S8 Ep31: The Discord Leaks with Shane Harris

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[00:00:38] Hello everyone and welcome back to Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:40] On today's episode, The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning intelligence correspondent

[00:00:44] Shane Harris joins me to discuss the Discord leaks and the Air National Guardsmen who

[00:00:49] earlier this week pleaded guilty to charges of willful retention and transmission of US

[00:00:54] national defense information and act has been called the largest disclosure of classified

[00:00:58] material in years.

[00:01:00] Shane shares his reporting on who this man is, what he leaked and his bewildering motivations

[00:01:05] for doing so.

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[00:01:50] Shane Harris, welcome back to secrets and spies.

[00:01:52] It's great to have you on again.

[00:01:53] Thanks Matt, it's nice to talk to you again too.

[00:01:55] Yeah as always.

[00:01:56] For any listeners who may be unfamiliar with your work tell us a bit about you and what

[00:02:00] you cover for The Washington Post.

[00:02:02] Yeah sure so I am the intelligence correspondent here at the post.

[00:02:06] So I cover the CIA, the DNI, all things related to espionage, the sort of secret worlds of spies

[00:02:14] and I'm on our national security team so I often work with a lot of colleagues who cover

[00:02:18] the State Department, the Pentagon, justice department and related things like that.

[00:02:22] Thanks for that.

[00:02:23] So a year ago tomorrow you were on the show to talk about your reporting on the Nord Stream

[00:02:28] pipeline.

[00:02:29] That was my first interview that we aired so I thought it'd be fun to ask you back

[00:02:34] on to talk about the Discord leaks.

[00:02:36] You've largely quarterbacked the post coverage of this story has been called like the largest

[00:02:41] disclosure of US classified material since Edward Snowden to ease us in.

[00:02:46] Tell us what sort of information began coming to light and how you became aware of it.

[00:02:51] Well it was last almost a year ago now I guess that one afternoon some classified military

[00:02:58] documents related to the war in Ukraine started popping up on social media.

[00:03:03] They were being seen on telegram, some were post worse, were on Twitter and a lot of

[00:03:08] reporters kind of scrambled to figure out what are these documents doing there.

[00:03:11] They looked like they were military briefings.

[00:03:13] They were on things like casualty numbers, you know sort of state of the war documents and

[00:03:19] we like others should dig into that and what we determined was that these documents had

[00:03:24] first way their way onto the internet via a server on Discord which is the platform that's

[00:03:30] really popular with people who play video games it helps them play video games in real

[00:03:34] time they can exchange text and video and they can share gaming platforms and screens.

[00:03:39] And my colleague Sam Oakford and I as we dug into this managed to basically find the

[00:03:45] original Discord server that these documents had emanated from and started digging into

[00:03:50] that and eventually were able to speak to people who have been members of that server

[00:03:57] and also obtain a larger charge of documents that were placed there by someone who was described

[00:04:03] to us by this initial core of members in the Discord server.

[00:04:07] This forwarding we now know that individual to be a now 22 year old member of the air

[00:04:12] national guard named Jack Tashira.

[00:04:16] He had printed out classified documents at work where he worked in Massachusetts in an

[00:04:22] intelligence facility on an air base.

[00:04:25] He's a computer tech basically who had a top secret security clearance and was fascinated

[00:04:30] by secret information wanted to show off to his friends the kind of access is that he

[00:04:35] had was very closely following world events including the war in Ukraine and would basically

[00:04:41] read and write down or print out classified reports about all these subjects that were

[00:04:45] interesting to him and then post them to Discord.

[00:04:48] He did this for quite a long time before he got caught so the discord leaks really are

[00:04:54] the product of all of this information that this young guy this kid really was basically

[00:05:01] able to steal from work and share with his friends.

[00:05:05] If we could let's start a dial the clock back a bit and say like who who is Jack Tashira?

[00:05:11] So so Jack Tashira was born in North-Dight in Massachusetts and grew up there kind of in

[00:05:17] a relatively small kind of suburban town.

[00:05:20] From a young age he was fascinated in by military hardware, military gear.

[00:05:28] He was very interested in World War II aircraft when he was a small kid and that around

[00:05:32] middle school got very into video gaming like a lot of kids do and it was very interested

[00:05:37] in games simulating warfare shooter games those types of things.

