Top Secret Docs leaked on Minecraft?

I was surprised to find out this was some kind of partisan issue. But I guess I shouldn't be. Everything else is.

 

It gets worse.

 

What is a lowly 21 year old E3 doing in a SCIF with Top Secret material and no supervision?
Where was this airman’s chain of command?
Why was the Washington Post allowed to read/see 300 highly classified documents? How many of these documents has the public seen? A dozen?
Is it true these documents have been posted for months? There are so many red flags to this story.

But let's look at the crimes. The first crime is the release of the documents. That person/s will go to jail. The second crime is committed by our government and its senior leadership against the American people. The government recognizes Ukraine cannot win (that is what the documents say), yet they continue to lie to the American public telling them we should fund billions & billions more.

 

The officer whose head is going to roll over this incident would no doubt heartily agree with you.

 

To be a whistleblower, one must reveal some credible wrongdoing.

This guy didn’t do that, he pretty much just revealed secret intel. It’s not even comparable to Snowden, who if he acted more reasonably could have made a case as a whistleblower - but fleeing to Russia of all places and going all scorched earth on document drops (not just focused on his supposed concern over domestic data collection) pretty well cemented his status as traitor. This guy is even more obviously a traitor than Snowden.

 

The problem is “credible wrongdoing” could mean a lot of different things, depending upon whether “credible wrongdoer” in question has a (D) or an (R) next to his or her name.

 

Not really.

It means a law was broken by a person or the govt. Snowden’s claim was “illegal sueveillance”. If he wanted to blow the whistle on illegal surveillance, he could have gone down that route. He would have probably had plenty of bi-partisan support, esp considering many on the left hated the patriot act. He escalated himself from potential whistleblower to obvious traitor, and it only had to do with his own actions.

Instead of facing the music as a whistleblower he concocted fanciful tales that he would be marked for assassination (delusions of grandeur), released a whole load of documents that had nothing to do with domestic surveillance, and ultimately fled to the arms of an adversary (removing all doubt).

This guy revealed a bunch of stuff pertaining to a hot war, potentially putting lives on the line. There’s really no possible justification to even initially ponder, as there might have been in a case like Snowden.

 

Absolutely, if an R was in office, especially one that can't be mentioned, with all this russia/ukraine shit going on...dude would be a whistleblower, for certain.

 

Possibly. You could be right but I hope not. There are some behaviors that separate this instance from the behaviors of most whistleblowers. He took the material it seems for bragging rights among his group of gamers and then it got away from him. He did not bring wrongdoing to the attention of his superiors (Vindman) or as a last resort leak it to the press for public attention (Deep Throat). Absent these actions I can’t see him as a whistleblower.

 

I think that something along the lines of what you’re discussing might be a result of this, but it won’t be as practical as you might think. As far as I can tell, the accused in this case was not supposed to have access to these documents. His job was to maintain the systems on which they are stored, and he had the special trust and confidence of a clearance in case he inadvertently came across materials such as these in the course of his legitimate duties. An example of what I mean is, let’s say, an operational planning team is working on maps in a classified area and a technician has to come in to the same work spaces to conduct maintenance on an unrelated system. That technician doesn’t need to know what the OPT is working on, might see or overhear something critical but unrelated to his duties, and is currently trusted to keep his mouth shut about whatever it is. This sort of thing generally speaking hasn’t been a problem up until now.

 

When Snowden, Manning and Reality Winner released classified documents they could arguably claim that they were whistleblowers. Teixeira's motivation seems to be a bizarre form of ego gratification.

 

Age is absolutely no excuse for what this guy did. He should be in jail for decades. Anything less is setting an incredibly dangerous precedence for the future.

 

Depends. Prison for decades should be his best-case scenario. Like I said earlier, if he meant for the Russians to have this, he should get the needle.

 

This guy may be flirting with getting the needle.

 

Wow, in light of these recent events, maybe our govt should double down on monitoring these dangerous online forums...maybe even push some tough new legislation.

 

Morally and politically, without question. But be careful what you ask for legally. Like someone said earlier, one person’s enemy agent is another person’s whistle blower. One person’s “mostly peaceful protest” is another’s “insurrection.” And sadly it seems, for both sides, the overriding element that governs their perception is whether or not they “agree” with the person or people’s misconduct in question, not the principle.

The principle involved here is the protection of classified materials. Individuals do not get to decide whether or not something should be classified, should be shared with the public, etc. Teixeira did not get to decide that. And MTG does not get to decide that. We have laws governing the classification, storage, and release of these materials. The same principle was true for Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. Anyone who finds themselves “agreeing” with them but “disagreeing” with Teixeira and MTG needs to remember the governing principle instead.

In my opinion, MTG needs to be stripped of her committee assignment with a strong public warning than anymore encouragement of sedition is going to result in suspension of her clearance. Yes, she got a new committee assignment based on a deal. I doubt anything in that deal guaranteed she gets to keep her assignment with full immunity for her words and actions. She got a second chance and blew it. Booting her will send a message.

 

They could “claim” it, but they weren’t. They were enemy agents. Period.

 

Will his call to the justice system be civilian or military?

 

I don’t think any of them were truly “enemy agents”, at least not at the time of their crime. To label someone an “agent” of a foreign govt implies they were acting at the behest of a foreign govt, following their orders, presumably in exchange for $$$ or favors. As Snowden chose to flea and accept accommodation in Russia, he effectively became an enemy agent, but he probably wasn’t at the time of his leak.

This kid may have done some of the potentially worst damage. But I doubt he was paid, and it’s not likely he was even known to the Russian govt given how this went down. He just got brainwashed by right wing propoganda, and apparently committed treason for “internet cred”. Gotta love social media.

 

It depends on what his status was at the time of the crime, military or civilian. If it was categorically one or the other, then it will be either the federal or military courts-martial system. If it was both (most likely), then there will be a conference between parties to make that determination, and if the accused is willing to cut a deal, then he may get a chance to choose the federal system. A court-martial is much more likely to convict; it only takes a two-thirds majority of the panel.