Tangle - Jack Teixeira gets arrested for intel leaks.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Starting point is 00:00:19 Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. My name is Isaac Saul. I'm your host, and I hope you guys had a great weekend. Today, we are going to be jumping in with the arrest of the leaker behind the trove of intelligence documents that were posted on Discord and eventually spread to a bunch of other social media channels.

Starting point is 00:01:13 We're going to be talking about who he is and what happened, what we learned, and then sharing some commentary from both sides about the leak. Before we do, though, as always, we'll jump in with some quick hits. First up, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the lower court orders that impose limits on how the abortion pill Mifepristone could be distributed. Number two, at least 74 people have died as a paramilitary group in Sudan clashes with the military. Number three, the parents of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is being detained in Russia, spoke publicly for the first time. Number four, the start of the Dominion v. Fox News lawsuit in

Starting point is 00:01:56 Delaware was unexpectedly delayed on Monday, just hours before the trial was set to begin. Number five, Montana lawmakers voted to ban downloads of TikTok in the state on Friday, the first such ban in the United States. Today, the Justice Department arrested Jack Douglas Teixeira in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information. After an exhaustive yet fast investigation, the FBI arrested a Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of leaking hundreds of government secrets today. The classified documents found online include sensitive intelligence reports about Russia's war with Ukraine and U.S. spying on allies. Charged with two counts under the Espionage Act and facing 15 years if convicted. 21-year-old Jack Teixeira had top secret clearance

Starting point is 00:03:03 as an I.T IT specialist with the Massachusetts Air National Guard. On Thursday, the 21-year-old U.S. Air National Guardsman was arrested by the FBI for leaking classified military documents in what is believed to be the most serious security breach since the publication of more than 700,000 documents by WikiLeaks in 2010. Federal agents arrested Tashara at his home in Massachusetts. The arrest came just a week after the leaks became widely circulated online, but months after Tashara allegedly first shared them with members of an online chat group he was a member of. Among other things, the documents detailed U.S. intelligence spying on allies and an unfiltered

Starting point is 00:03:45 view of Ukraine's military capabilities. Teixeira was an airman first class at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts and worked as an IT specialist. Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was being charged with the unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information. He could face up to 15 years in prison, according to some reports, though leakers often plead down their sentence. We covered the initial leaks in a past edition of the podcast, which you can listen to from last week. The case involving Teixeira is unique among intelligence leaks, namely because he does not appear to have been acting as a whistleblower or a foreign agent. Instead, several reports from the Washington Post, Bellingcat, and the New York Times traced the initial leaks of the documents to a group chat

Starting point is 00:04:29 on Discord. Teixeira was admired by the group's younger members and went by the nickname OG in the group, which discussed guns, military gear, and offensive jokes online. Members of the group attributed Teixeira's motivation for the leaks as an effort to impress or educate his online friends. Some of the documents that were shared on the Discord chat or have since circulated online were doctored, though U.S. officials believe the vast majority of the material was genuine and news outlets have been verifying them ever since. Fallout from the leaks is still ongoing. Allies in countries like South Korea have expressed a mix of outrage and denial, while U.S. military leaders fear the leaks could expose sources and methods, potentially putting people in danger. The leaks drew widespread criticism from Congress, though some members, like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, praised Teixeira because he,

Starting point is 00:05:18 quote, told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine. Including in the documents were reports that there were as many as 14 special U.S. forces on the ground in Ukraine. Including in the documents were reports that there were as many as 14 special U.S. forces on the ground in Ukraine. Today, we're going to take a look at some reactions from the right is saying. The right is divided, with some criticizing the Biden administration for allowing this to happen and others criticizing Teixeira's defenders. Some frame Teixeira as a whistleblower and argue that the corporate media is engaging in character assassination. Others say he is a criminal leaker and should be prosecuted,

