Riddle me this? Why the fuck did a mentally unstable 21 year old air national guardsman have access to the fucking crown jewels? Why were phones allowed in an area where this material exists? What kind of opsec did these fuckers practice.
I mean fuck this kid- he will get what he deserves. But the entire god damned chain of command needs to have their asses handed to them for this.
We had more security on a pair of night vision goggles when I was on active duty than they did national security secrets.
Cervantes
This is indeed extremely bizarre. Apparently he was able to print out the documents, fold them up and stick them in his pocket, take them home, and photograph them on his kitchen counter before sharing them with his on-line MAGA wingnut racist antisemitic online buddies, which the FBI did not become aware of for at least two months. Other than that, the Air Force has extremely stringent security procedures.
Roger Moore
I understand the frustration, but I think it would be wise to let this play out a bit. I’m deeply suspicious this kid didn’t get his hands on these documents all by his lonesome. It seems far more likely that someone else is using him as a fall guy. I’m sure the same thought has crossed the investigators’ minds, and they’re going to give him a chance to save his ass by turning on anyone who helped him.
Andrya
My thoughts exactly.
And, when I worked in aerospace, my Facility Security Officer (FSO) kept track of what classified documents had been issued to whom, and made sure they were put back in the safe. TFG apparently meant to steal documents- but since both Biden and Pence self-reported that they had classified documents that they should not have had, it appears that neither had any malign intent. So, why wasn’t there an FSO to remind them “hey, you have classified documents that you need to return?” My first thought, on hearing that Pence also had classified documents, was that we should send my (former) FSO to straighten out the White House- she NEVER missed ANYTHING.
JoyceH
Comms was my area when I was in the Navy, and there are an awful lot of really young junior guys with security clearances, not because they need to know the info in order to perform their job, but because their job is running a copier.
jonas
@Roger Moore: Until we have more information, I’m going with Occam’s razor on this one: he was a stupid kid who exploited lax security to get his hands on some secret documents so he could act like a “big man” with his online gamer buddies. Seems to fit with the insecure incel, gaming, gun-nut persona.
I agree with what others have said, though, that some higher-up heads need to roll for letting this happen. The more we find out, the more gobsmacked we are at how careless this office was with classified material. It’s almost as bad as Trump’s Oval Office!
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Seems the nazi trinket collector Harlan Crow bought a house from Clarence Thomas in 2014 for $130,000, and Thomas never put that down on any disclosure papers. Thomas’s mother still lives there, and I think it’s safe to bet she isn’t paying any rent. Also, Crow did $36,000 worth of work on the house after he bought it, which makes that a payoff to Thomas’s family of roughly $170,000–leaving out whatever rent he never charged Thomas’s mother over nine years.
Leto
I’ll drag this up from downstairs:
It’s way out of his lane to have had access to this stuff. No, he’s not a fall guy but something at Otis is way off base here.
@Andrya:
We’ve gone over this before but we’ll go over it again: your aerospace job (which the aerospace industry as a whole has some of the worst fucking cyber security in existence) isn’t anywhere on par with the executive branch. What the senior admin has to deal with on a daily basis necessitates them carrying classified shit with them all over the place, which is also why they have their own traveling security officer for this. You can’t stick the president in a SCIF all day long, nor can you do that with other officials. They’d never be able to do their actual job.
Raoul Paste
We had a lot more security than this at the Department of Energy. One person double-checked another over, lowly, classified documents, not secret or top-secret stuff.
WTF indeed
Scout211
The weak surveillance of social media prior to the January 6 insurrection and now this complete miss of TS military documents that were leaked online. There is a pattern here . . .
Added: and I’m not sure what it is.
Immanentize
Otis should have long ago been turned over to the local tribe, as the decommissioning statute requires.
Periodt.
suzanne
Do we know if he’s mentally unstable? We know he’s racist. Why TF someone known to be a racist shithead is in any position of responsibility is beyond me.
