‘Extraordinarily unusual’: Airman warned repeatedly to stop mishandling classified intel

The Air National Guardsman who is accused of posting a trove of classified documents to social media was repeatedly warned by his superiors in the Air Force over his mishandling of classified documents, prosecutors say. CNN law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller discusses new details emerging from court documents related to accused Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira. #CNN #News

39 comments

  1. That is sadly something that does happen in the military we had a guy who was sleeping with a supply person(lower rank than him) and using her to get free car parts via supply. Instead of kicking him out right then and there they moved him to another unit. He failed at the new unit he went to so instead of kicking him out on strike 2 they made him work at battalion as a transportation personnel.

    1. Former CIA Director (resigned) and retired General David Petraeus was fined $100,000 and placed on 2 years probation for the unauthorized removal and retention of classified material which he shared with his biographer/lover. Under a plea agreement he avoided prison time.

  2. so lapse in judgement by superior to run an investigation to see if this person is asking questions out of bounds. let us look into his social media to make sure they are behaving in the manner of an airmen. superior should be let go due to breach of trust for letting these sort of actions slide far to long. it is okay to have a curious mind to not make a serious notion but one should look or have this person looked at if they are doing things out of the norm. again it is fine to offer some more more functions if they are doing their duties greatly but the lapse is not doing a deep dive on their activity to make sure nothing is wrong.

    1. @George Sykes you are not wrong. Or whoever is the lowest ranking officer will get sacrificed. Maybe throw in their supervisor who is probably an E5 or E6

  3. This is the difference between a National Guard unit and a regular military unit. If he would have been caught taking notes of classified material in an active duty secure facility, he would have been immediately removed from the area and had his security clearance suspended pending an investigation. It boggles my mind that an Air National Guard unit had this mission tasking.

    1. In Canada, we do NOT integrate Reserve units, just individual troops that work with reg force oversight… We aren’t dumb enough to let people that train a day or two per week and a month and a half in the summer be in charge of ANYTHING really important.. Unless it’s a BIG war, like WW2 and we mobilize. Even for Afghanistan, the reservists (we have NO National Guards owned by our provincial premiers…) were integrated in regular force units, NEVER fighting on their own. A master corporal takes about 2 1/2 years to train in a full time infantry unit, and it’s the first rank with command abilities, a junior NCO, usually a 2ic of a section, but only six months in a reserve unit (or it was when I was in, we called them 6 month wonders),,, There is NO comparison. One is a pro, the other an amateur. SOME reservists are ex regular forces, but most are just students, or people with regular jobs.

  4. It sounds there were multiple alerts and red flags. They should have notified the FBI or a military branch to monitor his activities including internet activities. Seems like a big miss.

  5. The idiots in charge need to lose THEIR security clearances. There is so much negligence here that it SHOULD be criminal for them too. Cops get fired if they look up a file on someone they have no business looking up… For a beach of PERSONAL information. But the military plays games with National Defense secrets, and just “warns” a serial transgressor??? WTH is wrong with people?
    I had to get a Secret security clearance in the military (I know it’s a very low clearance, I was infantry, not intelligence), but I read the fine print before I signed the doted line… The penalties for unauthorized disclosures were VERY easy to understand.

  6. You feed the suspect mole flagged data to see where it pops up. It’s normal to let them swim for a while to observe. At least that’s what text books say.

  7. Who signed off on his SF-86 form needs to be held accountable. This could have been stop dead in it’s tracks if they did a proper screening.

  8. Wtf is wrong with them keep giving them chances and then offer a promotion for more classified information
    He should have been kicked out the first warning

    1. Retention and personnel management.
      If you have someone who seems to have trouble with his current job but seems to have an aptitude or interest for something else, you try find a job that better fits. If he/she still has problems then you get rid of them.

    1. Many get it at that age. Also, he was IT his job require the clearance, but his job wasn’t directly to read it, just that he’d come across it naturally.

    2. That’s what I’d life he to know. 1 thing is 4 sure IF he was B or B, he wouldn’t have had that kind of easy access. As he is white, n a way I can see how he was able to get by for a while.

      Not condoning what he did but taking notes out in the open was what did him in.

      Such is the folly of youth. Argh.

    3. @Meg Clifton Someone black or brown and THAT YOUNG would more than likely NOT have had that kind of a access or position so, young and so early in their career.

    4. @Meg Clifton Nothing, some people are caught up in their own racism that they can’t see anything outside of race. It’s common for people within certain career fields to have security clearance, there are no race restrictions on those careers, just requires the prerequisite scores on the ASVAB, and a clear background check.

  9. Three strikes and you are… in? What kind of madness is that, offering him a position with better access to things he should not have been looking at.

  10. I want to know how a teenager can get hold of theatre of war intelligence and be repeatedly warned about it and then go on to a chat room to impress his friends, like you can’t make this stuff up .

  11. Heads must roll. How is it this guy didn’t appreciate the consequences of his actions? He absolutely needs to be made a example of. Who could even consider his release?

  12. That’s crazy, an e7 talked crazy to me and threw a fist and I lost rank and pay on the first incident, one incident and it ruined my career as I got stuck as an e2 for my last 3 years out of 6. He got warned 3 times come on very useful information

  13. What if he didn’t keep those Top Secret communication secure on the USAF government server and instead routed everything onto his private server in order to defeat “FOIA” Freedom of Information Act Laws? I hear no legitimate prosecutor would charge that crime.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.