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      in US Politics

      Judicial record undermines Clarence Thomas defence in luxury gifts scandal

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      Earlier this month, the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas put out a statement in which he addressed the storm of criticism that has engulfed him following the blockbuster ProPublica report that revealed his failure to disclose lavish gifts of luxury vacations and private-jet travel from a Texan real estate magnate.Thomas confirmed that the Dallas billionaire and Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow and his wife Kathy were “among our dearest friends”. Thomas admitted, too, that he and his wife Ginni had “joined them on a number of family trips during the more-than-a-quarter-century we have known them”.The justice, who is the longest-serving member of the nation’s highest court and arguably its most staunch conservative, insisted he had taken advice that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends” did not have to be reported under federal ethics laws. He emphasized that the friend in question “did not have business before the court”.But a close look at Thomas’s judicial activities from the time he became friends with Crow, in the mid-1990s, suggests that the statement might fall short of the full picture. It reveals that a conservative organization affiliated with Crow did have business before the supreme court while Thomas was on the bench.In addition, Crow has been connected to several groups that over the years have lobbied the supreme court through so-called “amicus briefs” that provide legal arguments supporting a plaintiff or defendant.In 2003, the anti-tax group the Club for Growth joined other rightwing individuals and organisations, including the Republican senator Mitch McConnell and the National Rifle Association (NRA), in attempting to push back campaign finance restrictions on election spending.At the time of the legal challenge, from at least 2001 to 2004, Crow was a member of the Club for Growth’s prestigious “founders committee”. Though little is known about the role of the committee, it clearly commanded some influence over the group’s policymaking.During the course of a 2005 investigation into likely campaign finance violations by the Club for Growth, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) noted that rank-and-file club members could “vote on an annual policy question selected by the founders committee”.Crow has also been a major donor to the club, contributing $275,000 to its coffers in 2004 and a further $150,000 two years later.The 2003 legal challenge championed by the Club for Growth targeted the McCain-Feingold Act, which had been passed with cross-aisle backing the previous year. The legislation placed new controls on the amount of “soft money” political party committees and corporations could spend on elections.On appeal, a consolidated version of the lawsuit, Mitch McConnell v FEC, was taken up by the supreme court. In a majority ruling, the court allowed the most important elements of the McCain-Feingold Act to stand (though they were later nullified by the supreme court’s contentious 2010 Citizens United ruling).Thomas was livid. He issued a 25-page dissenting opinion that sided heavily with the anti-regulation stance taken by the Club for Growth and its rightwing allies. Thomas began his opinion by breathlessly accusing his fellow justices of upholding “what can only be described as the most significant abridgment of the freedoms of speech and association since the civil war”.By the time Thomas issued his opinion in December 2003 he had already forged his deep relationship with Crow. According to the billionaire, they first met at a conference in Dallas in 1994 – by which time Thomas had already been nominated by George HW Bush to the most powerful court in the land.The businessman had already showered Thomas with several lavish gifts before the McCain-Feingold challenge reached his court. Thomas disclosed for instance a 1997 flight from Washington to northern California on Crow’s private jet to attend an all-male retreat at Bohemian Grove at which the justice went on to become a regular guest.There was also a Bible once owned by Frederick Douglass, then valued at $19,000. In 2001 Crow made a $150,000 donation to create a Clarence Thomas wing within the Savannah, Georgia, library the justice frequented