[00:05:43] Now fairly normal childhood it would seem and when he gets to high school he starts exhibiting

[00:05:48] some troubling behaviors mostly involving violence and threats of violence he was suspended

[00:05:55] for one day from high school for threatening to bring weapons to school police found that

[00:06:00] he had made threats to students he had made threatening racial remarks when he was young.

[00:06:07] I say all of that to note that in addition to being kind of maybe a troubled kid this

[00:06:13] comes up and becomes a subject of interest when after graduating high school he is enlisting

[00:06:19] in the Massachusetts Air and National Guard and is applying for a top secret security clearance

[00:06:25] because it is ordered to do his job as a computer tech at this facility where he has a working

[00:06:30] he needs a clearance to help maintain computers and computer networks that contain classified

[00:06:35] information.

[00:06:36] He's working essentially for people who are doing intelligence analysis and support for

[00:06:40] the military and he has to be able to get on classified computer networks to basically

[00:06:46] to maintain them.

[00:06:47] So in the course of him applying for this security clearance these issues about trouble incidents

[00:06:52] in his past come up and apparently are deemed not sufficient to deny giving him a clearance

[00:06:59] all of which becomes kind of a point of issue later when he gets this job in this intelligence

[00:07:04] facility and he is spotted by his superiors poking around and reading classified documents

[00:07:12] when he's not supposed to be and is warned several times to stop doing this does it anyway

[00:07:19] tells friends that he knows he's not supposed to be sharing the information but he doesn't

[00:07:23] care what you start to emerge emerges from this is a picture I think of a kid who has

[00:07:28] a pretty big anti-authority streak who is very distrustful of the government for which

[00:07:34] he's working has a lot of paranoid conspiracy theories about things that the government

[00:07:39] is up to and seems in part to be looking around in classified documents to prove those

[00:07:44] theories sometimes.

[00:07:45] So it's this really fascinating portrait of someone who in this vast intelligence apparatus

[00:07:51] that we have today where hundreds of thousands of people have these top secret security

[00:07:55] clearances this kid with one of those clearances it basically has free reign at his job to

[00:08:02] go swimming around through classified networks looking at all kinds of documents that are

[00:08:06] just interesting to him and then shares them with his friends and doesn't stop when he's

[00:08:12] told to do it and ultimately doesn't stop until he's arrested.

[00:08:15] So it's a pretty fascinating portrait to me of a kid who grew up on blind his friends

[00:08:20] were all online these people who we share documents with he never actually met in person

[00:08:25] he met them during the pandemic and formed a discord server and it became this sort

[00:08:30] of for me a very fascinating story of the pandemic and what it did to people particularly

[00:08:35] young people who were in isolation and turned to technology as their only source of contact

[00:08:41] with other people and seem to have lost a real sense of reality and consequences for

[00:08:47] their actions.

[00:08:48] I want to put a pin in the vetting issues to get back to that in a second so let's let's

[00:08:54] stick a bit more into the community he was kind of stewing in on discord what it was

[00:08:59] like who he was surrounded by and kind of like how he got into that.

[00:09:04] So before the pandemic around about 2019 or so he had been in a discord server that

[00:09:11] was populated by people who were fans of a YouTuber that specialized in profiles about

[00:09:18] guns and military hardware should have like a guns and gear YouTube channel.

[00:09:23] And he fell in with some friends there who accounts differ whether they were kicked

[00:09:27] out of this YouTube chat you to our discord server or left it on their own, but they

[00:09:33] were becoming problematic for a lot of the racially insensitive jokes that they would

[00:09:38] make anti-Semitic remarks they would make basically as other members I think would collect

[00:09:42] character is it just causing a lot of trouble and saying things that they really found

[00:09:47] distasteful and offensive.

[00:09:49] And so these kids with a jack kind of at the center peel off and form their own discord

[00:09:55] server that becomes kind of a virtual clubhouse where they're all hanging out during the

[00:10:00] pandemic when they can't go to school and they can't see their friends in person.

[00:10:04] And in that discord server they are trading racist and anti-Semitic memes jokes that

[00:10:12] they're looking at images of Gore like violence on the battlefield they are displaying like

[00:10:18] a real insensitivity that he would probably associate with just you know idiot teenage

[00:10:23] kids who also though happened to be into some really paranoid ideas about the government.