Immanentize
Daddy, please tell me the cautionary tale of Sandy Berger again?
Baud
@Roger Moore:
You are banned from the Internet.
Immanentize
@suzanne: “mentally ill” is the go to answer for white supremacists — who are caught.
UncleEbeneezer
It is pretty damn impressive if you understand how slowly these things usually move. Like, a domestic election interference troll from the 2016 election just finally got convicted only a week ago!! Seven years between crime and trial/verdict. No Executive Privilege to litigate. No Attorney-Client Privilege to litigate. No Speech/Debate Clause protections. The speed at which Jack Smith (building 18 months of investigation by DOJ even before he arrived) is moving, is really awesome to see.
Andrya
@Leto: I agree about the volume of material POTUS and VPOTUS have to handle, but I still don’t see why you can’t have an FSO (or two FSOs, or five FSOs, or ten FSOs) managing a database that says “Title of Document: Ruritania Has Nukes!” with “Status: out to VPOTUS 3/31/2023” and then “Returned 4/3/2023”. It would be easy to search for stuff that was still out and make sure it was secured. In fact, I don’t think the president or VP could even manage all the information they have to process unless someone was organizing it for them.
RPh8
Why does any National Guard or Reserve unit need anyone assigned to intelligence?
Shouldn’t someone in active service, fully trained, vetted, & monitored be available to give whatever briefing is required to the chain of command of (a g a i n) a NG or Reserve unit in PEACETIME?
P*rn sites have better security protocols
NutmegAgain
@JoyceH: WaPo has some background on the treasonous little shit, and it sounds like this is exactly it. According to them, he had access to an, “internal Defense Department computer network for top secret information called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS).”
But also, who wakes up one day and says, “I’m going to do some treason today to impress my online buddies!” I mean really? Really?
SpaceUnit
I wonder at what point the clue bird came tapping on this dude’s window and he realized how deeply fucked he was.
Jay C
Whatever damage has been done by this security breach seems to be being applauded, online, by several of the Usual Right-Wing Gang Of Idiots: Marjorie Taylor Greene, for one; praising Jack Texeira as some sort of hero – her bullshit “rationale” (echoed by a gaggle of other online fools, just coincidentally, no doubt) being that this stuff is “exposing” the Biden Admin’s “illegal war in Ukraine”, or something…
West of the Rockies
@Cervantes:
Yup, super tight protocol other than the above Intel snafu. This one time in the mess hall, I tried to sneak a second brownie onto my plate… the Master Sargeant went ballistic.
West of the Rockies
Niagra Falls! Slowly I treasoned, document by document…
bbleh
@JoyceH: @NutmegAgain: and it would seem that it’s the need-to-know that’s the problem here, as it is in so many cases. You can have a TS clearance — and a LOT of people do — but you shouldn’t be accessing documents for which you don’t have a need-to-know. And at least in my experience, that was basically never enforced, or at best casually asked about, below the SCI level. And when I read he was in “tech support,” my first thought was, is there anything at his level he can’t get his hands on easily?
We may be lucky he didn’t give away something worse ..
@Andrya: in principle seems reasonable, but in practice I dunno. In an environment like the WH, there’s stuff flying around all over the place all the time, sometimes in panic mode. And there are copiers, and Very Senior People saying “get me a copy of this right now!” I imagine that, in practice, things just don’t get logged, and stuff gets handed from one Important Person to another without the slightest hesitation, and nobody ever really gets around to coming up to the VP and saying “uh, you’ve got 32 documents out since last December — here’s a list — do you know where they are?”
Grumpy Old Railroader
This is it in a nutshell. The chain of command needs to be removed and replaced at a minimum and investigated and possibly disciplined
geg6
I’ve no experience with top secret materials. However, in the course of my work, I have tons of PII on my computer (actually on University cloud storage) and in physical files in my office. Every time I got to the bathroom I have to lock my filing cabinets and my computer and lock my office door. I get audited on this by the University and by the VA every year. I can’t even take files for students with VA benefits out of my office or work without a VPN when I work from home. Aren’t there similar rules for military intelligence people? WTfuckingF?
