Intelligence leak a blow for allies

Alarming details disclosed about Washington’s intelligence scandal reflect badly on the US in its role as leader of the free world at a time of geopolitical challenge. The details underline the need for US allies to be clear about Washington’s shortcomings in safeguarding secret intelligence that is as vital to them as it is to the US. The weekend disclosure that US Air National Guardsman First Class (a low rank) Jack Teixeira, 21, charged with leaking highly classified information, had access to some of the US’s most sensitive intelligence was alarming. Even worse, as the BBC reported, as a “cyber defence operations journeyman”, Mr Teixeira was granted “top-secret” security clearance in 2021 to handle the most classified information. He was just 19, incredibly, when he was also given “sensitive compartmented access” to other classified US government programs. That included access to the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, the US’s top global intelligence network. Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer, told the BBC it was not unusual for someone as young as Mr Teixeira to have access to classified information in the US. There are, it seems, more like Mr Teixeira.

Just as worrying was a disclosure in an FBI affidavit submitted as part of the process against Mr Teixeira. It revealed that some of the highly damaging information published appeared on a Discord server devoted to geopolitical affairs, as long ago as December. The steady “drip” of intelligence on to Discord and other platforms increased in February. Yet, The Wall Street Journal reported, US counterintelligence did not get on to the leaks until references appeared first in the press.

It would be hard to think of a worse indictment of the failure of US intelligence, or one that more thoroughly kiboshes Joe Biden’s dopey view when he said: “There’s nothing contemporaneous (in the leaks) that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”

Really? The leaked material plays into Vladimir Putin’s hands, raising serious US doubts about Ukraine’s ability to resist the Russian tyrant’s onslaught, after concluding its air defences are hopeless. The leak will undermine morale in Kyiv and deter some Western democracies from making further efforts to provide the support Kyiv needs in the fight it is waging, for all the world’s democracies. The intelligence dump, embarrassingly, also includes less-than-flattering references to other key allies such as Israel and South Korea. Yet Mr Biden appears nonchalant. Donald Trump’s Republicans are no better, with the former president’s foot soldier congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeting that Mr Teixeira is “white, male, Christian, and anti-war” so we must ask “who is the real enemy”, him or Mr Biden? Against the backdrop of this failure, Greg Sheridan warned in The Weekend Australian that Beijing is winning the world’s new Cold War.