Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

You are here: Home / Information As Power / Breaking Open Thread: Purported Pentagon Leaker Arrested

Breaking Open Thread: Purported Pentagon Leaker Arrested

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And how will the Disloyal Opposition react to this news? Well, here’s an early entry from another disaffected military dude with a wide online audience:

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  1. 1.

    waspuppet

    Yeah, no. He stole them and put them on a Discord with some would-be friends. If he’d gone to the Post or the Times that might be different. Slightly.

    Also, “the government” looking into the Dobbs leak is the Supreme Court, and they stopped looking once it was obviously Alito.

    In short, Jack Posobiec hates America; he’s a Russian agent, and he’s just going “a bad thing happened and Joe Biden is president! See?! SEE?!”

  4. 4.

    Villago Delenda Est

    How in the hell does an E-3 in the Air National Guard have access to TS documents? Good grief, it takes at least a year for an officer to get a TS clearance, and you have to justify the application in the first place.

  5. 5.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @gwangung: A traitor is a patriot if you favor war against the government.

    I’m actually a big fan of good faith whistle-blowers. But there are proper channels and you need to start this process ready to accept some consequences.

    All indications here are that this was not good faith whistle blowing.

  6. 6.

    Josie

    @Villago Delenda Est: An excellent question. I hope they go as hard to find out who made it possible for him to have that access.​
     ETA: I’m guessing there will be some military ass covering involved. But then I’m a natural cynic.

  8. 8.

    jonas

    @Villago Delenda Est: It’s possible someone else with the TS clearance was careless and left the docs around where this numbnuts thought it would be hilarious to pilfer them and then show his Discord group. Then the other guy was too embarrassed to admit he’d misplaced them and so no one said anything. Just spitballing here, but the story of the year seems to be that TS classified documents seem to be *really* easy to misplace and/or abscond with.

  9. 9.

    MattF

    Uh, wait a minute, Poso, are you saying that people who mishandle classified documents should go to jail? I agree!!

  10. 10.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @jonas: Well, yeah, but someone without a clearance having access to the room with classified documents just laying around and not being watched like a hawk boggles my mind.  I used to have Secret stuff in my office, and I was never so careless as that.

  11. 11.

    Albatrossity

    I suspect that if was the FBI investigating the Dobbs leak, rather than some feckless SCOTUS employee fearful of fingering her bosses, we might have some success at identifying the leaker…

  12. 12.

    jonas

    @gwangung: The usual Fifth Column Russian ball-garglers on the MAGA right are speculating this is basically the Pentagon Papers 2.0, with Teixeira revealing that the government knows Ukraine is floundering and trying to cover it up.

    Of course what little we know so far suggests that this idiot was largely trying to impress a group of acolytes in his little chat group that he was some badass intelligence officer or something who had access to super secret stuff.

  13. 13.

    MattF

    …but the story of the year seems to be that TS classified documents seem to be *really* easy to misplace and/or abscond with.

    Different places have different standards. I recall the first time I wandered around ‘backstage’ at a Navy base… classified docs lying around all over the place.

  14. 14.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @MattF: Even if it comes out that Ukraine isn’t doing as well as advertised, it’s still good to help our allies and weaken our enemies like Russia, no?

  15. 15.

    Delk

    According to Cape Cod Times, he also has a step brother that works at the base.

    I think that may be “worked”.

  17. 17.

    RandomMonster

    Irony set itself on fire and jumped from a rooftop while shooting itself in the head when Republicans lecture us on inappropriate handling of documents.

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    The Dobbs “leak” Boso. Alito will hunt you down if you coax anybody of merit into investigating just how it sneaked into public view. Worst whataboutism of 2023, to date.

  19. 19.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    OT, lots of news this week:

    A ‘mild’ recession is now likely this year, Federal Reserve says

    WASHINGTON — Fallout from the U.S. banking crisis is likely to tilt the economy into recession later this year, according to Federal Reserve documents released Wednesday.

    Minutes from the March meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee included a presentation from staff members on potential repercussions from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and other tumult in the financial sector that began in early March.

    Though Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr said the banking sector “is sound and resilient,” staff economists said the economy will take a hit.

    “Given their assessment of the potential economic effects of the recent banking-sector developments, the staff’s projection at the time of the March meeting included a mild recession starting later this year, with a recovery over the subsequent two years,” the meeting summary stated.