as a child.The federal law 28 US Code section 455 requires any federal judge – including the nine supreme court justices – to recuse themselves from any proceeding “in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned”.ProPublica’s explosive investigation earlier this month exposed undeclared gifts and travel that have continued to be bestowed by the billionaire on Thomas to this day. They included a nine-day vacation with Ginni in Indonesia in the summer of 2019 the cost of which probably exceeded $500,000.In a later report, ProPublica revealed that in 2014 Thomas sold his mother’s home in Savannah to Crow. That transaction was also left undisclosed.The ProPublica disclosures have prompted a debate about the need for greater scrutiny of the conduct of supreme court justices. Top Democrats have called for an official inquiry into Thomas’s behavior and for all the justices to be subject to a strict ethics code.The progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speaking on CNN, decried Crow’s largesse as “very serious corruption” and called for Thomas to be impeached.Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a non-partisan group which advocates supreme court reform, said that a crisis of trust in Thomas’s ethical judgments had been bubbling below the surface for some time. “The reason that it is so salient now is that the supreme court has grown exponentially in power since Justice Thomas took that first private plane ride in 1997 – when the court becomes the most powerful government body, then ethics issues become all the more critical.”The Guardian contacted Thomas at the supreme court but did not receive a response.This week, the normally media-shy Crow, who has assets valued at $30bn and who has donated at least $13m to Republicans, gave an in-depth interview to the Dallas Morning News. He claimed the furore around his relations with Thomas was a “political hit-job” by the liberal media.He insisted he and Thomas were just friends who spent their time talking about their kids and animals. “We talk about dogs a lot,” he said.Asked whether he ever considered their friendship as a ticket to quid pro quo, he replied: “Every single relationship – a baby’s relationship to his mom – has some kind of reciprocity.”Crow’s office, in a statement to the Guardian, disputed any relevance of Crow’s links with the Club for Growth, his friendship with Thomas, and the justice’s opinion in the McConnell v FEC case. “Harlan Crow was not a party to the litigation, was only a financial supporter of Club for Growth, and had no role whatsoever in any Club for Growth litigation decisions.”The statement continued: “Any insinuation that Justice Thomas wrote his opinion in this case because Harlan Crow was a supporter is ridiculous as Justice Thomas had already expressed these same views in a previous case, Nixon v Shrink MO PAC.”The billionaire’s office insisted that Thomas’s skepticism of the constitutionality of campaign finance regulation “was established before he had even met Harlan Crow”.Crow has never personally come before the supreme court, and denies ever trying to influence Thomas on any legal or political issue. But he has served on the boards of at least three conservative groups that have lobbied the supreme court through amicus briefs. Early in his friendship with Thomas, Crow sat on the national board of the now defunct Center for the Community Interest, which filed at least eight amicus briefs in supreme court cases backing rightwing causes such as sweeping crime off the streets and countering pornography.He has also been a trustee for more than 25 years of the American Enterprise Institute, a thinktank advancing free enterprise ideas that has filed several supporting briefs to the court. In 2001 AEI gave Thomas a bust of Abraham Lincoln then valued at $15,000.Crow is an overseer of the Hoover Institution, a conservative thinktank based at Stanford University. In February, Hoover senior fellows led an amicus brief filed to Thomas and his fellow justices challenging the $400bn student loan debt-relief program introduced by Joe Biden.The supreme court is likely to rule on whether the scheme can go ahead this summer. In oral arguments in February, Thomas was among the rightwing justices who hold the supermajority who indicated they were skeptical of the program, raising the possibility that the court will scupper the hopes of more than 40 million Americans eligible for the debt relief. More

