Pentagon Orders Review of Classified Documents Leak

Sparked by the arrest of the accused leaker, Pentagon officials are looking into how highly classified and closely guarded intelligence was accessed, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he ordered officials to review procedures “to inform our efforts to prevent this kind of incident from happening again.”

“As Secretary of Defense, I will also not hesitate to take any additional measures necessary to safeguard our nation’s secrets,” Austin said

His comments came as Pentagon officials emphasized that there are strict guidelines designed to safeguard classified documents.

The leak was “a deliberate criminal act, a violation of those guidelines,” Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday.

“We continue to review those distribution lists, update them, make sure there’s a need to know,” he said. “And so all indications are, again, this was a criminal act, a willful violation of those, and again, another reason why we’re continuing to investigate and support [the Justice Department’s] investigation.”

The FBI on Thursday arrested Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the U.S. Air National Guard, for online leaks of classified documents that embarrassed Washington with allies around the world, Reuters reported.

Federal agents in an armored car and military gear swooped in on Teixeira, dressed in gym shorts, a T-shirt, and trainers, at his home in Dighton, Massachusetts, a mostly wooded town of 8,000 about 50 miles south of Boston.

Teixeira is an airman first class in an intelligence unit of the Massachusetts Air National Guard and is a junior Air Force communications specialist, the Journal said, citing his service record.

Teixeira holds the job title of cyber transport systems journeyman. And there’s no obvious reason why he would have access to the types of documents that were leaked, the Journal noted.

The newspaper raised the possibility the accused leaker might not have been authorized to access the documents, but could have found a way around the safeguards.