    Projections following the meeting indicated that Fed officials expect GDP growth of just 0.4% for all of 2023. With the Atlanta Fed tracking a Q1 gain around 2.2%, that would indicate a pullback later in the year.

    That crisis had caused some speculation that the Fed might hold the line on rates, but officials stressed that more needed to be done to tame inflation

    Interestingly, Dean Baker had this to say a few days ago:

    Finally, the slower wage growth means that for the moment workers’ pay is not keeping pace with inflation. However, this should be positive from the standpoint of future rate hikes from the Fed. It is very difficult to construct a story of persistent inflation when wages are growing at an annual rate of just 3.2 percent. This should mean the end of the Fed’s rate hikes.

    The annual rate of wage growth over the last three months was just 3.2 percent, a slower pace than we saw prior to the pandemic when inflation was below the Fed’s target.

    The Fed raised interest rates by 0.25% instead of 0.50%, which was under discussion

  20. 20.

    Dan B

    This guy probably hasn’t had his brain matured enough to realize the peril he’d be in.  However the racism, antisemitism, and gun worshipping is harder to have sympathy for.  It will be good to have him out of circulation.

  22. 22.

    Geminid

    @Villago Delenda Est: I think there are too many documents involved for this to be carelessness by authorized personnel. My guess is that Texeira used his IT role to gain unauthorized access, printed out the documents, and then took them home under his clothes.

  23. 23.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Roger Moore:

    Core inflation has been increasing over the last year or so, meaning that higher inflation expectations had been becoming entrenched. I blame the Fed for not acting sooner, so they didn’t have to jack up interest rates so high, so quickly.

  25. 25.

    LesGS

    @Dan B: Given what we knew about him before his arrest, primarily his age and his interest in guns, I was a little concerned that he would take himself out of circulation, maybe along with a few other people. I’m relieved it didn’t go that way, and that he will be held truly accountable.

  27. 27.

    Ruckus

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I don’t know about an E3 getting a clearance but I was given a TS clearance in the Navy because someone in my department had to have it to enter one compartment which had some of our equipment in it. It was, as I was told at the time limited to that compartment on board that ship. It supposedly ended the moment I stepped off that ship the last time. I believe that military personal may get clearance differently than civilians and as I’m sure you know the rules/laws are (or at least were decades ago) different for on duty personal.

  29. 29.

    JoyceH

    Empty Gee is complaining that this Christian white guy is being treated ‘like a criminal and traitor’. Gee, how terrible that a criminal traitor is treated like a criminal traitor!

  31. 31.

    jonas

    @Geminid: If that’s the case, then they have this guy dead to rights on a number of charges and he’s going to be a middle-aged man before he gets out of prison. What a way to throw your life away — just so you could brag one time about “sticking it to the man.”

  32. 32.

    Renie

    There was video of this kid reading a book on his backyard deck with helicopters above his house but he never looks up.  HUH?  Next we see him being trotted out with his hands on his head with guys in military get up with rifles pointed at him and several trucks around the house.  Still wondering why a certain Florida guy who also has highly classified documents and who has probably sold or shown them to others is still walking around as a free man.

  33. 33.

    jonas

    Back in the day, the government used to use any evidence of homosexuality as an excuse to deny people jobs and clearances because they were deemed a “security risk” (in the sense that they could potentially be exposed to blackmail). Maybe the military needs to start looking at “religious gun nut” as a security red flag for a change.

  34. 34.

    Leto

    @Geminid: they’re separate systems and he wouldn’t have been able to access them. Cyber Transport people work on the infrastructure portion of the network: servers, routers, switches, etc. You can’t access the data flowing over these in any way at his work center. I’m honestly curious how this Airman got ahold of this stuff because it’s waaaaay out of his lane. The rank/time/age portion is irrelevant, it’s how did this guy get ahold of this stuff?

  35. 35.

    Leto

    @Ruckus: we have plenty of Airmen with TS clearances who’ve been in about a year. It’s job dependent and if they pass their background check. I honestly think we need to dig deeper on backgrounds but idk how to do that without running afoul of first amendment rights and all. Resurrecting the DoJ report regarding extremists recruiting within the military would be a good first step. Not having a major political faction openly espousing government mistrust, fascist, racist rhetoric would also help. Systemic issues and all.

  36. 36.

    gene108

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Well, yeah, but someone without a clearance having access to the room with classified documents just laying around and not being watched like a hawk boggles my mind. I used to have Secret stuff in my office, and I was never so careless as that.

