In the wake of the most recent classified leak case—this time allegedly involving a 21-year-old Air National Guard IT specialist, not a president—lawmakers on Capitol Hill are redoubling efforts to classify less information. But as lawmakers await more details on how cyber transport systems specialist Jack Teixeira was allegedly able to disseminate highly sensitive military documents on the chat app Discord, the growing consensus among lawmakers is that America’s classification protocols need to be overhauled.
“It seems to me like we’re trying to protect so much that the job becomes impossible, and then inevitably, things that really, really matter slip through the cracks,” US representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters upon leaving a classified briefing on the leak late last month. “That’s the lesson for me, is if you try to do absolutely everything, then you can’t do the things that you really want to do.”
Over-classification is one bookend, as Senate Intelligence chair Mark Warner puts it, which was on display as classified documents were found in the possession of President Joe Biden, former president Donald Trump, and former vice president Mike Pence. But this latest case reveals problems on the other end of the spectrum: Too many people have security clearances.
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“Now we, in a sense, have potentially the worst of both worlds, where we have an over-classification problem and, at the same time, in the public domain it’s been reported that we have more than 4 million people with clearances,” Warner says. “So how do you square those?”
Lawmakers in both parties are now looking to technology for help as they negotiate how to best protect American secrets, while—if proponents get their way—also increasing transparency.
“This Is a Serious Situation”
The FBI arrested Teixeira on April 13 after a series of US military documents, some labeled “Top Secret,” surfaced online. Teixeira allegedly shared the documents with members of a Discord server as early as last December. Members of the Discord group reportedly claim that hundreds of documents, many of which pertain to Russia’s war against Ukraine, were shared with the group.
On Wednesday, two of Teixeira’s commanders were suspended, “pending further investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” according to the US Air Force. In its 42-page filing, released ahead of Teixeira facing Magistrate Judge David Hennessy of the US District Court in Massachusetts on Thursday, the Department of Justice accuses the IT specialist of trying to destroy evidence and looking up mass shootings on his federal government computer. The Justice Department also claims Teixeira’s former access to classified information “far exceeds what has been publicly disclosed.”
On Thursday, DOJ lawyers also said Teixeira owns a large number of firearms and that they found social media posts where he says he wants to kill a “ton of people.” Defense lawyers argued that Teixeira never meant for the classified material to be widely—let alone internationally—disseminated. The magistrate was skeptical.
Meanwhile, at the Capitol, when they’re not fuming, lawmakers are befuddled.
“This is a serious situation. You just can’t let someone like this have access to this kind of classified information, and, if you do, you ought to at least use technology to block that person from being able to share it,” says Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican. “I mean, most of us can put controls on the internet to stop our kids from looking at pornography, for God’s sake. How hard is that?”
Pentagon officials are promising members of Congress another briefing in early June. In the meantime, lawmakers fear current protocols amount to a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole—a game the intelligence community continues to lose despite a series of high-profile leaks that led to changes in the protocols governing classified material.
In 2010, Army Private First-Class Chelsea Manning was arrested for sharing US intelligence with WikiLeaks. Then in 2013, NSA contractor Edward Snowden shared thousands of classified documents with reporters from The Guardian and The Washington Post. Lawmakers say they don’t think those leaks could happen today, but they’re still pressing the Pentagon for answers.
“I believe—and I believe this, I don’t have complete proof—that some of the places that in the past where mistakes were made, may have had stricter protocols than the whole balance of the [Department of Defense],” Warner says.
Starting in 2018, the federal government replaced its old clearance protocol—where clearances were updated every five to 10 years—with a continuous vetting system for employees and contractors with security clearances that’s supposed to be fully implemented by October 1, 2023.
“One of the things that we have moved into in this internet-driven age is a process called continuous vetting, so even once you get a top-secret security clearance, you’re supposed to be vetted on an ongoing basis,” Warner says. “That raises a whole host of questions about posting in public or otherwise on the internet that, frankly, still need to be sorted out.” While the Discord leaks investigation continues, Warner says a top priority for lawmakers is making sure “continuous vetting in an internet-driven age actually can spot anomalies.”
Too Many Secrets
Whether an updated system will involve artificial intelligence tools remains unknown, but some senators are pushing the intelligence community to embrace new technologies to help streamline and safeguard government secrets.
“They’re going to need to come up with things like artificial intelligence and other things to be able to identify sensitive digital content so we can keep the truly important stuff secret but then make everything else available to the public,” says Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican.
Since classified documents from past administrations were found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Florida, a Biden office and home in Delaware, and Pence’s Indiana home, lawmakers have been focusing on overclassification. Cornyn says he’s been a part of talks with Republican senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Warner on how to streamline classification protocols.
“I think there’s just a lot of work that needs to be done and can be done, to provide more political accountability and, at the same time, raise standards for protecting truly sensitive national security information,” Cornyn says. “We need to have a better process for declassified information for historical purposes and lessons learned, so we’re going to hopefully roll out a bill here pretty soon.”
Lawmakers remain perplexed over how all these classified documents keep getting out, in part because, at the Capitol, sensitive documents are kept under lock, armed guard, and key. Beyond that, many fear the culture around classified documents is too lax throughout the executive branch.
From 2009 to 2013, Don Beyer served as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, where he took extraordinary measures to protect classified documents. “I made a rule that, mostly, I would actually go to our base office and have them talk to me about it. Or if they came to my office with it, you stand right there while I read it. I never want it on my desk,” Beyer says of classified material. “There’s never a phone in that office. Every phone was left outside. In every office in our building, you had to leave your cell phone outside.”
Now that he’s a Democratic representative from Virginia, Beyer is also wondering what role overclassification is playing in all these high-stakes blunders. “When you classify so much stuff, more people have the clearances in order to be able to do their job,” Beyer says. “So if you could rationalize it, maybe you can shrink the number of people who need a clearance.”
The ‘Need-to-Share’ Era
Even as US officials and lawmakers are focused on keeping American secrets, well, secret, others are warning against overreacting. Information flies these days.
“It’s a problem. We’ve got to figure out a better system, obviously, going forward. But you’ve got to balance that against the need for people to have access to information as well,” says Representative Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the new House select committee on China. “I think it’s just an increasing trend in the 21st century, which is, we’re going to have to move from this kind of need-to-know culture to a need-to-share in the government and with our allies.”
Disinformation, as this most recent leak of classified documents showcases, flies too. Versions of the sensitive files Teixeira allegedly shared with his buddies on Discord were later posted on pro-Russian Telegram channels, but they’d been crudely altered to make Russia look better and Ukraine look worse.
“Some of them have been doctored. Some adjusted, I’m sure, by the defendant himself, so assessing what the potential damage is and how to prevent that from occurring will be an ongoing process,” says Senator Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican.
Technological fixes can only go so far. Plus, for the time being, there’s always a human at the other end—and there’s no AI fix for human nature, at least not yet.
“I think the fundamental dilemma remains, which is that, ultimately, when you give someone a top-secret clearance, you’re placing an enormous amount of trust in that person. It’s hard to design software—or a policy—to fix the problem of human beings doing bad things,” Gallagher says. “So there’s some level of risk just built into the system that I think it’s impossible to be reduced to zero. It’s not obvious to me right yet what the right fix is. We’re trying to figure that out.”