Starting point is 00:06:11 not praised. In Red State, the blogger Streif said Tashara was no hero and no martyr. I thought everyone could agree that stealing documents from inside a sensitive compartmented information facility or SCIF, posting them online and making them available to people who were A, not cleared to see them, B, not in the military, and C, not necessarily U.S. citizens, was wrong. But, boy, was I stupid, they said. Marjorie Taylor Greene has a much firmer grip on what is happening in macro terms than the GOP establishment, but endorsing the theft of documents because they make a point you agree with is dumb. Teixeira didn't tell any truth about U.S. troops on the ground,

Starting point is 00:06:50 Streif said. What Teixeira did was violate his enlistment oath. It is really that simple. His way of leaking the documents shows there was no anti-deep state or even political motivation. The sad thing is that a young man has squandered a good chunk of his life for no greater reason than to show off to his friends. In PJ Media, Ben Barty criticized the rules around classification and the corporate media's relationship with the deep state. The news of Teixeira's alleged racism and domestic terrorism due to offhand remarks on a Discord server and an affinity for guns have spread far and wide in recent days, Barty said. CNN and the rest of corporate media are putting their vast resources to work for a character assassination. All this when seemingly every document the U.S. gets its hands on is

Starting point is 00:07:36 classified, and very little of it justifiably so. The standard for classification should be whether releasing the information in question will put an American asset in immediate danger, akin to the limitation on free speech but in the Constitution. Things like imminent troop movements on a battlefield would qualify, but it's worth noting that the deep state has well-established whisper networks and leaks classified intel to the corporate media 24-7-365. intel to the corporate media 24-7-365. That is how the New York Times got the whistleblower's name before the FBI released it, and how a news helicopter was conveniently on scene to capture the arrest. The New York Post editorial board said defenders of Teixeira should be ashamed. One sure way to become a political hero in this country, it seems, is to betray it by revealing official secrets, the board said. Just look at the response, left and right, to the theft and publication of highly classified documents by Teixeira. Representative Green defended him, and lefty gadfly Glenn Greenwald

Starting point is 00:08:35 praised Teixeira by saying on TV that he did the job of what journalists claim to do. In reality, Teixeira simply sought to impress boys in an online forum. Most reasonable people would agree that spilling state secrets simply to show off, not to uncover human rights abuses or other crimes, is not just spectacularly dumb, but also treasonous. Worse, the debate about his heroism distracts from more pressing questions like why would a gamer barely in his 20s serving in tech support have such easy and plentiful access to high-level documents? Alright, that is it for the rightist saying, which brings us to what the left is saying.

Starting point is 00:09:22 The left has also criticized the fact that Teixeira had such a high clearance. Some warn about the rise of young white men who are being radicalized. Others focus on the importance of smaller group chats that are now driving major events like January 6th and these leaks. In Slate, Fred Kaplan said he didn't fit the usual profile of a leaker and questioned how this could have happened. In the past, most leaks on U.S. foreign policy have come from three sources. Administration officials launching trial balloons, losers of interagency fights who want to rally fellow citizens, and whistleblowers seeking to expose terrible activities, Kaplan said. But this is about a show-off who wants to demonstrate

Starting point is 00:10:01 his inside knowledge. The most obvious question is how could this have happened? It has long been noted that too many people have security clearances, but Teixeira seems more than a little unstable. Some of his techniques, like taking paper documents back to his home, photographing them with his phone, then emailing the files to his pals, should have been fairly easy to block. More precisely, why does an intelligence officer at the Massachusetts Air National Guard need to know any of the information said to be contained in these leaks? In Ceylon, Lucian K. Truscott IV warned about the radicalization of white youth. Teixeira named his group on Discord Thug Shaker Central apparently as a racist joke playing on

Starting point is 00:10:42 a hip-hop phrase that refers to young Black men performing a rump shaker dance to popular rap songs, Truscott IV said. Reports about posts on the chat group say that members shared racist and anti-Semitic jokes and memes, he added. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.