[00:10:29] You know this is not to excuse any of their racist remarks which many of them thought

[00:10:32] they were just being funny and as they put it edgy but some of the really conspiratorial

[00:10:37] beliefs that they traded in I found to be you know pretty troubling for instance I mean

[00:10:42] Tashira was a big believer in this idea that the government notably the FBI had in many

[00:10:50] cases obtained evidence that individuals were about to commit mass shootings like at the

[00:10:55] one at the supermarket in Buffalo some years ago and let them happen so that they could

[00:11:00] create a pretext for tightening gun laws. Now putting aside that this makes zero sense because

[00:11:06] we don't tighten gun laws in response to mass shootings in this country. He was also

[00:11:10] this is very sinister dark idea about how the government works and you know it was kind

[00:11:17] of in that atmosphere that he was stewing every day right and I think that like members

[00:11:22] of this server that we discovered that we talked to really explained how the deeper they got

[00:11:27] into these ideas particularly during the isolation of the pandemic the more that they now see that

[00:11:32] they were becoming detached from reality and making really court decisions. And you know when

[00:11:38] things that they said racist remarks that they made jokes that they made resurfaced in the

[00:11:44] course of our reporting many of them were really humiliated by it and felt very embarrassed and

[00:11:49] shakran understandably. But it was a pretty extremist paranoid group of people and I think that

[00:11:55] you know the fact that they were spending all of their waking hours on wine together created this

[00:12:02] echo chamber where they were all reinforcing their ideas about you know the government being evil

[00:12:07] and the post George Floyd killing protests that became very worried that you know black people

[00:12:13] were going to rise up and somehow you know come for white people in their neighborhoods and this

[00:12:19] you know frankly a lot of paranoia that you see in some kind of quarters of the far right on the

[00:12:23] internet was kind of in microcosm with these kids. Something that I find so striking about this

[00:12:28] story is how it's as you sort of described it's born of this like toxic soup of so much that

[00:12:33] plagues are society today. So like social isolation and the pandemic of loneliness during a larger

[00:12:39] COVID pandemic casual conspiratorial thinking and like the expression of racist beliefs purely for like

[00:12:46] shock and cloud. I believe the clinical term is shit posting. That's right yeah distrust of

[00:12:52] traditional media sources, parasocial online relationships you've as you said you've managed to

[00:12:58] attract down a few of the people who are in this the kids who were in this group for your reporting.

[00:13:03] Did you get the sense that I guess at the time that they earnestly believe these things or were

[00:13:10] they just you know doing it for cloud as as they say. I think it was a mixture of both. I think

[00:13:16] that there were some that that probably didn't deeply think it and they were saying it to be edgy

[00:13:21] or because frankly they just hadn't really thought it through and all their friends were doing it

[00:13:25] and you know I'll do it too because people like it's a rise out of people and then there were

[00:13:29] others that clearly had internalized a lot of these beliefs and felt pretty strongly about them.

[00:13:35] I would put Jack to share it in that category based on things that you know we learned in our reporting

[00:13:41] but it was definitely a mixture and then you know people described Jack as being a leader of the group

[00:13:47] as someone that other particularly younger members of the group looked up to and I think the fact

[00:13:52] that he was in the military and a bit older than some of these kids gave him a sense of authority

[00:13:59] and credibility and I think that there's a lot of evidence that he used that and enjoyed being

[00:14:07] seen as a mentor and an older figure and driving a lot of the conversation the racist and

[00:14:13] apparently conversation that happened in the server. When Russia invades Ukraine this really kicks

[00:14:18] off and Jack takes this authority and the access he has to classify information and weaponize for

[00:14:25] it right? Yeah I think it's around the time of the invasion that he is posting a lot about what

[00:14:30] the US knows about the pending invasion and then after it happens you know kind of battlefield updates

[00:14:35] up to the minute information. He's sharing it both with his friends in this particular small

[00:14:41] discord server. He's also posting it on a much bigger server just kind of a more you could think

[00:14:46] of it isn't more of a public forum as opposed to this more clubhouse environment that he spent most

[00:14:50] at his time and so he's posting in two places classified information about the war in Ukraine. So his

[00:14:57] kind of fringy paranoid beliefs that he earnestly believed was that more of a motivator for him

[00:15:04] to start posting this stuff a more than ideological way in the sense of like how Edward

[00:15:08] Stodendid or was it just he had it and he could? I think it's more that he had it and he could you

[00:15:14] know I never got the sense from talking to friends or reading with Jack wrote that there was a

[00:15:20] sense of like I'm going to expose government wrongdoing. He did feel that he saw things for how they

[00:15:28] really were and that the normal who didn't have this kind of access were missing and he wanted to

[00:15:33] share those insights with his friends so that they would be informed and aware the way that he was.

