MUSKO NAVAL BASE, SWEDEN — Protection Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Wednesday defended the Pentagon coverage to permit younger enlisted service members entry to delicate nationwide safety secrets and techniques and downplayed whether or not a 21-year-old Air Nationwide Guardsman accused of leaking prime secret paperwork ought to have been allowed entry to them within the first place.
That query of why the Pentagon would permit a junior-ranking enlistee the clearance to view secret struggle plans for Ukraine — has dogged the Protection Division since Massachusetts Air Nationwide Guardsman Jack Teixeira was arrested final week.
Confronted with the query throughout a information convention Wednesday in Sweden, Mr. Austin mentioned that age shouldn’t be the problem. “The overwhelming majority of our army is younger,” he mentioned. “So it’s not distinctive that younger persons are doing vital issues within the army.”
Airman Teixeira, Mr. Austin famous, had top-secret clearance as a part of his job as a pc specialist in an intelligence unit of the Massachusetts Air Nationwide Guard.
“The difficulty is the way you responsibly execute or perform your duties and the way you defend the knowledge,” Mr. Austin mentioned. “All of us have a requirement to try this, and supervisors have a requirement to ensure that’s being performed.”
Mr. Austin’s feedback have been the primary time a senior Pentagon chief has, in a public setting, spoken about whether or not the army is entrusting an excessive amount of duty to service members at too younger an age. Army leaders have lengthy maintained that if you’re sufficiently old to die for the nation, you’re sufficiently old to do any variety of jobs within the army.
Whether or not Airman Teixeira’s case sparks a wider counting on age and delicate materials stays unclear.
Air Drive Secretary Frank Kendall has directed the service’s inspector basic to have a look at the Air Nationwide Guard 102nd Intelligence Wing, the place Airman Teixeira served, and at how Airman Teixeira was capable of publish lots of of nationwide safety paperwork right into a chat room for avid gamers. From there, they finally drifted to Twitter and the Telegram messaging platform.
