Newly released memos revealing that Air Force leadership repeatedly warned Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira about inappropriately accessing classified intelligence have left former and current defense personnel baffled at how he retained his security clearance and was able to continue sharing classified information for months.
“This is negligence on the part of the chain of command,” said Jason Kikta, a former Marine Corp Officer and former member of US Cyber Command. “They had a clear pattern of behavior,” adding he “should have been cut off at the second incident.”
Three Air Force memos documenting Teixeira’s misconduct were released publicly on Wednesday as part of the prosecution’s argument in favor keeping him detained pending trial.
The memos showed that Teixeira, a 21-year-old junior enlisted airman who worked within the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, had received a direct order from his superiors to stop taking notes on intelligence, which they found he was ignoring just a month later. And just months before he was arrested for allegedly sharing the intelligence online, a third memo said a supervisor observed him accessing intelligence unrelated to his job.
Teixeira was arrested on April 14 and has been charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal of classified information and defense materials.
Teixeira has not yet entered a formal plea, and a detention hearing is scheduled for Friday. His defense lawyers have argued he didn’t expect classified information that he posted on Discord to be further spread around the internet.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN on Thursday that the new information was “deeply troubling.”
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