US President Joe Biden is facing sharp criticism from Republicans after the latest secret service scandal and wants the case to be clarified as soon as possible. He instructed his government to find out why the alleged traitor had access to such explosive information at all, Biden said on Friday evening on the sidelines of his multi-day visit to Ireland, according to journalists traveling with him. The opposition accused the President of mistakes in handling state secrets.
The background are secret documents on the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine that have found their way onto the Internet. They have been circulating on the Internet for weeks and contain information on arms deliveries, assessments of what is happening in the war, but also details on alleged US spying against partners. According to reporters, Biden said the full extent of the incident should be fully investigated. He doesn’t think it will take long.
At the center of the affair is a 21-year-old US Air Force National Guardsman named Jack Teixeira. He is accused of unauthorized removal, storage and transmission of classified information and national defense information, it was announced on Friday. Up to 15 years in prison. The suspect has now been brought before an investigating judge.
Teixeira is suspected of having initially published the documents in a closed chat room on the Discord platform, which is popular with video gamers. From there, they spread on the Internet until authorities and the media became aware of them.
According to court documents, Teixeira initially shared the explosive information with the group in the form of transcripts from December last year. From January he is also said to have uploaded photos of printed documents. The security authorities now have to put up with critical questions as to why the IT specialist at a military base in the state of Massachusetts had access to the secret documents at all.
“Through our committees, Congress will get answers,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrote on Twitter. He accused Biden’s government of failing to secure secret information. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right frontwoman, tweeted, “Who do you trust with critical information that affects the security of our nation and our own lives?”
For the US government, it is not only the security gap itself and the disclosure of sensitive material that are problematic, but also the external impact on the international stage is fatal: Suddenly the question arises as to how reliable and loyal the US is as an ally, how good the government is protects her own secrets and those of her partners.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Republican Mike Turner, fears it could affect relations with international partners in the middle of a war. It is still unclear how much classified information has fallen into unauthorized hands and how the extent of the damage can be limited. The committee will also investigate why this “went unnoticed for weeks,” Turner wrote on Twitter.
President Biden instructed the military and intelligence agencies to take additional measures to protect sensitive information. The dissemination of national defense information should be further restricted. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin commissioned an inquiry into access to intelligence within his department. Control procedures would also be checked to prevent “such an incident from happening again”.
Court documents show that Teixeira’s role as an IT specialist gave him official clearance to view top-secret government documents – despite his low-level rank. Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder emphasized that in the US military, employees are often given “great responsibility from an early age”, for example as the leader of a military unit in combat.
Teixeira’s motive for publishing the secret documents has not yet been clarified beyond doubt. Initial findings don’t quite fit into the scheme of similar secret scandals of the past. Unlike the revelations by former secret service agent Edward Snowden, for example, nothing seems to point to a political motive so far. Teixeira was not necessarily hostile to the US government, members of the chat group say. They also consider it unrealistic that he was a Russian or Ukrainian agent. A member of the group told the Washington Post that his main concern was “to brag to his friends” and to inform them.