Roger Moore
@NutmegAgain:
My guess is that he and his buddies were up to their eyeballs in Russian propaganda. That has them convinced the US is making a huge mistake by supporting the Ukrainian government. So he thinks it’s his duty to find documents that prove how bad things are for Ukraine.
I’m not saying this to exonerate him. The only thing that matters here is that he took and revealed documents he should never have had. His motivation for doing so helps us to understand why he did what he did, but it doesn’t make it OK to do it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
John: “… he will get what he deserves”
That remains to be seen. He’s white, Christian, hates the right people and is the kind of shithead that Republicans love to rally around while claiming that the libs are persecuting him.
CaseyL
I’m still interested in seeing if this traces to the Christian Dominionists infiltrating the Air Force with RWNJs over the past decade. If he had one of them as a mentor, or SO, or even just knew one, I’d investigate that path pretty thoroughly.
justawriter
@suzanne: Because then we would have to can half the generals in the Pentagon maybe?
Delk
Plus, he’s a thug shaker!
Gvg
@CaseyL: Past decade? They were known to rule Air Force in the 80’s when my age group talked about going in, none of us did for that reason.
JPL
@Immanentize: There are folks at Otis now, wishing that happened.
JPL
@Gvg: The AFA was a breeding ground.
Another Scott
Yup.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sally
I haven’t read comments yet, but I want to say I am very disturbed by the saccharin treatment of this Airman First Class by so much media (eg WaPo). And referring to him as a “kid” – poor lonely lad who just craved companionship. They want to try 14 year old African Americans as adults, and assert that 12 year old girls are eligible to marry (TN legislator). Plenty of 21 year old serving military people are intelligent and responsible enough to NOT DISCLOSE TOP SECRET INFORMATION ON THE NET! I don’t care if he was groomed, stupid, or a bona fide mole. I see NYT comments that he was just a poor brainwashed soul – does he get this treatment because he claims to be a “christian”? Really?!! I see many comments (NYT WaPo) assuming it was a group of teenagers – how do anonymous commenters think the know for sure that the other members of Thug Shaker Central were “merely” teenagers, when so many were Eastern Europeans (Bellingcat).
suzanne
@justawriter:
Challenge accepted.
CaseyL
@Gvg: That makes it more likely, not less, that he was recruited/groomed for this.
Frankensteinbeck
@NutmegAgain:
An adolescent. I find this motivation 100% totally believable. It’s exactly the kind of ‘look at how cool I am!’ garbage that teenagers pull all the time. This guy is a little older, a little more extreme, and was in the unusual position to get in vastly more trouble for it than most, but there is nothing at all unusual about the thought process.
Full disclosure: When I was a teenager, the FBI came knocking on our door because my older brother was bragging to his friends about knowing someone who sold C4. Was it true? Probably not. But dumbass teenager is dumbass.
Andrya
@CaseyL: I don’t know about Christian dominionists, but in my experience the USAF is the most color-blind of the armed services- I actually believe that it is the most color-blind institution in the US. In 1983 USAF Colonel Larry Jackson descended on my employer because we had a failure on a USAF project. (Col. Jackson was African-American.) He made my life hell for the better part of a year, but Col. Jackson could most definitely kick ass. (This is not classified or sensitive information- it’s totally public.)
I hope and believe that Col. Jackson, who died in 2011, would be gratified that I use some of the things I learned from him in the classes that I now teach.
The Lodger
@Delk: Is a thug shaker anything like a gangsta singing Simple Gifts?
guachi
Why did he have access? Because people with clearances have access to LOTS of material. As a linguist, I had access to thousands and thousands of top secret documents. A truly mind-boggling amount.
Why do we have phones? Because we had to call people. The job would be impossible if we didn’t have phones.
Almost every day I had a clearance I could have done exactly this. Basically everyone with a clearance can do this.