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      in Elections

      Top Trump adviser to be interviewed by special counsel prosecutors

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      Donald Trump’s senior adviser and legal counsel Boris Epshteyn is scheduled to be interviewed on Thursday by special counsel prosecutors investigating the former president’s retention of classified-marked documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and his role in the January 6 Capitol attack.The investigation Epshteyn is being asked to talk about – potentially both – remains unclear, according to a person familiar with the matter who confirmed the meeting on the condition of anonymity. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.But the interview, which was requested by special counsel prosecutors, marks a moment of potential peril for Trump given Epshteyn has been one of his closest advisers in recent years, with more knowledge about the former president’s legal entanglements than perhaps anyone else.Throughout the Mar-a-Lago documents case, Epshteyn has simultaneously been a member of Trump’s inner circle as a senior adviser on the 2024 campaign, and a member of the Trump legal team as the project-manager-esque person leading the civil and criminal lawyers as the in-house counsel.The dual roles mean Epshteyn is considered to have the most insight into decisions taken by Trump and others as the investigation has progressed – the sort of behind-the-scenes knowledge most prized by prosecutors in high-profile criminal cases.Whether Epshteyn has legal exposure himself remains unclear. But he played a role in the Trump legal team’s botched response to a grand jury subpoena last year that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents before the FBI seized 101 such papers at Mar-a-Lago.In that episode, Epshteyn coordinated the two Trump lawyers who were involved in turning over some classified-marked documents to the justice department and signing an attestation letter certifying compliance with the subpoena, which later turned out to be false.The scheduled interview with Epshteyn was the topic of conversation among some of the Trump lawyers on Wednesday morning, who have made their dislike of working with him known internally, complaining that he acts as a gatekeeper to Trump and gave him poor predictions in the Manhattan hush-money case.But Trump has prized Epshteyn’s personal loyalty to him, and despite asking associates at the start of the year whether he was doing a “good job” after a series of legal defeats in court and having his phone seized by the FBI in the January 6 investigation, has kept him as a trusted member of his inner circle.The documents case has proved tricky for the entire Trump legal team, with prosecutors unusually focused on the behavior of the lawyers.Epshteyn’s interview makes him the fifth Trump lawyer to have formally spoken with justice department officials or testified before the grand jury in Washington hearing evidence about the former president’s potential mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice.The grand jury most recently heard testimony from Evan Corcoran, who led the initial search of Mar-a-Lago after Trump received the subpoena and was ordered to turn over detailed notes, because of the so-called crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege protections.Before Corcoran testified, his co-counsel Tim Parlatore was subpoenaed to testify about additional searches of Mar-a-Lago he led after the justice department believed Trump might have additional classified-marked documents in his possession. Alina Habba and Christina Bobb have also testified to the grand jury. More

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      in US Politics

      UN rebukes Washington over reports it eavesdropped on secretary general

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      The United Nations has raised concerns with the United States over reports that it eavesdropped on the private conversations of the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and other senior officials.“We have made it clear that such actions are inconsistent with the obligations of the United States as enumerated in the Charter of the United Nations and the convention on the privileges and immunities of the United Nations,” said a UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, on Tuesday.The comments followed a number of articles reporting that leaked Pentagon files appear to show Washington was closely monitoring conversations between the secretary general and his aides.The Washington Post reported this week that the documents included embarrassing allegations that Guterres had expressed frustration with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and “outrage” when his plans to visit a war-torn region of Ethiopia were rebuffed.It followed a BBC report last week that the US felt Guterres was too sympathetic to Russian interests when he helped broker the Black Sea grain deal amid fears of a global food crisis. According to the broadcaster, one classified Pentagon file indicated that Guterres preferred to preserve the deal even if it meant accommodating Russian interests.The UN’s implied rebuke on Tuesday comes as Washington scrambles to contain the fallout of the worst leaks of US intelligence in at least a decade.The classified reports were part of a trove of hundreds of secret national security documents, published on the online gaming platform, Discord, and revealed secrets about US, allied and Ukrainian military deployments, US penetration of Russian intelligence and military networks, and US intelligence eavesdropping on key allies, including South Korea and Israel.Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old air national guardsman was arrested last week on suspicion of leaking hundreds of secret defence documents and charged under the Espionage Act. In response to the leaks, Pentagon has moved to tighten access to classified information while the Department of Defense reviews its security procedures.According to the BBC, a Pentagon assessment describing private conversations between the UN chief and his deputy, concluded: “Guterres emphasised his efforts to improve Russia’s ability to export,” and that he would do this, “even if that involves sanctioned Russian entities or individuals”.The secretary general’s approach, one document reportedly said, was “undermining broader efforts to hold Moscow accountable for its actions in Ukraine”.The documents viewed by the Post suggest that Guterres was “really pissed off” after an appearance with Zelenskiy in March. During the visit, Guterres was reportedly surprised Ukrainian officials photographed him at a public presentation of medals to uniformed soldiers and later shared the images in a way that suggested Guterres had congratulated Ukrainian military personnel.The secretary general, who has repeatedly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of the UN charter and international law, “emphasized that he made a point of not smiling the entire time”, according to the leaked US assessment.Last week, Dujarric said Guterres was “not surprised” that he was allegedly spied on by the US. “Unfortunately, for various reasons, it allows such private conversations to be distorted and made public.”The US has a long history of eavesdropping on allied leaders, including United Nations officials.The National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of dozens of world leaders, including the then German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and UN diplomats, according to revelations made public by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.And in 2003, a secret memo detailed an “aggressive surveillance operation” against UN security council delegations in New York as part of a campaign to win support for going to war against Iraq. More