    From what I read in the articles posted here, he more than likely printed copies that he smuggled out. They were not physically lying around.

  37. 37.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Leto: Maybe he came in at times when no one was around and accessed other computers. The guards might have attributed his odd hours to him being another weird IT guy.

  39. 39.

    Dan B

    @JoyceH:  It is amazing how quickly MTG began bleating about WHITE, CHRISTIAN, MALE, ANTI-UKRAINE WAR, being persecuted by BIDEN!!!!!

    I heard a rumor that he listed his religion as Buddhist on his National Guard application.

  40. 40.

    Jeffro

    MTG is out with a tweet about how this “white, male, Christian, anti-war” person could possibly be the bad guy here, and I am thinking it would be EXCELLENT for reporters to slap that shit on a big piece of poster board, to shove in front of GQP reps and senators’ faces when they pretend not to have seen it tomorrow.

    Part of me is glad that her obvious insanity and treachery to our country are so fully on display 24/7.

    Part of me knows full well that not enough people will take it seriously, call her (and her enablers) to account.

  41. 41.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Leto: I don’t know squat about military or TS systems, but I was in charge of routers and switches at my old job, and I could capture anything I wanted to. Every bit flows through a switch port somewhere.

  43. 43.

    WaterGirl

    @Villago Delenda Est:  In my experience, at a major University, IT people have access to all sorts of files that they have no business accessing – even though you can get to them on the back end of the server.

    Same thing at the doctor’s office I managed networking for after I left the University.  All that information covered by HIPAA – I could have accessed any patient files, and no one would have known the difference.

    In the first place, no self-respecting IT professional would go poking around in files they have no business accessing.

    I have no experience with the government, but surely classified documents on servers are protected with passwords, and the passwords are protected somewhere that is not on the equipment the IT person has access to.

    Please tell me this is so.  Anyone?   Bueller?

  44. 44.

    Roger Moore

    @gene108:

    From what I read in the articles posted here, he more than likely printed copies that he smuggled out.

    That still shows security problems.  You shouldn’t be able to print top secret documents to a random printer and pick them up without anyone being the wiser.  And you sure as hell shouldn’t be able to smuggle documents out of a high security area.

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    I also see – I think? – that “Third Way” is tweeting about how “No Labels” is trying to get trump elected again in 2024 by running a spoiler ticket.

    While that’s true about No Labels, of course, I’m in awe of the whirlwind we’re about to experience next year when various GQP front groups try to cause all kinds of problems via third-party candidates, fourth-party candidates, etc.  To say nothing of the fifth column from the likes of MTG, Gaetz, and their ilk.

  46. 46.

    kindness

    The Intel people will be all over the base’s logs to see who has been printing out the docs that got taken.  I doubt very much that this guy is the last one who get’s nailed to the wall for this lil slip up.

  49. 49.

    Bill Arnold

    @jonas:

    Of course what little we know so far suggests that this idiot was largely trying to impress a group of acolytes in his little chat group that he was some badass intelligence officer or something who had access to super secret stuff.

    One of the reports has him spewing racist and anti-Semitic curses while target shooting.
    That would making him a Nazi grooming younger male gamers, in the current Republican narrative framework.

  50. 50.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Steeplejack: Most people experience “inflation” as “prices are higher than I expect them to be”–so even when it goes away, they remember things being cheaper and they perceive that as inflation. To satisfy them, there would need to be a deflationary period (which would probably be a catastrophe in itself).

  51. 51.

    Ruckus

    @Leto:

    I was in over 5 decades ago, during a war, so any concept of today’s rules/laws may be different. It was just such a strange thing, an officer on board told me I had TS clearance for this one space. And as I remember there was no other restricted space for those of us in that one department. We had equipment in every maned space on board and equipment in many of the unmanned ones, on the mast and pulled up from under the ship before entering port, and even in the Captain’s cabin.

  52. 52.

    Barbara

    @Albatrossity: ​I suspect that they know full well who the SCOTUS leaker was. It’s just not someone they can or want to embarrass let alone punish.

  53. 53.

    Butter Emails

    @WaterGirl:

    One would hope so, but somewhere there’s going to be a group of IT people granting access to these files and directories and resetting passwords when the brass lose the slips of paper they cleverly conceal under their Patton paperweights. They’ll have access to those files, or be able to grant themselves access.

