Some insider threats are more equal than others; so goes the position of the nation’s biggest leaker of classified documents in modern history, and it’s not Jack Teixeira.
This story shows the importance of what was hidden by the combined efforts of the national security apparatus in 2018.
Readers here are familiar, but most Americans are not, with how Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner leaked a top-secret classified Title-1 FISA application in March of 2017.
Then the Vice-Chair of the SSCI, Senator Warner instructed Senate Security Director James Wolfe to leak the 82-page FISA application assembled against Carter Page. On the afternoon of March 17, 2017, Wolfe took 82 pictures of the “Read and Return” document that was delivered to the SSCI basement SCIF by FBI Supervisory Special Agent Brian Dugan from the Washington Field Office.
Later that evening, Wolfe sent the images to journalist Ali Watkins using an encrypted messaging app. Ms. Watkins then shared the FISA content with her peers and used the information to leverage a top-tier job at the New York Times. The media were off to the races talking about FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign and using the leaked FISA as evidence of the ongoing investigation, later known as Crossfire Hurricane. Three days later, March 20, 2017, after coordinating the intent of the narrative creation with Mark Warner, FBI Director James Comey publicly admitted the Trump-Russia investigation for the first time.
After James Wolfe was arrested for the FISA application leak, his defense lawyers threatened to expose the role of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the leak and subpoena the members as witnesses. The Mueller/Weissmann team, then in charge of all DOJ operations that touched on Trump-Russia, took apart the evidence of Wolfe’s conduct, and DC Attorney Jessie Liu dropped most of the charges against Wolfe. Mueller then ran cover for Mark Warner, and eventually – out of an abundance of caution to maintain the need for the coverup operation – the Mueller/Weissmann team then made the FISA application public. The rest is history.
Keep in mind, I could be civilly sued if anything written above as an asserted truth was false. I’m not, because the truth is the defense. All of this happened.
At the time of the Mark Warner TSCI leak, no one outside the DOJ-FBI and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) had ever seen a FISA application. Heck, in 2017 through early 2018, it was considered a classified intelligence breech to even discuss the FISA process, the procedures or the court itself. People forget that.
The 2017 leaking of the FISA application was the biggest national security breach in years, perhaps seconded only to the 2017 leaking of the TSCI transcript from National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, given to the Washington Post by the FBI a month earlier.
So, it’s somewhat hypocritical and ironic to see SSCI Chairman Mark Warner now railing against the Pentagon and Director of National Intelligence over not being provided the details of documents leaked by a low-level military servicemember in the Massachusetts Air National Guard.
WASHINGTON DC – The Senate Intelligence Committee is demanding the Pentagon hand over copies of all the classified documents leaked by Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira.
The 21-year-old serviceman was accused by the Department of Defense of leaking “sensitive and highly-classified material” into a chat on the encrypted communications platform Discord. It then made its way onto other social media platforms. He was charged on Friday.
In a letter addressed to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., and ranking member Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the leak prompted concerns about “serious deficiencies” in the government’s security protocols.
“According to public reporting, A1C Teixeira began sharing classified information and classified documents within a social media platform as early as December 2022—nearly four months before the government’s discovery,” the letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, read. “These disclosures indicate serious deficiencies in the government’s insider threat and security vetting protocols.” (read more)