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      in US Politics

      Blinken warns Sudan’s rivals as US diplomatic convoy comes under fire

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      A US diplomatic convoy came under fire in Sudan in an apparent attack by fighters associated with Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said, in an incident he described as “reckless” and “irresponsible”.The incident on Monday prompted a direct warning from Blinken, who separately telephoned the RSF leader Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, and Sudan’s army chief, Gen Abdel Fatah al-Burhan, to tell them any danger posed to American diplomats was unacceptable.Blinken said the convoy that came under fire was flying US. flags and all in the convoy were safe. “We have deep concerns about the overall security environment,” he said at a press conference in Japan where he attended a G7 meeting of foreign ministers.Fighting erupted on Saturday between army units loyal to Burhan, the head of Sudan’s transitional governing Sovereign Council, and Hemedti, the deputy head of the council. The UN envoy to Sudan says at least 185 people have been killed and more than 1,800 wounded. Many more bodies lay uncollected in the streets.A US state department official said Blinken had expressed “grave concern” over civilian deaths in his calls with the rival leaders, and urged them to agree to a ceasefire. Both had a responsibility to “ensure the safety and wellbeing of civilians, diplomatic personnel, and humanitarian workers”, the official said.Hemedti said he had discussed “pressing issues” with Blinken during their call and further talks were planned. “We will have another call to continuing dialogue and working hand-in-hand to forge a brighter future for our nations,” tweeted Hemedti, whose whereabouts have not been disclosed since the fighting began.Sudan’s rival factions both claimed to have made gains on Monday as violence cut power and water in the capital. Volker Perthes, the UN envoy to Sudan, said the two sides showed no signs of being willing to negotiate.The power struggle has derailed a shift to civilian rule and raised fears of a wider conflict.Clashes in Khartoum have centred on key sites such as the international airport, presidential palace and the army headquarters. In comments to Sky News, Burhan said he was secure in a presidential guesthouse within the defence ministry compound.Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, said the EU ambassador in Khartoum had been assaulted at his residency. Borrell did not say if the ambassador, the Irish diplomat Aidan O’Hara, had been badly injured, but called the attack “a gross violation of the Vienna convention”, which is supposed to guarantee the protection of diplomatic premises.The US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said the US was not, for the time being, planning an evacuation from the country.Burhan raised the stakes in the violence still further on Monday, ordering the dissolution of the RSF, which he called a “rebellious group”. For his part, Hemedti called Burhan “a radical Islamist who is bombing civilians from the air”.Military jets flew low over the capital through much of Monday as repeated bouts of firing and shelling continued there and in Omdurman, Khartoum’s sister city across the Nile. Witnesses have reported dozens of bodies in one central neighbourhood of the capital, and hundreds of students remain trapped in schools by the fighting.Hospitals have been particularly affected, with essential supplies badly disrupted by the fighting. Hundreds of patients have been evacuated, while medical staff attempt to move others from intensive care or dialysis units to places of safety.“We had to move them to the isolation centres along with 70 doctors and nurses, all have been trapped here with no oxygen for the chest patients and that’s really dangerous … The oxygen we have is from the time of the pandemic and it’s limited,” one nurse said.Aid workers in remote parts of Sudan also reported tensions or violence. One based in on the eastern border with Ethiopia described the regular army overwhelming a small RSF contingent and seizing their base amid sporadic shooting. Officials also reported fighting in the east, including the provinces of Kassala and El Gadaref.The conflict threatens to plunge one of Africa’s biggest and most strategically important countries into chaos. Analysts say only pressure from “heavyweight” intermediaries will have a chance of ending the fighting.In a speech broadcast by Egyptian state television late on Monday, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said he was in regular contact with the army and RSF to “encourage them to accept a ceasefire and spare the blood of the Sudanese people”.The African Union’s top council has called for an immediate ceasefire without conditions, while other Arab states with stakes in Sudan – Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – made similar appeals.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      in US Politics

