and compliance with policies and standards,” according to service officials.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn