Episode Info
- Season15
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Episode Summary
Former Director of Global Engagement in the Obama White House Brett Bruen joins to host a special One More Decision to provide analysis on the discovery of a young Air Force reservist's role in stealing over a hundred secret documents and publishing them online. Bruen takes us inside the American security clearance system and looks at whether after so many intelligence issues, allies are now going to be less likely to share their sensitive insights with Washington.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mcfarlane: I'm Julia McFarlane, host of One Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices made that shape our world. Together with my cohost, the former chief of British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove, we unpack the key decisions, past, present, and future, that matter to us all. We drop new episodes every Thursday. But today, we're bringing you One More Decision, smart analysis of the latest breaking news around the world with Global Situation Room president Brett Bruen, who served as the White House director of global engagement during the Obama administration. Over to you, Brett.
ONE MORE DECISION WITH BRETT BRUEN
Bruen: We're here with One More Decision. And this week, it is an important decision, one that will reverberate around the world, but certainly here in the capital of the United States where at this hour, you can almost feel the political, the security tremors across what's known as the Beltway. We understood this afternoon that the FBI went to the Cape Cod home of the mother of the suspect, Jack Teixeira. Teixeira was a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. He worked in the intelligence wing, and this is the person we are led to believe by federal authorities was responsible for leaking those documents, or I should say taking photos on his phone of those documents and then posting them onto a small member-only group of social platform known as Discord. Discord is a place that Jack apparently spent a lot of time exchanging with other members of this group about his role, his position in the military, and certainly the insight that he had, specifically intelligence insight. So while we're still getting a handle on what transpired, why it transpired, we can nonetheless, I think, draw several conclusions, and those will be the focus of today's One More Decision. I spent the better part of my diplomatic career handling classified documents. And the US system is unique in many respects, having spoken with colleagues from across Europe, Latin America, other parts of the world. In order to become a national security official, this is a member of our foreign service, a member of the defense department in a number of positions, you need any number of different levels of security clearance. The lowest in the US system is just a background check. The Diplomatic Security Service, in my case, those of other agencies will look into your criminal record. They'll look into your personal as well as your professional life, and they will determine that you're not a risk. That is simply to have an ID to walk in the building. Then up from there, we're talking about a classified level. It's the lowest level of classification in our system. And oftentimes, you would see that accorded to certain staff members who maybe are in an administrative or an operational position. And it goes up from there to secret and then ultimately to top secret. When I went over and worked at the National Security Council under President Obama, you actually needed top secret, specially compartmentalized information clearance, which is in and of itself the highest level of clearance in the United States national security structure. Now there are different parts of that SCI clearance level. And indeed, some of these documents that Teixeira released, we understand were at least at the top secret level. So what does that mean? It means that they could be quite damaging. We classify in the United States documents often according to the impact that they would have on our sources and our methods. We also classify them in terms of the impact that they would have on those who are sharing that information with us. And as we all saw during the WikiLeaks revelation some years back, it can lead to very costly, costly on a personal level, costly on a political level change. And that is why often information is so sensitive, is so tightly controlled. And one of the things that I think the White House, but also our broader national security team needs to take a look at at this moment is not only, as the Washington Post, a columnist raised the question today, why are we collecting so much information? And I think there, in an age when we have so many threats, there may be a lot of justification for collecting information about the activities of different countries as well as other non-state actors, as we would say in diplomatic terms, but also how we are providing access to that classified information. I think one of the biggest questions that looms large over Washington at this hour is whether or not a 21-year-old airman in the reserves should have had access to so much information to have the ability with his telephone to inflict potentially so much harm, so much instability, potentially the loss of so many lives, lives of Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting out on the Eastern front against Russia, lives of those Taiwanese who are trying to hold out against an increasingly aggressive China. Should someone who is in such a low position, and we understand that Teixeira, in fact, was working on the technical side. And that is why, partially, he had access to so much information because he had to manage the system, manage the computers of this Air National Guard unit. So there are going to be a lot of these questions raised both in the halls of power, the halls of congress, and the halls of many foreign capitals around the world. But the question that I will leave you with today is when we are looking out at such a delicate relationship, delicate relationship that the US and President Biden have tried to rebuild in terms of confidence, in terms of influence around the world after the tumultuous years of the Trump presidency. We are now backsliding, and the question really is how far have we slid backward in terms of the confidence that leaders in so many of those capitals have in both our leadership in terms of our influence, but also will they be willing the next time to share some of those more sensitive insights and intelligence, fearing that some low-ranking soldier or airman would potentially have the power to access that information, to share that information out across social media. This is really something that the United States needs to take a very hard look at because our system after 9/11, after the attacks on the Pentagon as well as on the Twin Towers and the plane that went down in a field in Pennsylvania rapidly expanded our use of intelligence as well as those who have access to that intelligence. Now we are wrestling with a question that in an age where, quite frankly, social media technology, the technology of our phones has advanced so much faster and farther than perhaps our system of protecting classified information. Should we share those secrets so widely? Do we need to really rein in access on a need-to-know basis, which often was the judgment with some of those most sensitive subjects in the White House in the situation room. So we will continue to examine here at One Decision these questions. It was a moment, an important moment that we wanted to share some insights with our audience around the world about what's happening here in Washington. We'll toss it back to Julia in London.
Mcfarlane: That's it from this world update from the One Decision podcast. If you enjoyed this little conversation, why not check out our channel for our main offerings which drop every Thursday? Just search One Decision wherever you find your podcasts. From me and the team, thank you for listening, and see you next time.
