Senators from both parties called for changes to the U.S. government’s system for classifying secret information after a closed-door briefing Wednesday on the biggest leak of closely held documents in a decade.
Calling the leaking allegedly done by a 21-year-old National Guard airman “stunning,” Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters, “I certainly wasn’t satisfied with any plans they have in place to prevent this from happening in the future.”
The Justice Department last week charged Jack Teixeira with illegally accessing and disseminating classified national defense information. The materials he is accused of taking include sensitive battlefield information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and revelations that the U.S. eavesdropped on allies such as South Korea.
“You probably need to classify less and then at the highest levels of classification potentially have a smaller universe of people” allowed access, Senator Mark Warner, the Intelligence panel’s Democratic chairman, said outside the briefing given by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Defense Department and State Department officials. He said “we are working on bipartisan legislation.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also said lawmakers should consider legislation on the classification system, saying “I think there have to be some improvements.” He declined to elaborate.
But there was also some partisan finger-pointing. Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said that access to classified information should be curbed and that the Biden administration should be held accountable.
The administration faces a delicate balancing act as it seeks to explain how a young, relatively junior airman had access to such sensitive information and was able to disseminate it online for months without detection. In the years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack of the World Trade Center in New York, the U.S. intelligence community sought to encourage the sharing of information to prevent repeat episodes.
Now, the concern is that sensitive information is too broadly accessible, and the challenge is to maintain collaboration across intelligence agencies without allowing vulnerabilities to emerge. The Pentagon has said it already has begun culling the roster of those entitled to classified reports.
“We need to make sure this never happens again, and after all the problems we’ve had with breaches,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. He said that the “idea of ‘need to know’ needs to be reevaluated.” But he said “there is no congressional path that can solve this. There’s no law.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters earlier Wednesday that it’s not unusual for someone Teixeira’s age to have access to sensitive information. “The vast majority of our military is young so it’s not exceptional that young people are doing important things in our military,” he said, adding that the alleged leaker had top-secret clearance and worked as a computer specialist in an intelligence unit.
“As that investigation unfolds, we’re all going to learn a lot about exactly what happened and how it happened,” Austin said at a joint news conference with Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson.
The Air Force has also begun its own investigation into the 102nd Intelligence Wing in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the unit Teixeira was assigned to, and in the meantime has suspended it from its intelligence duties, Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek said in a statement.
“I’ve tasked our inspector general to go look at the unit and anything associated with this leak that could have gone wrong from the point of view of implementing our policies” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee on Tuesday.
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(With assistance from Natalia Drozdiak.)