And I didn’t work in some backwater, I worked at NSA facilities my entire career (Fort Meade and Fort Gordon for the most part)
eversor
I had crazy high security clearances in my early 20s so I can see how that happened. However we secured our stuff and nobody would have thought of a stunt like this.
As for “showing off for his friends” that’s not what happened. They interviewed some guys from his Discord. He was the ring leader of them. He was also telling them to go to god (Christianity of course) and to strengthen their bodies and faith. Which does not shock me at all, nor does it shock me that someone who is talking about religion and stuff to people would betray their oaths on a dime (Barr did what he did for religion). Then there is the racism and you can see Christian Nationalism and White Nationalism all in one.
This is not that uncommon in the military. In fact far from it. When I was in there was constant pressure to be Christian and people were openly religious and pushing it on other people. If you were not Christian you’d rapidly be on the outgroup and often get shit assignments, extra duty, and just made miserable. Not all commands were like that but enough were often from the top down. Even in the ones that were not like this, if some people in it were nothing was done to stop it. I spent a lot of time at NAS Oceana Damn Neck annex which houses various Navy and Marine commands, training schools and blah blah blah. They have an arcade which I liked. But you could not play games without someone coming up within and hour and trying to talk you into going to church. It was straight out harassment but nobody would do shit about it because Jesus.
There are a lot of screwballs in the military who are real nutters and out there but you can’t touch the issue of White Nationalism or Christian Nationalism because Republicans will holler and while the military doesn’t have freedom of speech they still have freedom of religion and thus not a damn thing can be done about any of this.
TriassicSands
Deep Thoughts by Hack Jandey [sic]: There may be a tiny problem with the control of classified government documents in the United States.
TriassicSands
…,humanity and the universe.
lowtechcyclist
@Roger Moore:
How many goddamn someone elses? How does any one person have access to such a wide sweep of classified and very sensitive information?
Either our military intelligence was infiltrated by a small organization of people, which would be real bad, or the security of our classified info is fucking terrible and anyone can get their hands on a ton of serious shit that they aren’t working on, which is probably even worse.
Cervantes
@guachi: Okay, well if this is true — which I do not believe — then there is no such thing as secrecy or classification and Russia and China can get a hold of any documents they want to just by paying a $50 bribe to a private first class. So no, this is not true.
Delk
@The Lodger: lol!
lowtechcyclist
@Scout211:
The problem is, there’s so much social media, how do you surveil it all? I’m not sure that’s possible, short of a Soviet-style surveillance state. And I’d rather not live in one of those.
guachi
@Cervantes: Yes, it is true.
Believe what you want but it’s an absolute fact that you can print stuff out, shove it in your pocket, badge out, and walk to your car with it.
I could have. The number of times my pockets were searched (and military uniforms have lots of pockets) is a handful out of the thousands of times I walked out of any of the buildings I worked in.
Bill Arnold
@lowtechcyclist:
With automation. Most of these social media services have open APIs (that may require payment), and if they don’t, the web sites can be scraped regularly with automation.
Current large-language-model based automation would be (is) quite up to the task of looking for classified information. Not 100 percent but accurate enough to worry potential leakers.
Parler was entirely downloaded, including videos, in an open source project after Jan 6 and before it was shut down maybe a week later;
Twitter and other large sites are bigger but e.g. there are private companies that pay any necessary fees to scan (and presumably archive) them for business analytics purposes, and presumably some governments do so as well.
HeleninEire
Jesus. Caitlyn Collins on CNN just said they got the leaker guy “after a massive manhunt.” No. They just showed up at his house.
different-church-lady
Another slow new week.
different-church-lady
@lowtechcyclist:
I dunno. Why don’t we ask all those on-line experts who (last time there was a significant leak) told us the NSA listens to every phone call in the country using a fiber-optic splitter in a closet somewhere in Arizona? Surely they know how it can be done.
lowtechcyclist
@RPh8:
Damn good question.
