Thread by @20committee

Brief thread: I realize many Americans hear "National Guard" and conjure up images of good ol' boys playing Army on the weekend. In reality, the Guard and Reserve possess a lot of intelligence and related (IO, etc) units which are fully integrated into broader DoD/IC missions...

These specialized units often add considerable value to the IC since certain esoteric skill sets (languages, IT) frequently reside more easily in the Reserve Component (RC) than the active force. Don't write them off or think they're unimportant. They're all over the country...

Moreover, these intel-type RC units are, on paper, held to the same standards as the active military in terms of security clearances, SSOs, SCIF management, etc. If you're not up to par, and your personnel aren't trained & cleared, they're not deployable, so what's the point?

The big revolution came in the 1990s when RC intel units started being held to the same standards with security, etc, as the active IC force. This went into overdrive after 9/11. Before long, they all had their own SCIFs & toys and they could play in the spook big leagues...

Many of these RC intel units support the active force year-round, not just when members deploy. They provide intel work in real time, all the time. They're important to national missions. That's the upside to the big DoD investment in same-standard SCIFs, clearances, SSO, etc...

The downside, of course, we see in the Teixeira case. Lots of CI questions here, including about his SSBI. Having a 102d IW SCIF with common access meant our rogue 21 yo had a lot of SCI access we now really wish he didn't. People are jumping to conclusions, because Twitter...

We don't know exactly how Teixeira got access to the stuff he leaked: Did he just click and print? Did he get unauthorized access as a trainee IT guy? Was he dumpster-diving in burn-bags? Did he have helper(s)?

We don't know. Best not to guess and muddy the already murky H2O...

Regardless, it's long past due for DoD/IC to fundamentally reassess whom they're giving TS/SCI access to and, more, what their "need to know" is -- simply sharing everything on internal classified networks isn't working out well. They didn't learn (enough) from Snowden, et al...

Last: "the Pentagon is now promising to do better while restricting such easy access to secrets: the five-sided-funny-farm excels at shutting the barn door tightly after the horses have fled."

If you liked the thread, this is better (free trial too):

topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/lets-say-it-…