Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano on Leaks

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it appears as if the leaks are for the most part legitimate.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/13/person-who-leaked-classified-us-intelligen...

The head of a Discord group where a trove of sensitive US intelligence documents were posted online has been identified as a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman named Jack Teixeira, according to a new report.

The New York Times first reported Teixeira’s identity Thursday, adding that investigators want to talk to him about the leak and say that he may have information relevant to the investigation.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported that an arrest in the case could happen as soon as Thursday.

The head of a Discord group where a trove of sensitive US intelligence documents were posted online has been identified as a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman named Jack Teixeira, according to a new report.
The fast-moving developments followed a report by the Washington Post late Wednesday that the classified files were shared to a Discord channel called “Thug Shaker Central.”

The Times reported Thursday that Teixeira’s online gaming profile links him to other members of the channel.

The paper also reported that details of the interior of Teixeira’s childhood home from pictures posted to social media match items on the margins of some of the photographs of the secret documents.

On Feb. 28, some of the documents were reposted by a member of the Discord channel “wow_mao.”

A member of that channel in turn posted some of them on March 4 to the even larger channel “Minecraft Earth Map.”

On Thursday morning, President Biden told reporters in Ireland that federal investigators were “close” to uncovering the leaker’s identity.

Translation:

"US intelligence officer" allegedly leaked documents that got into the press.
The character is 21 years old. My name is Jack Teixeira. He served in the National Guard in the 102nd reconnaissance wing. He was fond of online games, memes, racism, communication in social networks and chat rooms. Voted for Trump.

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soryang's picture

@humphrey ...how does a national guardsman (not even in the regular armed forces) gain access to documents which some analysts have described as having been prepared for briefing at the JCS level? Just asking. Then there is the matter of "need to know." I've noticed that the few analysts I've listened to on this subject, don't even mention that as a factor.

Investigators are likely to probe how Teixeira, from his position at a base in Massachusetts, would have had access to highly classified information, some of which was used to brief senior leaders at the Pentagon. National Guard units perform some support services for active-duty units, including intelligence support for the Joint Staff, one U.S. official said. In that case, Teixeira could have had access to the kinds of highly classified documents that he is alleged to have shared with his fellow members on the server, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a developing investigation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/13/suspect-pent...

I'm getting no paywall to access the WP article on this topic. Jimmy likes Glenn Greenwald's analysis. I like Jimmy's conclusion at 13:43 in the video below:

"Ready to turn to China and Taiwan."

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語必忠信 行必正直

@soryang

... how does a national guardsman (not even in the regular armed forces) gain access to documents which some analysts have described as having been prepared for briefing at the JCS level?

There's a lot of discussion in the Col. MacGregor and Ray McGovern interviews with Judge Napolitano, posted in our thread, asking your question and speculating whether it was lax security or purposeful release by a higher level whistleblower.

Either way, it's Bad for Blob.

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enhydra lutris's picture

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

a 21 yr old National Air Guardsman, just got arrested.
He is in big trouble.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

studentofearth's picture

First this interview began 5 minutes after the public announcement of the arrest. Col Doug Macgregor and Judge Napolitano had not much time to think about what to say during their analysis. At 10:32 discuss credibility of young teenage informer and content of interview. (25:10 min)

Ray McGovern article yesterday about effect of leaks on the course of Vietnam conflict published on AntiWar.com
Daniel Ellsberg’s First Leak Helped Prevent War With China
His interview with Judge Napolitano discusses the current leak and the ones in the 1960's. (April 10, 22.17 min)

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

soryang's picture

@studentofearth I thought the Macgregor interview was excellent.

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語必忠信 行必正直

snoopydawg's picture

Another video with Larry Johnson

A Controlled Leak and A 21 Year Old Scape-Goat

I don’t know how this was done, but there is no way that a 21 year old National Guardsman had access to the TS material, especially CIA documents from the CIA’s Operation’s Center. Someone with access to that material had to feed this to this young man and, because he had active clearances, created a predicate crime by posting them on the internet. Here’s my interview today with Judge Napolitano. I will write more tonight.

Comment

Its unclear to me why everybody is ignoring the obvious on these documents. They appear to issue from an American source. They appear devoid of any actionable intel. They appear devoid of anything the Russians wouldn’t already know or suspect. The information lacks significance outside of a narrow corridor of its effect on perception. They are clearly not aimed at convincing the Russians of anything.

