Several former military and intelligence professionals have contacted me and voiced similar doubts about the pat story being circulated regarding National Guard Airman Jack Texeira and the allegations that he removed TOP SECRET documents from a SCIF, photographed them and then posted them to a gamer chat. They all agree, something is not right. The media account does not make sense.
The biggest oddity are the two two separate documents from the CIA’s Operations Center. Neither are complete and both deal only with the Ukrainian/Russian war. To reiterate a point from my previous article, that CIA Operations Center produces two daily reports — one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It is not a “Community” product, i.e., it is not distributed to the other intelligence agencies. It is an internal CIA document (of course, it is available to the Director of National Intelligence).
Texeira’s alleged possession of two separate reports is doubly odd because he did not copy the full reports. The one dated 1 March 2023 only shows 3 of 8 pages. If he was taking the documents to impress the youngsters on the gamer chat, why did he not take the whole enchilada? And why did he only publish the portions of the intel report that dealt exclusively with Ukraine and Russia?
There has been some media reports that he also posted a State Department EXDIS cable. I have not seen it and cannot confirm that it exists. If it does, that would be another huge red flag. EXDIS is bureaucratic speak for EXCLUSIVE DISSEMINATION. It has a cousin, NODIS — i.e., NO DISTRIBUTION. The U.S. military does not have access to such cables.
There was a time when State EXDIS was available to U.S. military commands on a restricted basis. That was pre-Chelsea Manning. After Manning’s leaks in 2010, that access was cut off. I know this first hand because I was part of a team scripting military exercises for all U.S. regional commands (i.e., EUCOM, NORTHCOM, AFRICOM, PACOM, CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM) during the course of a year. I was the State Department Subject Matter Expert. That means I had the job of creating cable traffic from the Secretary of State or U.S. Embassies that the U.S. military might see during a terrorist crisis. Prior to the Manning/Wikileaks leak, I had full access to State Department messages, including EXDIS. After Manning, that access was terminated. Not just for me but for all the uniformed personnel I worked with. All held TS SCI clearances. There has been no change in that policy, which means there is no way that Jack Texeira would have had any access to copy and take a State Department EXDIS message.
Another curiosity with the story, apart from Jack’s youth and the claim that he held TS SCI clearances and had access to CIA internal reports, is the schedule of his Massachusetts Air National Guard unit. That outfit had not been called up and assigned a 24 x 7 mission. Instead, the Air National Guard unit meets one weekend a month. In other words, Jack had to work his magic over a two or three day period surrounded by peers and those in command of the unit. You do not just show up and pursue your own interests. There are drills and assigned work, which is supervised by Non-Commissioned Officers (i.e., Sergeants) and Officers.
The documents I have seen posted on Twitter and Telegram, were dated 28 February, 1 March and 2 March, i.e., Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. According to the MI-6 funded Bellingcat, those documents were published on 4 March, a Saturday. Let’s assume that Texeira’s National Guard unit assembled for drill on March 4. We’re asked to believe that Jack Texeira showed up for monthly Air National Guard duty on Saturday, quickly scoured the high side computer for sensitive documents, printed them off, smuggled them out of the SCIF, returned home sometime after 5 pm (normal end of duty day), photographed the documents and quickly uploaded them to the Discord server. If that is what happened, it smacks of urgency. Most young airmen, after a long day at work, want to go out and party rather than stay at home photographing documents.
I remain skeptical of the narrative and hope by raising these questions that some genuine journalists will explore the oddities and try to get to the ground truth.