  54. 54.

    Leto

    @Gin & Tonic: you’re not capturing shit on these with the way the encryption works. Unless he just happens to have a spare unit lying around, with the correct crypto, then nope.

    @Ruckus: similar thing here. All the classified/crypto stuff is kept in the vault, and in safes within the vault. So idk.

  58. 58.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steeplejack: Seriously — working himself up over these but-what-if-an-asteroid-hits ‘finance’ scenarios cannot be good for Goku’s mental health.

    And spending another evening talking him down off his own rhetorical ledges, across a series of posts, is not good for my mental health!

  65. 65.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Albatrossity:

    some feckless SCOTUS employee fearful of fingering her bosses

    No, I will give the SCOTUS employees credit:  This came from the top, and there is no mystery about it.  Roberts said that everyone else would get investigated, but the Justices themselves would only get asked if they did it.  They all said they didn’t.

  66. 66.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Anne Laurie:

    and it befouls more interesting discussions.

    it happens so often some people might even think that’s the point….

  68. 68.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I am not even slightly upset with you, but this does seem like an unhealthy obsession.  May I suggest you just avoid economic news and not talk about it when you do happen to see it?  I use the word ‘obsession’ seriously, as this specific issue has been the one you’ve been watching for bad news and jumping in panic at for awhile.  You would be a happier, healthier person if you avoided it.  Break the cycle.

  69. 69.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I’ve written over 200 postcards since last year for political causes. I wrote 50 of them just for the WI elections. I’ve sent pictures to Watergirl of them and she’s featured them at least once in a thread. If I were a troll, why would I go to the trouble to do that?

    I mean, I have email confirmations and credit card transactions if you don’t believe me

  71. 71.

    Betty

    @Leto: I am not sure to what extent the screening has changed but my niece’s daughter had her admission into the Army held up about a year ago because of a tiny tattoo that she had to give a satisfactory explanation for. She did and has excelled so far in her training.

  72. 72.

    Urza

    @WaterGirl: Don’t know about the older government systems, but the Cloud is pretty tight on security.  No access to anything whatsoever, in a SCIF to do work on the Cloud.  Need clearance just to know about how it works.  Most of the cleared people are ex-military, and yes young people can get approved, but there’s no access to the ‘customer’ files to begin with and its encrypted 3x just for the public Cloud.  Even got a weird air gapped setup to ingest data that may never come out.

  75. 75.

    PJ

    @Dan B: He’s 21, he’s not a fucking child.  JFC.  I was never in the military, but by the time I was 13, I understood what was illegal or unethical or destructive or treacherous.

  77. 77.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @GibberJack:

    What is that supposed to mean? I’m more than willing to show you the email confirmations and credit card transactions from FedEx Office for the 200 postcards I’ve mailed to voters since last year, including the 50 I sent to Wisconsin for the April 4th election where Judge Janet won by nearly 11 points

  79. 79.

    Jinchi

    it’s been a year since the Dobbs leak in the middle of an election year and the govt hasn’t done a thing about it

    LoL that rightwingers think there was a crime involved in the “leak” of a soon-to-be-public decision by the Supreme Court.  It’s the judicial equivalent of leaking the script of the next episode of Succession.

  80. 80.

    Chris T.

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Core inflation has been increasing over the last year or so, meaning that higher inflation expectations had been becoming entrenched.

    Whether or not the first part (“core inflation has been increasing”) is true, the second isn’t a consequence of that. If anything, this has cause and effect reversed, so this is like saying “if I bring an umbrella, it will rain”.

    Embedded inflation expectations have to be measured by surveys, or examining bond markets, or similar. Using any of these methods today, we find that there are no embedded inflation expectations.

    Core inflation measures (there are several) have increased, but have also decreased! So it’s entirely unclear what is actually going on, and what the future may hold.

  81. 81.

    fancycwabs

    Oh, look. The DOJ can act quickly to arrest people accused of mishandling classified documents without taking a full goddamn year to stew about it when it wants to.

  82. 82.

    H-Bob

    Maybe those documents that Jack Teixeira published were declassified by TFG in his mind!  Take that, Dick Tracy!

  83. 83.

    Paul in KY

    @Villago Delenda Est: He was probably in the Comm Center. That base is going to have to revamp their briefing on taking care of classified info. It should be one that would scare the shit out of even a stupid choad such as him.

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