(CNN) Newly released memos revealing that Air Force leadership repeatedly warned Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira about inappropriate access to classified intelligence have baffled former and current personnel at defense of how he maintained his security clearance and was able to continue sharing classified information for months.
“This is negligence on the part of the chain of command,” said Jason Kikta, a former Marine Corps Officer and former member of the US Cyber Command. “They have a clear pattern of behavior,” he added “should be cut off in the second incident.”
Three Air Force memos documenting Teixeira’s misconduct were released to the public Wednesday as part of the prosecution’s argument in favor of keeping him detained pending trial.
The memos show that Teixeira, a 21-year-old junior enlisted airman working within the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, received direct orders from his superiors to stop taking intelligence notes, which they saw that he did not care. months later. And just months before he was arrested for allegedly sharing intelligence online, a third memo said a supervisor observed him accessing intelligence unrelated to his work.
Teixeira was arrested on April 14 and charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal of classified information and defense materials.
Teixeira has not yet entered a formal plea, and a detention hearing is scheduled for Friday. His defense attorneys argued that he did not expect the classified information he posted on Discord to spread further on the internet.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN on Thursday that the new information was “deeply troubling.”
“You can bet the Senate Intelligence Committee is going to go after it,” he said.
According to a current member of the US service in charge of classified intelligence, the memos read as if Teixeira’s leadership was building a case for disciplinary action against him. It’s unclear, however, where the memos went or who saw them.
‘Observed taking notes’
A memo from September 2022 states that Teixeira “was observed taking notes on classified intelligence information” at the sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, and placed “the note in his pocket.” He was ordered to “no longer take notes on any form of classified intelligence information,” the memo said.
A month later, his supervisors believed he was “potentially ignoring” a cease-and-desist order given to him in September, to stop deep infiltration of intelligence.
They learned of the second infraction when Teixeira began asking “very specific questions” after a weekly intelligence briefing, and asked if he had access to JWICS, a government network for top secret information. , to find classified intelligence.
The current US service member said that was usually an immediate red flag to everyone in the room, because not only was Teixeira told not to take classified intelligence notes, but his job as a cyber system journeyman will not need. for him to know that information.
“When one of our cyber troops shows up at a briefing and starts asking detailed questions, everyone in the room is going to be like … What in the world are you doing?'” the service member said. “This is out of the ordinary.”
Some insight, however, can be shed on an offer to Teixeira recorded in the second memo to train in a different job that would give him more access to intelligence.
The memo states that Teixeira “was offered the opportunity to explore cross training to 1N0 or 1N4 [Air Force Specialty Codes],” but declined, meaning Teixeira’s leadership offered to help him get a new job in Air Force intelligence. the intelligence airman told CNN.
Current and former service members said the offer from his leadership suggested they mistakenly believed his continued interest in intelligence was a sign he was not used to his current role and wanted to help him out. find a job that is a better fit.
But the current service member added, the fact that the offer for a different job came a month after they gave him a direct order not to take classified intelligence notes – an order they had reason to believe that he does not care – a significant concern.
The third time happened in January 2023, just a few months before Teixeira was arrested for allegedly posting information to Discord, a popular social media platform for gamers. The third memo said that on January 30, a senior non–The commissioned officer was walking on the operations floor when he saw Teixeira “on a JWICS machine” and “looking at content unrelated to his primary duties and related to the field of intelligence.”
The memo says only that the senior NCO informed their leader of his observation. There was no mention of further discussions with Teixeira about what he had observed.
An Air Force investigation is underway
What happened or didn’t happen after Teixeira’s actions and the concerns from his supervisors will be part of the Air Force’s own investigation into the unit, which is ongoing.
A current defense official said the memos, written by his enlisted supervisors, should have been seen by his commander. But the current service member said it is not unusual for senior non-commissioned officers to handle disciplinary matters for a junior enlisted airman like Teixeira.
Either way, the official said the commanders’ knowledge, or lack thereof, of the memos to Teixeira’s enlisted leadership may have been the reason the two unit leaders were suspended after his arrest.
A 2016 directive from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) — part of an effort to improve security after several high-profile intelligence leaks — required security clearance holders to report on activity from of colleagues, including misuse of government computers and unwillingness to follow security protocols.
All of Teixeira’s behavior described by prosecutors was reported under ODNI directive, according to Carrie Wibben, who helped write the policy when she was an ODNI officer.
“Every person in his chain of command probably has a security clearance, at least to a secret level,” Wibben, now an executive at the consulting firm Exiger, told CNN. “As clearance holders, they also violate security policy if they decide not to report incidents to the appropriate staff security officer assigned to their unit or higher-level command.”
Finally, the service member said no–The commissioned officers who wrote the memos about Teixeira’s behavior should go directly to the special security officer (SSO), a position within each SCIF that has the authority to suspend access. to a member of the classified information service.
A current service member and a former enlisted intelligence airman gave examples from their own experiences in SCIFs where a security officer took action for various concerns that could affect a service’s clearance. member, such as a DUI over the weekend, or mounting financial debt in one’s personal life.
“If I am a section leader of the group, which is the NCOs, and I know that one of my troops is doing this, I raise it with the proper authorities because I don’t want the money to stop me,” said the service member. “The moment I saw the first thing about taking notes on classified material, I should have gone to a security officer.”
A second former senior Defense Department official told CNN it was surprising that Teixeira’s leadership spoke to him twice about his actions but did not appear to restrict his access to intelligence.
Kikta, the former Marine Corps officer, echoed a similar sentiment.
“On the third [incident], we are in the land of negligence,” said Kikta, who is now an executive at the security company Automox. “At that point, Teixeira is not the problem. It’s you.”
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed reporting