Posted on 04/14/2023 3:27:20 AM PDT by FarCenter
Folks inside the Beltway are crediting a Johns Hopkins University lecturer on foreign policy, Charlie Stevenson, with memorably identifying in his newsletter a new type of source for leaked documents: “the showoff who wants to demonstrate his inside knowledge.”
The category may not be brand new – it may explain the motivation behind Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified papers, currently the subject of a US Justice Department investigation.
But Stevenson’s quick description may fit Jack Teixeira, who the FBI arrested Thursday on suspicion he had revealed highly classified Pentagon documents on videogamers’ site Discord – a site that, the Washington Post reports, the 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard enlisted man ran for the entertainment of a group of worshipful teenagers.
That said, it’s also important to bear in mind – in the current epidemic of leaked secrets, many of them relating to the Ukraine war – that the older categories of leakers have not gone away.
Paraphrasing Stevenson, Slate’s Fred Kaplan writes: “In the past, most leaks on US foreign policy have come from three sources: administration officials launching trial balloons; losers of interagency fights, who want to rally fellow critics; and whistleblowers, seeking to expose terrible activities.”
The second of those older categories, in particular, seems most likely to apply to the as-yet-unidentified person who has fed independent investigative reporter Seymour Hersh the details of a purportedly US-led operation in which three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia and Germany were blown up last September.
The alleged purpose of the bombing was to deprive Vladimir Putin of the power to use Russian gas exports to blackmail Germany into abandoning its support for Ukraine. Let’s examine the Washington Post account and Hersh’s accounts for a comparison of these two cases.
“it may explain the motivation behind Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified papers”
Wow. Maybe the piece gets better after that turd of a phrase.
Oh just give me a damn break on the Trump comment in that article. What we’ve learned is all Presidents have formerly classified documents in their possession. The Deep State only cares because Trump is after them, so he’s the only one they’ve gone after.
U.S. intel agencies may change how they monitor social media, chatrooms after missing leaked U.S. documents for weeks
They really want that Oceanian/Orwellian “Restrict Act”
If you went across all of DoD...everyone with the TS-level clearances...probably 10-to-15 percent are gamers (including the intel, the comm, and operations crowd). Even if you admit that 10-percent of this gamer crowd are a problem....just how many folks will you require to monitor them around the clock (24 hours a day)?
There’s a behavioral issue going on and someone ought to sit down and assess gamer tendencies...whether they can be truly trusted with the burden of classifications.
Maybe if they weren’t so apparently paranoid and monitoring all the way to grannies talking about their recipes, they wouldn’t have such a burden from having to watch their own as they wouldn’t have to hire nearly as many.
Really? What evidence do you have that there is a behavior problem here?
And who will watch the watchers?
Thanks, now I don’t have to bother reading this BS.
Alexander Vindman, Leaker - Good. Daniel Ellsberg, Leaker - Good. Texiera, Leaker - Bad and Traitor. Could it be that Mr. Texiera is of Hispanic background and there is a bit of racism at work in the press??
I believe that’s a Portuguese name. He’s from Massachusetts, which has a large population of those of Portuguese heritage.
End of the millennials era, and going into the Gen-Z era...more consumed with video-gaming, less attention span, more use of SSRI-type drugs, Less able to handle responsibility, any type of work equals stress, over-dependence on technology to solve all problems, less skeptical nature allowing propaganda to be believed, prone to believe racism is everywhere, and suggesting that everything has to have an award attached to it.
I find it all too familiar that the government and media are more concerned with the leaker than the fact that what was leaked shows the government is lying about Ukraine.
I didn’t get past that part. Thank God it was early, I guess.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.