Breitbart har en glimrende gennemgang af forløbet for den 21-årig Jack Douglas Teixeira, der angiveligt har lækket tophemmelige dokumenter vedrørende krigen i Ukraine. Teixeira kommer fra en militærfamilie og er både troende katolik og patriot. Men han er også meget ung, for en it-medarbejder ved flyvevåbnet, til at have adgang til statshemmeligheder.

For et par år siden oprettede han en gruppe for gamere på nettet, opkaldt efter en bøssepornofilm, hvor snakken hurtigt gik blandt de unge mandlige medlemmer om løst og fast, ofte med grov og politisk ukorrekt humor. Det var her Teixeira begyndte at tale om sit arbejde og siden bakkede sine historier op med citater og derefter billeddokumentation, af hvad der kom forbi hans bord. Selvfølgelig blev noget af dette tophemmelige materiale delt i andre internetfora af gruppens medlemmer og inden længe vakte de New York Times og Washington Posts opmærksomhed.

This brought the alleged document leak to the attention of the media, generating a few big headline news stories and sparking an intense media manhunt for the original leaker. Open-source investigation website Bellingcat reported on Sunday that the New York Times (NYT) began digging into the story after five documents related to the Ukraine invasion were shared in Russian channels on the messaging platform Telegram.

Some of Teixeira’s docs were also posted on the notoriously rambunctious 4chan system, where one poster employed a classified document to win a petty argument with the message, “Source this dick, at least my piece of paper is more credible than hearsay.” 

Efter at have forfulgt forskellige spor “It then took the Washington Post about a week to hunt Teixeira down.”. Ja, meget er sket på den avis siden Jason Robards kørte biksen. Men hvorledes kunne han få fat i så interessante oplysninger?

Bellingcat noted that once Teixeira began sharing images of the classified material, they appeared to be photos of hard-copy documents[!], not scans or computer-generated images. Some of the photos appear to have been digitally manipulated when they were passed along by other users, especially the Russians on Telegram, but it was not clear if any of the original copies posted by Teixeira are manipulations or fakes.

“When asked how such a young service member could have had access to highly sensitive documents, the Pentagon spokesman, Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, said it was the nature of the military to trust its very young service members with high and sometimes grave levels of responsibility, including high levels of security clearance,” the AP reported on Thursday.

Virkeligt? Trumps ‘chief of staff at the Pentagon’ og ‘deputy director of National Intelligence’ Kash Patel mener ikke at Teixeira kan have været alene om denne lækage (vi forudsætter at dokumenterne er ægte). Selv ikke den største it-medarbejder i Pentagon har indsigt i det hemmelige materiale, der er adskilt fra dem, der sørger for at computer systemerne virker.

“This is crazy sensitive stuff,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of people who have a Top Secret/SCI clearance don’t have access to this information. And me, as the former deputy DNI and chief of staff of the DOD and publisher of the [Presidential Daily Brief], with the highest security classification, knows that, literally, there is not a lot of people in the U.S. that have access to this kind of intel. It’s done for a reason. So this doesn’t happen.”

“Whether he’s in IT or not, is irrelevant. The way it was produced, the way it was put out there — pages, printed photographs taken, published online — that is a methodical way of releasing classified information illegally,” he said.

“I think he’s definitely working with other people in DOD or the intel space to get this information out. This is an Assange-style operation. This kid — no offense to him — at 21 years old, cannot put out this five-months, unlawful disclosure of sensitive intelligence,” he said.

Patel said the tradecraft around the way the leaks are being disclosed also suggests a cover-up of how damaging the leaks are.

“I think the DOD and the [intelligence community] gave it to [the New York Times and the Washington Post],” he said. “They’re giving it to them to say we need, you know, we needed a cover-up. We need to make sure people think Ukraine’s working, we need to make it seem like it’s one rogue 21-year-old actor in some airbase in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.”