Ken
Could we pick the half that are worst at their job? Mathematically, 50% of them are below average.
Which reminds me of an old science-fiction novel where an alien patiently explains to the humans that generals are, on average, terrible at their job. The argument was that in any war, half of them are on the losing side; and even among the victors, there will be plenty who were badly wrong about how long the conflict would take, or how much damage would be incurred.
different-church-lady
@Ken: I dunno, that’s kind of like saying 97% of the hockey players in the NHL are bad because they don’t win the Stanley Cup.
Ken
Charles Stross’s Laundry Files novels have a simple solution to secret material which, unfortunately, is unavailable to those of us who live in universes without magic. The Laundry wards each document, and if someone without clearance tries to read it, their head catches fire and their brain oozes out their ears. Then after they’re dead, things get really unpleasant for them.
lowtechcyclist
@Bill Arnold:
Apparently this guy wasn’t worried until it was way too late.
Tony G
@suzanne: This is just a wild guess, but perhaps this young racist shithead had this level of authorization because the officers who were supposed to be enforcing security were also racist shitheads. Just a wild guess.
Suzanne
@Tony G: Agreed. Or maybe they just don’t do due diligence at all. Also plausible.
Tony G
@Ken: I have zero military experience (I was grateful to have been a little bit too young for Vietnam) but, if the U.S. military is like any other organization that I’ve been involved with, then a significant number of unqualified people get promoted to high positions. If history is a guide, there will be no investigation by the “news” media of the structural deficiencies that led to this security debacle. When the U.S.-created government in Afghanistan collapsed in a few weeks in 2021, it would have been nice to see an investigation of how U.S. Army and Marine Corps generals lied to the public about the shoddy, corrupt state of the Afghan government that was supposed to be ready to take over when the Americans left. Of course, there was no such investigation. It’s all a big club, as George Carlin famously said.
RSA
How would that work? That is, what do LLMs contribute to the task?
KSinMA
@CaseyL:
Me too.
Shalimar
@Andrya: 2% of USAF pilots are African-American. That doesn’t sound color-blind. That sounds like “black guys aren’t smart enough to play quarterback”.
karen marie
@Grumpy Old Railroader: “Possibly”? They should be fucking court martialed, imprisoned for a lengthy term, dishonorably discharged and lose all benefits.
Lavocat
None of this passes the smell test. My first thought when this case kept getting more and more surreal was that Traitor Trump somehow had a hand in it by planting a Trumpster Op deep in the system. Hell, I even thought Trump could be directly involved given that no one really knows what secret documents he stole. Because there is no fucking way in hell that a 21-year-old doofus pulled this off alone. There are many more shoes to drop on this. Count on it. I mean, even with a decent security clearance, ALL of this shit would be need-to-know. And this shithead sure as fuck did not need to know. OG is just the patsy.
Poe Larity
TTG (ex-DIA) at Lang’s place:
Andrya
@Shalimar: I have no experience interacting with pilots. I worked in rockets and missiles, and I met a lot of African-American USAF officers who had real power over important programs. Not sure what to make of your statistic.
Omnes Omnibus
@Andrya: Pilots are the people who become generals in the AF.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
He had family who worked there. Nepotism is why he had more access than he should have and didn’t face the scrutiny he should have. That is such a common issue.
Ruckus
@Tony G:
My experience with lifers when I was in was that some were extremely good at their jobs and were reasonable leaders. OTOH there is a portion of lifers (I was in the military 50 yrs ago so this may have changed a lot) who stayed in because for them the pay was good the retirement was good and they really, really were not going to do as well in non military life. IOW they had nothing better to do and few skills to sell. I imagine that not a lot has changed overall because humans.
RaflW
Meanwhile, MTG is so emboldened (and foolish) that she’s openly saying it’s fine to torch national security if it damages Biden.
There is no way she should be on the Homeland Security Committee. Not that the Squeaker will do sh*t about it. But it’s an absolute disgrace.
