Photo: Joint Base Cape Cod. (2023, April 15). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Base_Cape_Cod
The Massachusetts Air National Guard's 102nd Intelligence Wing has been temporarily stripped of its intelligence mission amid an investigation into classified documents that were posted online.
"The mission has been temporarily reassigned to other organizations within the Air Force," the Air Force said in a statement.
Last week, 21-year-old Jack Teixeira was charged with possessing classified documents pertaining to national security and possessing national defense materials. Teixeira was granted top-secret security clearance in his role as an information technology specialist with the 102nd Intelligence Wing.
He allegedly used that clearance to steal documents and post them on a private Discord server. Officials said that he started out transcribing the documents by hand and posting the text online. After a few weeks, he was concerned he would get caught, so he started bringing the classified documents back to his house, where he took photographs, which he shared online.
After some of the documents were reposted on a public server, a massive investigation was launched to locate the person who leaked them.
After Teixeira was identified as a suspect, the Air Force Inspector General was tasked with investigating the security practices within the 102nd Intelligence Wing.
"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 to see what things allowed this to happen," Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said during a Senate subcommittee hearing on defense appropriations, according to CNN.