A Damning Indictment For Many - Editorial
On December 11, news broke that 15 members of the Air National Guard were disciplined in relation to the leaking of classified documents online this spring. The information was delivered to Congress that very morning, but reportedly only came about after the Air Force was put on notice that The Washington Post had done its own investigation into the leak, the findings of which were about to go public.
The Post’s investigation was laid out in a series of articles, the first of which hit the internet early that same morning. The following night, a PBS “Frontline” documentary about the investigation aired, and its findings were so damning and revelatory—and not just for Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old airman currently facing six federal charges in relation to the leak—that we had to watch it twice to fully take it in.
A sweeping dereliction of reporting duties among the 102nd Intelligence Unit and its supervisors is essentially what allowed a subordinate computer tech to repeatedly abuse his security clearance—one that should never have been granted in the first place—resulting in what has been called one of the worst leaks of US national security intelligence in American history.
The most damning indictment delivered by “The Discord Leaks” “Frontline” episode points squarely at the institutional failures of both the Air National Guard and online platforms like Discord, a popular site among gamers where documents were allegedly shared. Discord is a largely unmoderated platform, relying on users to moderate content themselves—the ineffectiveness of which has allowed the platform to become breeding grounds for extremism, bigotry, violence and cultural chauvinism, where unchecked egos and machismo run amok.
The documentary’s revelations were jarring, especially regarding the alleged leaker’s history of racist and violent remarks, a paper trail for which traces back to high school. Somehow, though, both the Department of Defense and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (which adjudicates clearance decisions), failed to clock any of these incidents—including, for example, in March 2018, when Jack Teixeira was reported for allegedly telling students he had a Molotov cocktail in his backpack. The Dighton police wrote up a report on the incident, which the Post obtained, but the DOD must have missed this detail—along with a number of other concerning incidents the Post dug up, many of which were reported to, and recorded by, police and school officials.
Jack Teixeira was ultimately suspended and ordered to take a psychological risk assessment before returning to class as a result of that incident. At the time, he was worried that the situation might hurt his chances of enlisting. It did not, and just three years later, he was granted a security clearance.
These failings on behalf of the government and military in allowing a person with such obvious red flags to enlist are scary enough, but authorizing that person for a security clearance is simply horrifying. This is meant to be a thorough vetting process done by agents of the military, using the most sophisticated means of intel—is that layer of our national defense really so thin?
The picture painted by the investigation is a harrowing one, but it exposes some of the most intimate and consequential threats that the whole world—not just the United States—now faces. Jack Teixeira spent years on Discord, trolling dark corners of the internet where the more offensive and shockingly vulgar you are, the more popular you get. And that hostility, which defined his online life and persona—and seems to be one of only constants in the former airman’s 21 years—bled into his real life soon enough: this time last year, he was allegedly smuggling classified documents off Otis Air National Guard Base to his home in Dighton, where they were photographed and posted on Discord in pursuit of online “clout” and attention from like-minded peers spanning the globe. The worry he felt in 2018 about his chances of enlistment being damaged were long gone, seemingly replaced by a need to feel some sense of superiority. He thought of himself as superior—after all, the private Discord server belonged to him at this point—and sought out a way to show it, eventually wielding his power in the form of highly classified intelligence delivered on-demand to online friends who felt more like fans. And he chased that feeling—to the detriment of both himself, the military, the American government, and a number of foreign nations around the globe—all the way to a federal prison cell.
Ego is one hell of a drug.