Who then? The media has been hyping “an offensive” for months. The weather will soon allow for an offensive. The Russians have been moving the ball for months (infrastructure strikes, consolidation in Belarus, Bahkmut, etc.) All of this looks like Russia is winning to your average person.

Seems to me “the leak” is designed to reinforce confirmation bias. Causal observers already know Russia is winning. TPTB know this. What better way to overcome expectations than to lower them (consistent with what the public already believes), do better than predicted then use the media to amplify the “surprise” victory over expectations? This is disinformation 101.

TPTB know what “the offensive” will consist of. They know because the Ukrainian force is now nothing but a NATO-created proxy, irrespective of what the documents allege. They know because there is a NATO air exercise scheduled for May. And they know the “the offensive” is going to be a lot more significant than currently predicted.

What’s interesting about the arrest is that many people have been questioning whether the leaks were real or maybe a limited hangout, but now with the arrest people think that they must be real information that was leaked.

MoA weighs in on them too.

More Doubts About The 'Leaked' Briefing Slides - Updated

Funny again how some people cheered when Manning released the Iraq War files and especially for Assange who posted the collateral murder tape, but now those same people want this leaker to face a firing squad. Gah! Tribalism boils my buttocks!

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snoopydawg's picture

Also from simplicius

Apparently, Teixeira worked as an IT or tech support worker for the Massachusetts Air National Guard and had access to an internal DoD computer network with top secret information. He used it to download the data then ‘show it off’ to his friends on a private video game server on Discord, all for the sake of internet ‘clout’, or so goes the boilerplate cover story the MSM wants us to believe.

As Larry Johnson pointed out for us, the NOFORN on the docs meant they were not for Foreign eyes, and meant for internal U.S. DOD consumption only. However, many of the docs also had “Rel to US / FIN / UKR / 5VEY” which names Ukraine and Five Eyes countries, which are US/UK/Canada/New Zealand/Australia. The reason I make that distinction is, it would make more sense if the docs meant for a variety of allies were more accessible, as perhaps they were on more ‘open’ types of servers, but the NOFORN ones apparently were mixed in with them. So it’s pretty surprising that this young guardsman had access to computer systems filled with this stuff.

More surprising, however, is the fact that no one from the Epstein flight logs list has yet been detained in SWAT Team or Special Forces fashion on national television like this. Yet in the land of the brave and home of the free, Julian Assange and young Minecraft players are ruthlessly pursued and persecuted as Enemy #1 for, in effect, exposing the vastly illegal imperialist overreach of the Deep State cabal.

The leaks, by the way, were apparently much more extensive than initially appeared. Some now estimate there are hundreds of pages, and they have been slowly trickling onto the internet, each day batches of dozens of new documents are appearing.

The new leaks had some rather ‘interesting’ revelations; allow me to name a few of them:

Link

Gonzo, Ray McGovern and Johnson. This got lots of kudos in the comments.

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snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

Simplicius:

3.) The last and strangest of the new leaks sounds like something from a crappy British tabloid. It states that Ukrainian Presidential Office Chief of Staff Andrey Yermak ‘has learned’ of a plot to overthrow Putin inside of Russia. Insiders in the Kremlin ‘told him’ that Patrushev and Gerasimov believe Ukraine’s forces are superior to Russia and that if Russia launches any offensives they will suffer grave casualties. Therefore Gerasimov planned to sabotage the future Russian offensive and completely derail the SMO by March 5, which apparently never happened (quelle surprise). But the kicker: the March 5 date was chosen as that was when “Putin was scheduled to start a round of chemotherapy and would thus be unable to influence the war effort.”

Yep I’m leaning towards a limited hangout or just a lot of BS. But hey someone has been arrested so we can all breathe a sigh of relief right?

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which specifically addresses gamer chat rooms.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

slippery elements of this story is that, as many responsible journalists have pointed out, much of the released data was known. It was known by critics of U.S. and NATO policy and was widely reported. But what has been revealed is that U.S. leadership also knew it but lied about it. That is what was Top Secret, classified, and not known by the American public. Our political leadership's lying is what was secret, and it has been revealed by these leaks.

So the harm that could come to U.S. national security is not a threat to us. It's a threat to our war machine.

And this applies especially to the pretense that our leadership has no knowledge of Russian military industry, or its weapons systems, or its capability. Scott Ritter and Douglas McGregor are not the only people in our military who have a comprehensive knowledge of Russian military strengths. Our government knew exactly what the Ukrainian military would face, and they let it happen, on purpose.