      Alexandra Petri’s US history review: if you’re going to lie, lie big – and funny

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      In the 18th century, sexting was much more difficult. It had to be conducted by letter, of course, resulting in long delays and messages arriving out of order – particularly if you were on opposite sides of the Atlantic, as John and Abigail Adams were in the late 1770s.Incredibly, we now have a record of their attempts to exchange lewd notes, published this month in Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up). The Washington Post humor columnist takes us on a tour of centuries of US history, including a first-hand look at the Adamses struggling to confirm how many petticoats and long shirts have been removed at any point in a year-and-a-half-long correspondence, interrupted by concerns over the health of their cows and a particularly lascivious note from Benjamin Franklin.It’s one of dozens of very funny essays stretching from the arrival of Europeans in the Americas to the presidency of Donald Trump. At a time when many elected officials are seeking to rewrite history to make America look better, “why stop at saying slavery was not so bad or Andrew Jackson was a swell guy? Why not actually commit to the principle of the thing and insert all the bizarre documents that you think ought to be there?” Petri writes.“If you’re going to lie about the past, lie big!”Petri works in a huge variety of formats: letters, poetry, scripts, maps. Important early documents include a European’s guide to naming places: (Options: “name of king but put town on the end”, “New [place you just left]”, “your ethnic group, plural, but put ‘boro’ on the end”); a guide to toys for Puritan parents (“There is nothing silly about this putty. It is plain, functional putty that can be used to imprint passages of scripture”); and a more realistic take on the minutemen, titled The Hour Men, because what if you need snacks or misplace your musket?Later we witness the author and women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton trapped in a romcom while planning the landmark Seneca Falls convention, “because whenever a work-oriented woman goes to a small town for any reason, the town tries to seize her and put her in a Hallmark romance”. Stanton knows she “really ought to work on the Declaration of Sentiments,” Petri writes. “But for the first time in her life, she was feeling sentiments rather than just declaring them.”There’s a record of what civil war photographers said to posing troops: “Say: ‘Everyone I love will soon be dead!’ But don’t say it with your mouth, say it with your eyes.’” And there are plenty of literary parodies, including musing on what Edgar Allan Poe’s work would have been like had he just had a good handyman – maybe that telltale heart could have been removed and the House of Usher could have remained standing – and a rewriting of Fahrenheit 451 that dares to ask how, if books are banned, there are still enough being printed for book-burners to have a full-time job.More recent documents include a record of what Nancy Reagan’s psychic began predicting after she realized her words were affecting policy: “A romantic partner continues to be receptive to your influence. Consider urging him to do something about the Aids crisis.”Visual elements feature a blend of Thoreau and a perennially missing man, in the form of “Where’s Walden?”, and a PowerPoint presentation by Nikola Tesla’s friends, concerned that the physicist is in love with a pigeon (which is something he actually admitted to, one of several genuine pieces of history I learned from this book).Petri’s writing is consistently witty and erudite without the slightest hint of pretentiousness, and her tone is generally jovial and upbeat. Most of the book will be accessible to anyone who paid attention in high school history class, though there are a few essays with prerequisites: a spoof of the writer Shirley Jackson, for instance, went over my head despite a dim memory that I was forced to read The Lottery somewhere along the line. As is generally the case with parody, the better you know the original, the funnier it will be.“If you’re going to lie, lie big.” But Petri’s lies spring from vast knowledge of the facts of US history. If you can make the 19th-century debate over monetary policy funny, you’re clearly on to something.
      Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important American Documents I Made Up is published in the US by WW Norton More

