海角大神

In March 2018, a high school junior in North Dighton, Massachusetts, was suspended after a classmate guns, Molotov cocktails, and racist threats.聽

To those who knew him online, this wouldn鈥檛 have been a surprise. The student 鈥� Jack Teixeira 鈥� was a gun-loving, edgy teenage gamer. The servers he frequented in the years to come included members who were obsessed with the military and posted Nazi memes.

But that didn鈥檛 prevent Mr. Teixeira, the next year, from getting an IT job with the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Neither, in 2021, did it stop him from getting a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance聽鈥� the highest level the government awards.

Now Mr. Teixeira stands accused of abusing his position, and then some. Last month, he was arrested and charged with being the perpetrator of the largest leak of U.S. intelligence in a decade. Since last October, he has allegedly posted hundreds of highly classified national security documents on Discord, a popular gaming site.

The Discord leaks have presented a list of questions for the American intelligence community 鈥� about how someone in such a niche outfit could have access to some of the nation鈥檚 most furtive secrets and why the leak took so long to spot. But as more details of Mr. Teixeira鈥檚 past come out, former intelligence officials are also starting to wonder how he got a clearance at all 鈥� and how he even made it into the military.聽

鈥淚t seems like they didn鈥檛 do a very good job vetting him at the very outset, to say nothing of when they were considering his security clearance,鈥� says Evelyn Farkas, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a total failure.鈥�

Jon Elswick/AP

Image of Justice Department's motion for continued pretrial detention of Jack Teixeira.

It鈥檚 a failure, former officials argue, that may say less about Mr. Teixeira than the system he worked for. The American intelligence community is a sprawling bureaucratic neighborhood of agencies and levels of classification. In 2017, the number of people with active Top Secret security clearances was 鈥� including government employees and contractors, and officials at all levels of seniority. Even as the Pentagon investigates this leak and tries to contain its damage, there are simply too many people with top clearances across too many levels of government to audit them all.聽

Gaming culture

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Mr. Teixeira reportedly began posting classified information about the war to an . He would continue doing so for months, but in October began concentrating on another online group, a community of 50 mostly young gamers on a Discord server called Thug Shaker Central.

There, reportedly as the group鈥檚 leader, Mr. Teixeira posted transcripts and then photos of highly classified documents detailing U.S. intelligence secrets from the war in Ukraine to arms supply in South Korea.聽

Besides boasting classified documents in its chat, Thug Shaker Central was a portrait of online gaming鈥檚 often lewd, offensive culture. According to a Department of Justice filing last week, Mr. Teixeira 鈥渉ad regular discussions about violence and murder on the social media platform.鈥澛燣ast November, , he stated that 鈥渋f he had his way, he would 鈥榢ill a [expletive] ton of people鈥� because it would be 鈥榗ulling the weak minded.鈥欌��

When the FBI raided Mr. Teixeira鈥檚 family home in Massachusetts on April 13, according to the same filing, they found a gun safe containing bolt-action rifles, an AK-style weapon, and a gas mask 2 feet from his bed.

This is not the profile of someone the United States wants with a top-secret clearance.

鈥淚t鈥檚 exposing something that鈥檚 quite systemic,鈥� says Amy Jeffress, a former Department of Justice prosecutor and national security lawyer. 鈥淲e keep seeing these cases where individuals who really should not have access to our most highly classified information do have access to it.鈥�

Part of the problem, Ms. Jeffress argues, is that the government classifies too much information 鈥� it鈥檚 just seen as a safer option. But a high volume of classified documents demands a large number of government employees with security clearances:

Alex Brandon/AP

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, center, departs after a closed-door briefing about the leak of highly classified military documents, on Capitol Hill, April 19, 2023, in Washington.

Another issue is that top secret information is shared widely among different parts of the intelligence community, a choice that dates back 20 years, when a lack of intelligence sharing was faulted, in part, for the government鈥檚 failure to anticipate the 9/11 terrorist attacks.聽

The upside is that sharing intelligence helps avoid catastrophe. The downside is that more widely shared intelligence is harder to keep secret.聽

鈥淓very intelligence crisis has an aphorism or a saying that comes out of it. After 9/11, it was 鈥榠nformation sharing, connect the dots,鈥欌�� says Michael Allen, who worked in President George W. Bush鈥檚 National Security Council. 鈥淏ut now we鈥檝e clearly overshared the information.鈥澛�

Secret PowerPoints

The documents Mr. Teixeira posted on Discord were J2 briefing slides, the highest-level intelligence product America鈥檚 intelligence community creates every day, says former Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Council official Javed Ali.聽

Those slides 鈥� essentially a daily PowerPoint presentation for the nation鈥檚 top policymakers 鈥� are posted to an online bulletin board of sorts known as the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System, or JWICS (pronounced 鈥渏ay-wiks鈥�). For Mr. Teixeira, it was as simple as accessing JWICS, printing out the slides, and taking them home.聽

Members of the intelligence community work on keyboards that track their every keystroke and printers that log their every print. But those tools better suit an audit than a real-time alarm, says Mr. Ali. Thousands of people access JWICS each day, he says.聽

Mr. Teixeira was an IT employee, which made his clearance kind of like the head electrician at the White House, says Dr. Farkas, now director of the McCain Institute, a Washington-based think tank. He needed a clearance in case he saw something secret at work. But he had no 鈥渘eed to know鈥欌�� such sensitive information.聽

The intelligence community needs a better way to enforce that need-to-know standard, she says. The Department of Defense is working on a yearslong project to make its which would mean users need to continuously authenticate their credentials before accessing information at different levels. But that structure likely wouldn鈥檛 have prevented all of Mr. Teixeira鈥檚 leaks, and is still years away.聽

鈥淗ow do you begin to regulate a system that鈥檚 compartmented like crazy with all these different levels of classification?鈥� says Mr. Allen.聽

Mr. Ali recommends added scrutiny of social media accounts and airport-level security at secure sites, maybe even random bag checks. But even those protocols, he concedes, aren鈥檛 perfect. Even members of the intelligence community have constitutional rights to privacy.聽

鈥淭hese are things that are hard to do,鈥� says Mr. Allen. 鈥淏ut ... any system that doesn鈥檛 detect some of these red flags is, by definition, flawed.鈥