Procopius
@CaseyL: I’m afraid the RWNJs infiltrated the Air Force Academy while it was being built. When I was in Air Force Basic Training (1955) we were marched to church every Sunday morning. Not that it ever affected me, but we were all required to attend a Christian service. I don’t have a link, but there were scandals at the Air Force Academy forty years ago.
Jackie
@RaflW: It is. And I see Jr has joined her. Not to anyone’s surprise.
https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-jr-2659853570/
dnfree
@lowtechcyclist: Somewhere in my online browsing today I saw a reference that his STEPFATHER retired from this unit about the time this guy started, and his STEPBROTHER also works there. That struck me as suspicious, if true.
SteverinoCT
Jumping on the “Hey, I had a clearance!” bandwagon, as a QM on a boomer, of course the charts etc. with the patrol areas were TS. Not the deck log, though: I’d make an entry, “Commenced SSBN deterrent patrol,” and the next line would be a couple months later, “Completed SSBN deterrent patrol.” In between, we maintained the TS “patrol log,” which was the deck log but classified and sent with the rest of the TS package at the end of patrol.
I was also a CMS custodian, responsible for the paper punch tapes (60s tech) with the targeting data. At least that was the theory: in practice as they were updated the old ones were shredded, and with two-man control having another guy available to stand next to the shredder was handy. And I was the Secret Custodian, too, meaning I had access to the safe with Secret docs (intel pubs and such) that I had to sign out to the needy. There was a chatty magazine in there from DIA or someone that had some interesting stuff, some of which I have seen come to light publicly, since. It was mainly an opportunity to screw up if my inventory was off.
For the record, any submarine crewman had at minimum a Secret clearance, due to the nature of the thing. I actually had a cover for my chart, a real PITA.
Jinchi
Well,… half are below average for the group. Hopefully the generals are well above the 50% mark in their field relative to the larger population.
Villago Delenda Est
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s the kind of “Look how cool I am!” shit that the fuckin’ traitor PAB pulls all the time.
Villago Delenda Est
@SteverinoCT: I was a COMSEC custodian multiple times. Tremendous pain in the ass.
Duke of Clay
@West of the Rockies: I learned only yesterday that it is Niagara Falls. I am 75 years old and have been spelling it “Niagra” all my life.
NotMax
Sen. Whitehouse asks DOJ to investigate Clarence Thomas for non-disclosure of real estate transaction.
Top of the show breaking story on O’Donnell today: Clarence Thomas has absolutely violated federal law.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
Good for Whitehouse. Dems should def make a big deal about this
NotMax
@Duke of Clay
Not a fan of Ms Monroe?
;)
Cathie from Canada
@Sally: Here in Canada, us lefties now have a meme about the “friendly sausage maker”.
Back in July 2020, a heavily-armed military reservist named Corey Hurren from Winnipeg drove 700 miles to Ottawa with the idea of “arresting” our prime minister and he actually rammed through the gates to the grounds of the prime minister’s residence before the RCMP finally noticed him and negotiated a surrender. Luckily, Trudeau and his family weren’t home at the time.
The Canadian media turned this guy into “just a friendly sausage-maker” who “didn’t want to hurt anyone” he only wanted to talk to Trudeau and couldn’t we all just give this guy a break? It was a really bizarre reaction – I still believe the media adopted this view as a way to minimize the errors made by the RCMP.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/armed-suspect-community-rideau-hall-corey-hurren-1.5636083
https://globalnews.ca/news/7622570/corey-hurren-rideau-hall-plea/
sukabi
@Roger Moore: concur… it doesn’t pass the smell test.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cathie from Canada:
Jesus Christ, that’s pretty bad. It’s not just US media, I guess that pull that type of shit
NotMax
@Cathie from Canada
Oh Dunderbeck, oh Dunderbeck…
:)
Mike in Pasadena
I asked the same questions about Snowden. When I was in forty years ago, nobody thought about taking A page of a Top Secret — NOFORN document. It meant the end of your life outside of a prison.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
The scene on the boat looks exciting!
