The Biden administration will find it difficult to explain how a 21-year-old airman who was assigned to the “cyber transport systems journeyman” position, which required a high school diploma, a driver’s licence, and up to 18 months of on-the-job training, may have been responsible for the largest US intelligence leak in a decade.
With the assurance of a prompt arraignment on Friday, the FBI detained Jack Teixeira of Dighton, Massachusetts, on Thursday. His detention, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland, was related to the “unauthorised removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defence information.”
Teixeira’s position at the Pentagon was quite entry-level. Employees like him “maintain our communications systems up and running and play an integral role in our continuing success,” according to an Air Force job description. According to his service history, he enlisted in the Air National Guard in 2019.
That will inevitably prompt the question: If a junior member of the Defence Department has access to such private data, who doesn’t?
Dennis Wilder, a former senior editor of the President’s Daily Brief, called it “outrageous” that these kinds of materials would be given to a little national guard unit. “The Pentagon really has a problem here,”
President Joe Biden attempted to minimise the impact of the leak, but analysts and former officials said it was a significant revelation that revealed not only the most recent evaluations of the Ukraine war but also how the US gathers intelligence globally.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday night that the leaker was a military enthusiast who began sharing the documents with online friends and acquaintances – some of whom were just teenagers – in an apparent effort to avoid isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. One official from an allied country described how telephones started ringing right away.
The question of whether the most powerful country on Earth can maintain secrecy was haunting the US after a string of intelligence mishaps, the individual claimed. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin responded to such worries by announcing on Thursday that he has commissioned a review of the Pentagon’s “intelligence access, accountability and control procedures” to ensure that a leak of that magnitude never occurs again.
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