WASHINGTON (AP) — The Air Nationwide Guard intelligence unit concerned within the large categorised paperwork leak by an airman final yr has been recertified and can return to its mission on Saturday after months of investigations, enhancements and inspections, the Air Pressure stated.
The 102nd Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group was suspended in mid-April 2023 after Massachusetts Air Nationwide Guard member Jack Teixeira was arrested over leaking extremely categorised navy paperwork concerning the conflict in Ukraine and different nationwide safety secrets and techniques.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, who heads Air Fight Command, authorized the recertification of the unit after an inspection crew did a last evaluation, Air Pressure spokeswoman Ann Stefanek stated Friday. She stated Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin and Air Pressure Secretary Frank Kendall concurred with the choice.
A crew from the 480th Intelligence Wing at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, spent two weeks watching the unit do its mission as the ultimate step within the evaluation course of.
In an announcement Friday, the Massachusetts Nationwide Guard stated the airmen look ahead to returning to their mission.
“With the information gained from this difficult expertise, we welcomed the chance to assist establish issues with Air Pressure processes that would jeopardize the protected dealing with of categorised info in each the lively responsibility and reserve parts,” the Guard stated, including that the Wing applied adjustments to make sure any unauthorized disclosure of categorised info doesn’t occur once more.
The ISR group is a part of the 102nd Intelligence Wing, primarily based at Otis Air Nationwide Guard Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. As a part of the recertification course of, the Wing put in a brand new organizational construction to enhance oversight of the group’s operations, made quite a lot of required adjustments in different safety procedures and stuck different issues that have been recognized in an investigation by the Air Pressure inspector common, Stefanek stated.
The leaks raised questions on how a single airman might take away paperwork undetected, why there have been no safety procedures in place to forestall it and the way the paperwork lingered on-line for months with out anybody realizing it. There are strict guidelines for the dealing with of prime secret info throughout the navy.
The inspector common’s investigation, launched final December, discovered a variety of safety failures and concluded that a number of officers deliberately didn’t take motion on Teixeira’s suspicious conduct. The Air Pressure disciplined 15 personnel in reference to the issues, starting from eradicating folks from command posts to different non-judicial actions, equivalent to placing letters in service members’ information.
Based on the evaluation, personnel had entry to categorised paperwork with out supervision and there have been situations when Teixeira was caught violating safety insurance policies however those that caught him took no motion.
Teixeira labored as a cyber transport programs specialist, primarily an info know-how specialist accountable for navy communications networks. He was a part of a three-person crew that had unsupervised entry at evening to an open storage facility to carry out upkeep inspections.
He pleaded responsible on March 4 to 6 counts of willful retention and transmission of nationwide protection info beneath the Espionage Act. The 22-year-old acknowledged illegally accumulating among the nation’s most delicate secrets and techniques and sharing them with different customers on Discord, a social media platform fashionable with folks taking part in on-line video games.
The plea deal requires him to serve no less than 11 years in jail, and his sentencing is scheduled for September in Boston.