When I was about 10/11 years old I went to the Canadian side of the Falls to stay for a weekend with my parents on vacation. Back then, you didn’t need a passport to go to Canada.
Went on the Maid of the Mist and it was an awe-inspiring experience being so close to the Horseshoe falls.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
History moment.
March 30, 1848. The Day Niagara Falls Ran Dry.
Mike in Pasadena
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Truer words were never written.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
One of my very, very favorite ensemble shows, Wonderfalls, is set in the environs of Niagara Falls. A dollop of extra fun is spotting which shots are filmed from the Canadian side and which from the American. Rare is it when a cast meshes so swimmingly.
PaulWartenberg
I am willing to bet this youth worked briefly in a high-ranking officer’s (Major or Colonel) work area where the boss was too busy goofing off, and he ordered the interns to take the paperwork home with them for reading so they could brief him the next morning while he shook off his hangover from the night before.
PaulWartenberg
@justawriter:
We ought to can half the generals and admirals. Last I heard we had more high-ranking officers than we had divisions to put them in charge of.
JML
I had a Secret when I worked at the Pentagon, and I saw people “de-classify” documents with a black sharpie. Part of the problem is how vastly over-classified so many things are in the federal government, especially the Pentagon. It makes people casual with security, especially when they know that 80% of the “classified” material they handle isn’t really classified or shouldn’t be classified. It means that huge numbers of people have security clearances that probably shouldn’t need them for their jobs, but because we over-classify everything, they do. All it takes is a person needed access to one classified report a month to guarantee their boss will get them a clearance, so that the boss doesn’t have to do that work for them. And so when end up will a gazillion people with access to more and more material, and nothing to separate out what’s important and what’s not.
No one should get let off the hook and the entire chain of command needs a royal bollacking over this, but I do understand how it happens.
OGLiberal
@Jay C: And the other half of the right-wing is calling this treason…but, but, but….it’s the Biden admin’s fault…..how could they let this happen?…heads should role but they won’t because the Biden admin holds nobody accountable, blah, blah, blah.
lee
Couple of items to note:
He knew he was fucked about 2 days prior to his arrest. He commented in Discord that ‘things were bad and he was probably going to be offline for a while’. I would love to know if the father/stepbrother had anything to do with his treason or if they told him how fucked he was about to be. I would like to think the latter but I’m guessing the former.
He made images of the documents. While not impossible to track it is much more difficult.
Miss Bianca
@Cathie from Canada: Ack. I’m not sure whether to feel heartened or horrified to learn that Canadian media can be just as bad as US media.
@NotMax: That was a great series. And now I’ve got the theme song going through my head.
EthylEster
@NutmegAgain: 21 year old males, obviously.
bluefoot
@Sally:
As Ta-Nehisi Coates has said, racism/white supremacy is often in who gets the benefit of the doubt and who does not.
Villago Delenda Est
@PaulWartenberg:
This has been true for decades, even with the post fall of the USSR drawdown.
Paul in KY
@suzanne: IMO, he’s a bit ‘mentally unstable’ to ruin his life by showing TS documents on a freaking Discord server.
Paul in KY
@Gvg: I was in during the early 80s & thank God they didn’t rule it then. At least not at the Homestead AFB Officer’s Club.
Paul in KY
@Sally: I’d say at least 3 of the ‘teenagers’ were FSB colonels.
Paul in KY
@Andrya: RIP Colonel Jackson.
Paul in KY
@eversor: Thank God they didn’t seem to give a shit about that down in S. Florida in early 80s.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: The USAF is made for pilots. All non-pilots are support personnel to pilots & ex-pilots.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: God is it the worst!!!!!
Chris
@Mike in Pasadena:
Note that the same politics that were at work with this guy were already at work with Snowden. And, before that, with Hanssen.
At a certain point, “what the fuck is it with the intelligence community breeding disgruntled right-wingers who decide to act out by selling out their country?” starts to become the question.