Sometimes the obvious answers are in the part that few pay attention to.
According to the original outline, as presented by the Washington Post last night [Original Story Here], the full surveillance and intelligence power of the United States government was unable to locate the source of the largest leak of U.S. classified intelligence in a decade, but some journalists found a teenager in his mom’s basement with all the answers. This is the story, and they are sticking to it.
I’ve been in enough rabbit holes created by the silos of the intelligence community to know when not to enter one. First things first, what silo uses the Washington Post?
We all should know by now the same three-letter operators in charge of the Amazon Cloud Service, are the same three-letter operators who use the PR firm known as the Washington Post.
Why the intelligence people from inside the CIA/NSA silo wanted to exploit the teenage gamer with a connection to an intelligence leaker, as the preferred narrative is unknown. However, the DHS details provided in the intelligence community follow-up through the New York Times does provide some clues.
New York Times – The leader of a small online gaming chat group where a trove of classified U.S. intelligence documents leaked over the last few months is a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The national guardsman, whose name is Jack Teixeira, oversaw a private online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.
Two U.S. officials confirmed that investigators want to talk to Airman Teixeira about the leak of the government documents to the private online group. One official said Airman Teixeira might have information relevant to the investigation.
Federal investigators have been searching for days for the person who leaked the top secret documents online but have not identified Airman Teixeira or anyone else as a suspect. The F.B.I. declined to comment. (read more)
There it is again….
The CIA, DoD, NSA, FBI, DHS and all of the combined systems of the United States intelligence apparatus, the kind that can isolate your location through the mirrored image on a WaWa CCTV camera in Podunk, Mississippi, could not find the 21-year-old originating leaker who was posting details, images and classified data for months in a chat room online. But the Washington Post and New York Times can isolate, locate, interview, record, broadcast and then name the suspect within 12 hours….
Okay. Gotcha!… and now the government will talk to young Mr. Jack Teixeira about his endeavors. Got it.
I have been in these intelligence creations, and we have traveled into the rabbit hole of their intelligence storylines long enough to spot one when it surfaces.
My gut hunch… Two issues. The first is the obvious; the USG was cool with the leaked information because it formed the baseline for a geopolitical change in direction, a pivot away from the quagmire they created in Ukraine. This part is obvious, because if that wasn’t the case the leak cleanup operation would have been silent. The collective IC would have just traced the origin, destroyed the information, pulled in the participants and black-holed the entire mess.
The fact the IC engineered a media narrative for it, pushing the leak story into the mainstream cycle, says the IC had a motive to promote the leak narrative.
Second, the gaming “sector” has always been a thorn in the side of those who seek to control communication and conduct surveillance therein. They are already in social media platforms, but the gaming platforms were not exploited to scale. The USG has now established a baseline to enter that sphere of communication and networking and begin formal operations in the gaming platforms.
Still, anytime the U.S. Intelligence Community is involved, it is always best practice to watch and remain out of the hole.
The only question you really need to ask yourself is, what aspect of my liberty does this intelligence operation support the removal of?
After all… if only we had the Restrict Act in place, then none of this classified information surfacing on social media would be such a concern, right? Right?
Remember…. “Greasy Bear hackers and Macedonian Bot Farms might sound like a good justification for a prosecution when pitched to an incurious media. However, when Greasy Bear and the accused Macedonians show up in court, well, the prosecutors might just have a problem. That is the backdrop for a series of bizarre requests from the Special Prosecutor to seal the evidence against the accused, Concord Management, and the defendant’s response. (read more)