Patell mener at det er et forsøg på at dække over noget, og at Washington Post og New York Times, der før har løbet ærinder for efterretningsvæsenet, når det skulle underminere Trumps politik, har fået historien foræret, så offentligheden kan få den vinklet efter behov. Og medierne har da også haft en utrolig interesse i at beskrive Teixeira, som en afstumpet type,  accepteret at forsvarsminister Kirby taler om at det ikke var meningen af folket skulle vide, hvad deres penge blev brugt til og derpå bebrejdet staten dens sløsede sikkerhed. Glenn Greenwald beskriver dynamikken

On a virtually daily basis, one can find authorized leaks in The New York Times, The Washington Post, on CNN and NBC News: meaning stories dressed up as leaks from anonymous sources that are, in fact, nothing more than messaging assertions that the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and the Pentagon have instructed these subservient media corporations to disseminate. When that happens, the leaker is never found or punished: even when the leaks are designated as the most serious crimes under the U.S. criminal code, such as when The Washington Post‘s long-time CIA spokesman David Ignatius in early 2017 published the contents of the intercepted phone calls between Trump’s incomcing National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Most of Russiagate was constructed based on authorized leaks, a generous way of describing official propaganda from the U.S. Security State launedered in the American corporate press.

But when it comes to unauthorized leaks — which result in the disclsoure of secret evidence showing that the U.S. Security State lied, acted corruptly, or broke laws — that is when the full weight of establishment power comes crashing down on the head of the leaker. They are found and arrested. Their character is destroyed. And now — in a new and genuinely shocking esclation — it is the largest media corporations themselves, such as the Times and the Post that actually do the FBI’s work by hunting down the leader, exposing him, and ensuring his arrest. 

This playback is always used in such cases and is easily recognized. The point is to shift attention from the substance of the embarrassing and incriminating disclosures onto the personal traits of the person who exposed them, so as make the public forget about what they learned and come to see the leaker as so unlikeable that they want nothing to do with the disclosures themselves. Thus:

When Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers – showing the US Government was lying to the American public that it believed it could win the war in Vietnam – FBI and CIA agents broke into the office of his psychoanalyst to try to expose his psychosexual secrets to discredit him and distract from the substance of the disclosures.

Medierne behandler whistleblowere meget forskelligt. Men tilbage til Patel

He said the intelligence shows that the Pentagon and President Joe Biden have been lying to the American people about how well the Ukraine War was doing.

“I think the substance of the intel…it says basically, our effort in the Ukraine, our $100 billion effort, is failing,” he said.

“And I think that’s why this has ignited such a firestorm in DOD–because they’ve been exposed and no one’s had any answers. So I don’t know if Congress is going to act, but the Gang of Eight, the Armed Services Committee, and possibly even Intel Committees need to jump in on this,” he said.

“Why hasn’t the Armed Services Committee subpoenaed [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley] and [Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin] and demanded an answer under oath as to why they have been lying to the President of the United States, or permitted him to lie on the success and failure of our operations in Ukraine, who we have there, and how much money we’re spending there? Because they’ve been telling us for months and months and months that we’re on the verge of beating Putin,” he said.

“Why wasn’t this intelligence briefed to these members in Congress who are supposed to oversee our highest levels of intelligence? And if they were told it, it’s an even bigger problem because it clearly shows the U.S. position in the Ukraine failing,” he said.

Hvis russerne ser ud til at vinde, vil en fred være bedst for Ukraine. Men hvis Biden er under indflydelse af kræfter, der mener, at krigen er en god måde at udmatte Rusland på, vil krigen fortsætte med vestlig hjælp. Er denne læk, så et forsøg på at tvinge Bidens administration til at søge en fred, inden valgkampen går igang og fred bliver et af Trumps mærkesager? Eller det at nogen i systemet ikke mener at man skal løbe risikoen for en atomkrig for kævl i sigøjnerlandsbyen?