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      in US Politics

      Too many with access, too little vetting. Pentagon leaks were ‘a matter of time’

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      Jack Teixeira, 21 years old, clean-shaven, with buzz-cut hair and proudly uniformed, is the face of America’s newest security threat, one it is struggling to resolve.The formidable US counter-intelligence infrastructure is adept at finding spies and rooting out whistleblowers. Teixeira, charged on Friday on two counts of the Espionage Act, is neither spy nor whistleblower.His family history is the epitome of conservative patriotism. His stepfather served in the same unit, the 102nd intelligence wing of the Massachusetts air national guard, and his mother, who worked for years for veterans’ charities, celebrated the fact that her son was following the same path. The young recruit was an observant Catholic, who would pray with other members of his online chat group.But Teixeira’s outlook had taken the same dramatic turn as much of American conservatism, becoming conspiratorial and distrustful of the very institutions earlier generations revered. Friends quoted in the Washington Post said he had come to regret joining up, as his view of the military dimmed.His motive for allegedly sharing hundreds of top secret documents among the 20 or so young men and teenage boys on the Discord gaming server he moderated, at least as he explained it to them, was to alert them to shadowy forces driving world events. He reportedly posted the documents, photographed unfolded and laid on his family’s kitchen counter alongside glue and nail clippers, without commentary or any apparent underlying logic.It seems to have been a way to cement his status as the leader of the group, a man of mystery and action. It was as inchoate as the video he reportedly shared with his group, Thug Shaker Central, (named in apparently ironic spirit after a variety of gay porn), in which Teixeira shouts antisemitic and racist slurs then fires a rifle.This was the young man, clearly still living out his adolescence, who was given one of the nation’s highest security clearances – “top secret/sensitive compartmented information” (TS/SCI) – so that he could do his job maintaining the sealed infranet system at Otis air base on Cape Cod, through which the nation’s most closely guarded secrets flowed.To get that level of clearance you must, in theory, be extensively vetted. The process takes months, as investigators trawl through your history and interview friends and colleagues. But vetting standards differ across agencies, and those of the air national guard may not be on a par with the CIA, yet the staff at both see the same documents.Other security arrangements at the Otis base also appear to have been lax. Teixeira is alleged to have first copied out text from secret documents and, then, in January, began to print them and take them home.“The breakdown in physical security here appears stark and serious,” Bradley Moss, a lawyer specialising in national security, federal employment and security clearance, said. “The after-action review will absolutely need to assess where the process broke down by which no one noticed his removal of the records.”There is another problem with trying to filter out people like Teixeira: the elastic limits of first amendment free speech rights, in a country where what was once extreme is increasingly mainstream.The far-right Georgia Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene got Teixeira’s first name wrong on Twitter but hailed him as “white, male, christian, and antiwar”.“That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime,” Greene said.The Fox News talkshow host Tucker Carlson defended Teixeira and complained the airman, arrested by armed FBI agents at his home and charged in a Boston court the next day, was being treated worse than Osama bin Laden, who was shot in the head by US special forces in his bedroom in 2011.The new Republican right views the state as an enemy when it is being run by Democrats or moderate conservatives. Part of the Trump legacy is a preference for foreign dictators over opponents in a democratic system. So weeding out enemies of the state within the intelligence and military community risks angering an increasingly significant and vocal part of the political arena.“It’s difficult to truly quantify the scope of the threat, and part of the problem is simply holding repugnant political views is not truly a security issue. It’s more of an HR issue,” Moss said. He added the vetting process was not “designed to flesh out the details of an individual’s personal political leanings”.“That’s deliberate: the government is largely forbidden from considering your political views in that context unless it implicates a separate concern [such as criminal conduct],” he said.The problem facing the vetters is magnified by the enormous scale of the numbers involved. According to the office of the director of national intelligence, there are more than 1.2 million government employees and contractors with access to top secret intelligence materials.Brianna Rosen, a former White House official, said that was a result of the 9/11 attacks, where some of the intelligence failings that allowed the hijackers to succeed involved a failure to share intelligence with law enforcement agencies.“It’s a double-edged sword because, in one sense, a lack of this kind of information sharing is, in part, what contributed to 9/11,” said Rosen, a senior fellow at Just Security, an online forum on security, democracy, foreign policy and rights. “As a result of all of these increased intelligence-sharing programmes, you do have a situation where there is a vast amount of people that have access to sensitive information that they probably shouldn’t have access to, and that may not have been vetted as thoroughly as they should have been.“It was really only a matter of time until something like this happened, which is why this is really a systemic problem that Congress and the Biden administration needs to address more closely.” More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the Pentagon leaks: this system puts lives at risk | Editorial

