Pentagon leak suspect Jack Teixeira to appear in federal court Friday

Thanks for your input Chief! However, having lived in this specific world; Cyber Operations, Cyber Support (to include cyber transport), the Intel Community, etc, I can understand how it could be possible to do what this kid did. I have literally performed many of the same things this kid was likely tasked to do. But note, he isn't pointing any fingers that someone put him up to it, and there's very little doubt it was he who did this.

That said, I will not go into some of the vulnerabilities one could observe from one unit to another in this environment, but I began my career exploiting it with great success (it was my job). Whether these vulnerabilities existed and were exploited by intent or accident, we had a lot to work on back in the day, and while many of those vulnerabilities have been resolved and/or mitigated, there are obviously still things to deal with.

Access for this kid should have been compartmentalized sure, but as a transport journeyman, his TS/SCI access was required, since he could very likely be exposed to that data in the performance of his duties. We do not know, nor will we likely know the details as to how he accessed the data, ex-filled it, and ultimately went unnoticed. I can only speculate as to what I know from my days in that community.

Now, I'm not definitively saying he didn't have help (intentional or not), but I can absolutely say it is more likely he did this on his own accord. Let's also not forget, this is not the first time "trusted" people have acted alone in the exfiltration of highly classified data. The bigger question is, why haven't we learned our lesson in protecting it and compartmentalizing appropriately through automated controls, with authorized people to manage access? Or was someone in the unit lazy and simply applied blanket access to all, based solely on whether the individual has a clearance or not.

Thanks Maj. for you input I am still trying to wrap around this story . What borthers me is he came from a long line of military people who should have known better . And he did not try and sell and give to our adversaries .

CMSgt Donald ONeill I understand Chief… It simply doesn’t make sense to me coming from a long line of military in my own family. But you and I both know we get our share of extremely bright Airmen, and unfortunately those who are not so bright. But I can also say I have come across several Airmen expressing very similar feelings about the military and questioning why they chose to join. In one specific example I had 6 Airmen expressing their intent to leave the Air Force. They came to me in a deployed environment and I can only speculate their leadership back home wasn’t engaged, wasn’t challenging them, wasn’t keeping them engaged on meaningful work and showing them how they are making a difference. At the end of that deployment I had 5 of them rethinking that intent to separate and instead looking for bigger and better opportunities. Several years later one of those Airmen worked with me yet again while deployed to Bagram in the early days of OEF. I was proud of him as he learned so much and helped me make a difference supporting our A-10 and Medevac ops through comm support. So again I see a potential leadership failure here with is ANG Airman (among a few other issue I take with where the Air Force is going these days). There’s very little camaraderie in the Air Force today and too many leaders both NCO and Officer are too concerned about covering their own ass, that they aren’t looking out for those they are supposed to be leading.

So we’ve recently come off of COVID, where Airmen from an typically introvert world (i.e. cyber) are propelled into even more introvert environments.

So now he has his new click and in order to appear more important and/or worldly, he makes a huge mistake in judgement. One he unfortunately cannot recover from compared a lot of the very stupid things some Airmen do.

Maj my instincts tell more is going to come out as a young man I started my military career in the Special Forces 63-66 went to Vietnam 65-66 . There is where i learned more about government than I wanted to . All the the best my friend .