They bankrolled a private army of nazi thugs to kill, torture and terrorize children, babies and civilian workers, enriched a gang of energy opportunists, and demonized the only country willing to stop them. They're not stupid. They're evil.

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Did read the Washington Post article based on interviews with one of the young chat room members that 'OG' (apparently Texeira) was sharing info with. And looked at some of the Twitter chatter reactions.

The latter seemed mostly about denouncing the leaker as MAGA scum.

The Post article OTOH seemed to describe something else - OG in somewhat of an educator/mentor role to a small group in the real ways of the world.

The documents were another lesson for younger members in how OG thought the world really worked. The member said OG wasn’t hostile to the U.S. government, and he insisted that he was not working on behalf of any country’s interests. “He is not a Russian operative. He is not a Ukrainian operative,” the member said. The room on the server where he posted the documents was called “bear-vs-pig,” meant to be a snide jab at Russia and Ukraine, and an indication that OG took no sides in the conflict.

But OG had a dark view of the government. The young member said he spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark. He ranted about “government overreach.”

OG told his online companions that the government hid horrible truths from the public. He claimed, according to the members, that the government knew in advance that a white supremacist intended to go on a shooting rampage at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022. The attack left 10 dead, all of them Black, and wounded three more. OG said federal law enforcement officials let the killings proceed so they could argue for increased funding, a baseless notion that the member said he believes and considers an example of OG’s penetrating insights about the depth of government corruption.

Of course, 'baseless'...

For all OG’s disdain for the federal government, the member said there was no indication that he was acting in what he thought was the public interest by exposing official secrets. The classified documents were intended only to benefit his online family, the member said.

In hours of interviews, he continued to express admiration and loyalty to a man who may have endangered his young followers by allowing them to see and possess classified information, exposing them to potential federal crimes.
...

Now he says he believes that the world should see the secrets OG passed along to a tiny group. He argued that the public deserves to know how intelligence agencies spend their tax dollars, and was particularly outraged that the documents show U.S. surveillance of foreign allies.

Source - WaPo

Indeed, the public does deserve to know - and, having been given a glimpse of that reality, should be demanding it - count on distraction efforts to be cranked up to avoid such an unpleasant (for the Deep State) eventuality.

Ideological Subversion:
“What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves...”
—Yuri Bezmenov

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."
- Plutarch

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snoopydawg's picture

@Blue Republic

Which means that they want to make sure it gets as many eyes on it as possible. That’s usually a sure fire giveaway that it’s not true.

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@snoopydawg

Listened to the Napolitano-Larry Johnson interview.

Agree that it's prudent that anything from the Guardian/WaPo/NYT... especially a 'big scoop' should be viewed w/skepticism. They do on occasion commit real journalism, though, and there are generally elements of truth here and there among their more obvious propaganda.

I somehow doubt that the kid interviewed was an actor. If Texeira is prosecuted, they'd likely have to produce him as a witness. Larry Johnson saying that no one on T's level should have a clearance for such high level documents is maybe beside the point, given how large, complex and complacent organizations tend to function in the real world.

Situation reminds me a bit of when, back in the mists of time, right out of college I had a job working at a computer service company that had a number of local banks as clients. Smaller banks didn't have their own computer systems at the time and outsourced to outfits like the one I worked for - IBM mainframes ran the data on tape overnight - updated account information was printed on microfiche and delivered to banks on a daily basis.

Which was my job. Graveyard shift, working alone or occasionally one other person. Ran the machine, created and sorted the fiche and went around in a company car dropping them off at appointed locations. Company also printed cashiers checks for their clients. Stacks of blank ones were 'secured' in stacks in a chicken wire (that could have been defeated by a decent set of nail clippers) cage in a stockroom. A device for imprinting them was off by itself in another area. No video surveillance then and far fewer people around on the night shift. Hmm...

Suffice it to say there were opportunities there for the creatively inclined, and I entertained more than a few thoughts on the matter, but didn't pursue it. Then, a young computer operator who also worked graveyard but, unlike myself, didn't have access to the account information, went for a dumber - but straightforward - approach and simply stole a bunch of blank cashiers checks and disappeared.

Last I heard he was going around the country passing bad checks, I imagine he was caught eventually. And the company brought in some security consultants. But until that happened, the possibility that low-level night shift dweebs like the absconding operator (or myself) were potential security threats had been almost completely overlooked.

Not sure that something of that nature mightn't have been the case with this leaker and his access...

Quote of the Day:

“It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.”

― Thomas Sowell

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