The fallout continues from Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira allegedly posting military secrets online, leading to 15 airmen being disciplined, including commanders who “were not vigilant in inspecting the conduct of all persons who were placed under their command.”
FULL TEXT: Air Force IG report
That’s according to the results of an Air Force Inspector General investigation that was sparked by the federal arrest of Teixeira, who’s accused of leaking classified documents. Teixeira was an information technology specialist at the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod.
The Air Force IG report blamed Teixeira’s alleged actions as the primary cause of the top secret leak, but there were “also a number of contributing factors, both direct and indirect, that enabled the unauthorized disclosures to occur and continue over an extended period of time,” the investigators found.
Beginning in September, Air National Guard leaders launched disciplinary and other administrative actions against 15 individuals for dereliction in the performance of duties.
The actions ranged from relieving personnel from their positions, including command positions, to non-judicial punishment.
“The preponderance of the evidence shows three individuals in A1C Teixeira’s supervisory chain had information about as many as four separate instances of security incidents and potential insider threat indicators they were required to report,” the investigators wrote.
“Had any of these three members come forward and properly disclosed the information they held at the time of the incidents, the length and depth of the unauthorized disclosures may have been reduced by several months,” they added.
Col. Sean Riley, 102 IW commander, was relieved of command for cause and Col. Enrique Dovalo, 102d Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group commander, received administrative action for concerns with unit culture and compliance with policies and standards.
“The preponderance of the evidence also shows that 102 IW and 102 ISRG commanders were not vigilant in inspecting the conduct of all persons who were placed under their command,” the report reads.
The 102nd Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group was taken off mission when Teixeira was discovered as the alleged source of the unauthorized disclosures. The group’s mission remains reassigned to other organizations within the Air Force.
Teixeira was arrested in April at the North Dighton home of one of his parents and was charged with two counts: unauthorized removal and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials. He was ordered held, where he remains despite the defense’s persistent appeals to the order.
He was then indicted in June on six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defense. He pleaded not guilty to the charges in federal court in Worcester.
Teixeira enlisted in the Air National Guard in 2019 and began around January sharing military secrets with other Discord users, authorities said — first by typing out classified documents and then sharing photographs of files that bore SECRET and TOP SECRET markings.
Teixeira worked as a cyber transport systems specialist, essentially an information technology specialist responsible for military communications networks. As such, Teixeira was part of a three-person crew that had unsupervised access at night to an open storage Top Secret-Secret Compartmentalized facility to perform maintenance inspections.
Herald wire services were used in this report.