Starting point is 00:11:21 DeShera reportedly wanted to teach his friends about actual war, but that usually does not include stealing top-secret Pentagon intelligence documents. Now, the right-wing media and political sphere is starting to turn him into a conservative-caused celeb, with Tucker Carlson claiming his arrest was part of some kind of vast conspiracy to cover up the secret involvement of American ground forces in Ukraine. There are other radical cells out there. They're using violent video games and racist anti-Semitic propaganda as recruiting tools to lure young white people into the Republican Party. In The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel said, of course, this is how the intelligence leak happened. While leaks are a feature of the 21st century, this is little

Starting point is 00:12:05 in common with WikiLeaks or the Snowden NSA revelations. Instead, the leak does not seem motivated by righteous or even misguided whistleblowing, but an extremely online man, barely old enough to drink, who is trying to impress his teenage friends in a racially named group chat, he said. Unlike traditional social media or even forums and message groups, group chats are nearly impossible to monitor. Law enforcement and journalists learn this while trying to track extremist groups such as QAnon or right-wing militias. The problem of social media at scale and trying to moderate it are well documented. But as our digital social lives start to splinter off from feeds and large audiences and into siloed areas, a different kind of unpredictability and chaos awaits.

Starting point is 00:12:49 The age of the group chat appears to be at least as unpredictable, but trades a public form of volatility for a more siloed, incalculable version. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So I would not describe my reaction to Teixeira's story as shocked, but the details of this leak are not at all what I expected. Throughout my career as a journalist, I've written about the risks and potential harms of deplatforming people. One such risk is that it can push people into tiny little corners of safe internet spaces where the groups like the one Teixeira was a part of are increasingly common and increasingly sideload. I think it has become apparent in the last few years that their existence is becoming more and more significant. Last week, I wrote that I love leaks because they often give us an unfiltered look at events. Quite a few people were upset about that stance, which I understand. It is possible that leaks can

Starting point is 00:13:54 have a broadly negative impact. They can put people in danger, change the course of a war, or set off a public panic. When I say that I love leaks, I don't mean to imply that every leaker is noble or every leak is good. Simply put, my job is trafficking in information, reliable information in particular. While intelligence assessments can be squishy or written with low confidence, few things offer us such unvarnished and high-level information as access to classified documents. Of course, motivation matters, and in that light, I agree with all of Deshera's critics. I have no idea what to make of the accusations of racism or anti-Semitism given that I haven't actually seen the purported comments, which every news outlet

Starting point is 00:14:36 continues to report on while none actually quote anything he really said. Otherwise, the extensive reporting on him still paints the picture of someone more interested in social status than any noble political goals. As many have pointed out, he was not trying to uncover human rights abuses or even vast government conspiracies. He did not intend to inform the public. He seemed as if he was just trying to impress his friends with a dose of quote-unquote reality about what was really going on in Ukraine. None of this was ever supposed to go beyond this chat. In fact, Teixeira tried hard to keep the leaks confined to the online chat group he ostensibly ran. But I also think the pundits are a little too quick to dismiss his political motivations here. The Washington Post simultaneously cited a member of the chat who said Teixeira wasn't hostile to the U.S. government, but a few sentences

Starting point is 00:15:25 later noted that he had a very dark view of the government and spoke of law enforcement and the intel community, quote, as a sinister force that sought to suppress citizens and keep them in the dark, end quote. That is not an apolitical position. But again, I can separate any misgivings about him and his motivations from a sense of interest in the leaks and gratitude for the information found in them. As is typical for me, I'm still glad they happened. They were a reminder of our own intelligence agency's vast spying apparatus across the globe and a reality check on the difficulties facing the Ukrainian military that are good context for observers and pundits who write about the war as I do. Given my hope for Putin's failure

Starting point is 00:16:05 in taking over Ukraine, I am, of course, worried about how the leaks may benefit Russia's military, yet I can hold that view simultaneously with the others. Now comes the difficult part. Tashar will be charged and could face many years in prison, and as a society, we have to decide what to do with him. He is not a particularly sophisticated leaker, not a foreign agent, not some kind of evil mastermind. The government will have to balance the need for deterrence, which calls for a harsh penalty, with the reasonableness of the circumstances, these reek of the actions of an ignorant, possibly stupid young man. My own view is that Teixeira needs to face a serious penalty, and a prison term is probably

Starting point is 00:16:45 appropriate, but that term should leave plenty of space for him to learn from his mistakes and reenter society as a better man, rather than face a life of ruin. Alright, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Ashley in Iowa. She said, I have a question about the February UAPs. Why do you think we haven't heard a follow-up since the retrieval of the objects? So Ashley, that's a great question. First of all, in previous Tangle Editions, we shared views questioning whether the Chinese spy balloon was actually a spy balloon at all. I expressed certainty about it and then some skepticism. More recent revelations make me think it probably was what the Biden administration said.

