21 year old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman,
Jack Jara was arrested Thursday after dozens of secret briefing slides for hundreds of
top officials ended up on a chat app for gamers battle plans and information
related to the war in Ukraine.
Revealing us spying on adversaries including Russia and China but also on us allies and
partners.
The Pentagon calls it a very serious risk to national security.
The investigation and arrest have raised questions about how the government handles state
secrets.
This is about how we protect and safeguard classified information and as I highlighted,
we do have strict protocols in place.
So let's look at those protocols,
some of which led investigators to Tara and how classified documents are
supposed to be handled.
There are three levels of classification,
confidential secret and top secret.
Each indicates how damaging the information would be to national security if it were leaked
from damaging to exceptionally grave.
This classification is printed on the top of documents in addition to any extra
designation like SI which stands for special intelligence
information gained from monitoring foreign communications.
Some of the printed documents allegedly photographed and posted by Tahira appear
marked with SI and other sensitive classifications.
Classified documents especially the si ones can usually only be
accessed in sensitive compartmented information facilities or skiffs
by people who were granted that level of clearance skis are secure
rooms.
Think the White House situation room where information can be accessed and
discussed securely.
There's no cell phones,
there's no even smart devices such as fitbits or Apple watches allowed nothing
technical that can allow for the extraction of the information.
They can be rooms like these at the Capitol where senators and house members must go to view
FBI investigations and other classified reports.
They can be fashioned in hotel rooms or out in fields or they can make up larger
areas inside an entire building.
My office in the last three years,
I was uh chief of Intelligence for the FBI was a skiff but they all
follow the same protocols and because the sensitive information can only
be accessed in a skiff,
it can also only be printed in a skiff.
Intelligence.
Experts say there's a technical footprint that begins here.
Government printers keep detailed logs of what is printed and by who and
some of these documents people familiar with the matter said,
contain invisible or digital markings too.
You're printing for a specific purpose,
you would only print the number of copies for the folks that would have access to this.
But when returned,
it's put into generally into a burn bag and then shipped off to an incinerator that's going to
destroy that information.
It's in this trail that often identifies leakers.
In 2017 reality winner,
a translator contractor for the national security agency who leaked documents she printed
was quickly identified by tracing the printer's records.
Experts like school say this process is secure and is good at identifying
leaks,
but to prevent them in the first place,
it relies on trusting the people who are involved at each step of this process.
Well,
there's always going to be human trust involved in the process,
the procedures that were violated,
who knew about them,
what security protocols were and where this information was accessed will all be
reviewed with likely changes coming for the Pentagon,
potentially others.
But you're always going to have a human aspect to this because that's what the
business is about.
It's about individuals being able to access the information.
According to the indictment,
Tara was identified through his activities online and through this security process,
his searches on classified networks.
It's unclear what changes may come to security protocols or to the clearance of who
gets to view these materials in the wake of ceo's arrest.