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      There must always be a place for necessary whistleblowing from inside governments. This newspaper will always stand, responsibly, for that principle. Yet leaks are also serious matters, which challenge a state. In a particularly serious case, or at a particularly serious time, such as during a war, a leak can help an enemy, dismay allies, weaken morale and, at least potentially, change the military balance and put lives at risk.The leak of highly classified US intelligence documents covering plans to aid Ukraine’s war against Russia is unquestionably grave, both in its content and context. In Ukraine, Nato is in the midst of by far its most serious conflict for a generation. The inherent seriousness of the leaks is enhanced by other factors, including the details and numbers they contained, the breadth of the secrets’ online distribution, including to potential enemies, the length of time they were accessible, and the likelihood that the material becomes part of a disinformation campaign.This case has particular features that distinguish it from celebrated leaks in earlier times. There is no suggestion – yet – that the leaks are the work of foreign spies. Nor do they appear to be the work of a whistleblower seeking to expose a scandal, as happened in the Pentagon Papers case during the Vietnam war, or in Edward Snowden’s exposures of US surveillance programmes. There is no hard evidence that the leaker believed, as happened during WikiLeaks, that the material should be put into the public domain on freedom of information or other grounds.Instead, the evidence points in a recognisably more contemporary and disturbing direction. The leaks were made on the social network Discord by a young male official in the Massachusetts air national guard. In the histories of espionage, and also of recent mass shootings, there have been examples of relatively anonymous young men triggering major incidents in part to boost their self-esteem. Jack Teixeira, who was arrested and charged in Boston this week, is 21, and is interested in guns, games and racist memes. He released his Pentagon documents, it has been suggested, to display his self-importance and to impress others in the online gaming chat group of which he was the leading figure.Two large public policy questions immediately arise. One is how someone low down the intelligence food chain like Teixeira could get his hands on such material. Part of the answer is the unmanageable volume of material held by the US government. For decades, there have been allegations that intelligence agencies were too bloated, slow and complex to be clear, including to themselves, about what must be secret and who should be able to access it. The digital revolution made this process even more mountainous. But, as events from WikiLeaks to these Pentagon leaks suggest, the government systems have not been fit for purpose.The other issue is the extent of the damage. The most important aspect from a European perspective are the doubts documented over Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russian air power. That information should never have been seen in public in this way. It could suggest that Ukraine’s low stocks of arms mean its expected spring offensive will be difficult to carry through, leaving Kyiv highly vulnerable to Russian counterattacks. This may mean a less decisive offensive and, instead, a protracted lower intensity conflict. If that is the result, then these leaks have altered the course of history too.
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More