This morning the Washington Post serves up an eye-popping scoop, talking to one of the members of the Discord server where all of those classified documents first appeared, and offering a verbal portrait of the leaker: “a young, charismatic gun enthusiast” who works on a military base and spends “at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices.”
In the intelligence community, there’s a truism that people betray their country for one of four reasons — money, ideology, coercion or compromise, and ego, although sometimes sex is listed instead of coercion or compromise. In the case of this Discord leaker who went by the initials “OG,” it certainly sounds like ego:
OG shared several documents a week, beginning late last year. Posting pictures to the server took less time. But it also exposed OG to greater risk. In the background of some images, they could see items and furniture that they recognized from the room where OG spoke to them via video on the Discord channel — the kind of clues that could prove useful for federal investigators.
The dramatic and yet nonchalant presentation also reminded the group that OG could lay his hands on some of the most closely guarded intelligence in the U.S. government. “If you had classified documents, you’d want to flex at least a little bit, like hey, I’m the big guy,” the member said. “There is a little bit of showing off to friends, but as well as wanting to keep us informed.”
In a sense, OG had created a virtual mirror image of the secretive facility where he spent his working hours. Inside the Discord server, he was the ultimate arbiter of secrecy, and he allowed his companions to read truths that “normal citizens” could not.
As mentioned earlier this week, roughly 1.3 million Americans have top security clearance. That no doubt seems like a lot, but 16 government agencies use classified information in one way or another. There are 18 different agencies, bureaus, and offices that make up the U.S. intelligence community, and that’s separate from everyone in the White House and Congress who have that level of clearance, as well as judges and staff in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. According to a 2021 report, “there were 671 federal government officials who can deem information up to top secret.”
In related news, President Biden said during his trip to Ireland, “I’m not concerned about the leak because — I’m concerned that it happened, but there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.” That is strikingly implausible spin, another offering of the president’s reflexive “remain calm, all is well” response when his administration encounters a major problem. Biden is saying there’s nothing of great consequence in the biggest leak of secrets since Edward Snowden, while other U.S. officials are declaring there could be life-and-death consequences, and the Ukrainian sources say they’re changing their battle plans because of the leak.
Apparently, no one in the administration tells Grandpa what’s really going on.
If the Washington Post can find this guy’s buddies within a few days, the FBI is likely to identify and arrest this person soon. Many will fairly ask whether too many people have access to too much classified information, and how the Department of Defense could miss the warning signs and red flags surrounding “OG.”
And then, at some point down the road, something bad will happen, and American lawmakers will denounce the stovepiping of intelligence information and the lack of sharing sensitive information among U.S. intelligence agencies.