Starting point is 00:17:30 In fact, in Teixeira's leaks, there were documents about the balloon and three other spy balloons that indicate that is what our government thought it was. We also got an NBC News story on the balloon transmitting information and photos of the actual balloon from the Air Force. My thought about the other objects we shot down after the Chinese spy balloon is that if they were also real threats, I think we would have heard about it. When the government has an opportunity to tell us that we are under threat from foreign nations, they almost always do. Usually, this is to boost military funding, promote or spur national unity, and to ensure a commitment to the U.S. forces abroad. Often, these threats are real, but if they exist, they rarely go unused. Given that, I suspect the other objects we shot down were innocuous. Some have suggested one of

Starting point is 00:18:16 the objects was an amateur hobbyist's $12 balloon. There is some evidence for that. The amateur group said they lost their balloon in Alaska the same day the shooting happened, but the group has never linked the two events. As far as I know, nobody has claimed ownership for the third object that got shot down that week over Lake Huron, nor has one been found or recovered by the U.S. military. So, for now, we simply don't know, which to me means the truth may be that it's embarrassing for the Biden administration or our intelligence services simply don't yet know what the objects were. Quick reminder, if you have a question you want answered in the podcast, you can email me anytime, isaac at readtangle.com.

Starting point is 00:19:01 All right, next up is our under the radar section. Operators behind Russia's efforts to manipulate social media conversation around American politics boasted that they are only detected about 1% of the time, according to the intelligence documents leaked on Discord. The claim, which was first reported by the Washington Post, caused alarm from former government officials and experts inside and outside the major U.S. social media companies. The trove of documents allegedly leaked by Teixeira contained an assessment from military leaders that Russia is successfully boosting propaganda on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Telegram. However, some intel officials warn that the source of the number, a Russian agency, had strong incentives to exaggerate their own success at avoiding detection. The Washington Post has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode

Starting point is 00:19:48 description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The estimated number of documents the U.S. government classifies each year is about 50 million. The percentage of those documents that warrant classification, according to Una Hathaway, a former Pentagon special counsel, is 5 to 10 percent. The percentage of likely U.S. voters who think Edward Snowden is a hero for leaking information about the NSA is 14 percent. That's according to a 2018 Rasmussen poll. The percentage of likely U.S. voters who view Snowden as a traitor was 29 percent. The percentage of likely U.S. voters who view Snowden as a traitor was 29%. The percentage of likely U.S. voters who said Snowden was somewhere in between a traitor and

Starting point is 00:20:32 a hero was 49%. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Researchers from Moderna said they believe vaccines for cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune disease are showing tremendous promise and could be ready as soon as 2030. The vaccines, which use the same mRNA technology employed for some COVID-19 vaccines, have been in development for years to treat better-known and less novel diseases. In theory, an mRNA vaccine could alert the patient's immune system to cancer that is growing in their body so it can attack and destroy it without destroying healthy cells. Researchers say some 15 years worth of progress has been made in the last 12 to 18 months thanks to increased attention, investment, research, and use of mRNA technology. While COVID-19 vaccines were often controversial,

Starting point is 00:21:21 this could be one unintended positive consequence of the pandemic. The Guardian has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and consider becoming a member. You can also give this podcast a five-star rating or just alert your friends to our work by sharing the podcast with them. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul,

Starting point is 00:21:52 and edited by John Long. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.

Starting point is 00:22:45 We'll see you next time. a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.

Tangle - Jack Teixeira gets arrested for intel leaks.

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