[00:15:40] I don't think if that is an ideological motivation. I think if it more is kind of like a bit of like

[00:15:45] misguided sense of leadership like it was like he was he felt it was important that these young people

[00:15:51] you know really know what's going on but he also clearly enjoyed being the one to tell them

[00:15:58] being seen as an authority figure. I mean there is a very there's a pedantic streak in all of this

[00:16:04] and the way that he could lecture people or we get upset when they weren't paying as he felt

[00:16:10] you know close enough attention to all of this knowledge that he was dropping on them about the

[00:16:14] way the government really works and what's really going on in the world. But he never presented to me

[00:16:20] as someone who like a Snowden had articulated an idea about the public's right to know government

[00:16:28] malfease and see what they were up to if he wasn't leaking the stuff to journalists when he was

[00:16:32] polling on discord he didn't think that it was going to be widely disseminated and in some cases

[00:16:38] of course he was posting it you know anonymously under a stream name not his own actual name.

[00:16:43] So this information that he was sharing leaves the kind of sheltered cocoon that they had

[00:16:48] on discord and it gets to people like yourself and then the Pentagon how did he react as I guess

[00:16:55] you could say the walls were closing in. It's a place to say he freaked out probably you got very

[00:17:00] nervous you know he he seemed to understand even before the news widely broke that the Pentagon

[00:17:08] was looking into this we never be able to pin that down but he seemed to have some kind of advanced

[00:17:13] idea of this but once the news broke and news organizations started reporting on these documents

[00:17:19] floating around the internet the evidence is that he immediately recognized these were

[00:17:25] documents that he had shared with his friends and that they had broken free as you said of this kind

[00:17:29] of cocoon. He started destroying computer equipment he destroyed his phone he told people he'd

[00:17:36] interacted with to go back and delete messages that contained classified information that he'd post

[00:17:41] it. He essentially nuked or entirely deleted the small discord server that he was in and you know

[00:17:48] all of this has been you know both documented by our reporting and by the FBI's investigation

[00:17:53] he he tried to cover his tracks and I think that that is pretty clear evidence that he knew

[00:17:59] that you know the government was likely to come looking for him and it was being reported at the time

[00:18:04] that the FBI was looking for the source of this so he knew that the walls were closing out on him

[00:18:09] and I think that you know that's you know he has since pleaded guilty so I think we can say

[00:18:15] this is evidence that he understood that he had a crime. Yeah so he was in airman first class

[00:18:22] at the time of his arrest with the specialty cyber transport systems journeyman is that just a fancy

[00:18:28] way of staying he was an IT guy like what did he do in his quadrant. Yes that's a fancy way of saying

[00:18:33] like he's a tech you know I mean he it's funny because you know I used to sort of say to editors

[00:18:40] when we were first reading this story I said I mean he's like the HVAC guy you know it's like he has

[00:18:44] to come into the house and repair your HVAC but you don't expect him that he's going to look through

[00:18:48] your drawers and your files while he's doing it. When the Air Force later came out with an Inspector

[00:18:53] General Report interestingly they felt out that one of his actual jobs was to monitor the HVAC

[00:18:58] system at work and make sure the air conditioner was going to keep the computer school down

[00:19:03] but why does that this is not someone who was engaged in sophisticated analysis he had no reason

[00:19:09] to be looking at any of these documents his job was to keep the computers running he was like

[00:19:15] the help desk guy even in its interesting when he was caught looking at these documents his bosses

[00:19:22] who could tell he was interested in them actually offered him the opportunity to get

[00:19:26] trading as an analyst and he declined that not clear what but like they could tell like you know

[00:19:32] hey you seem to be interested in doing this job that is definitely not your job if you're not

[00:19:38] going to go train to do that job then stop poking around these networks just make sure that you

[00:19:42] know they're working that's your job as you said he wasn't an analyst or some sort of a

[00:19:48] sensor operator or something like yeah he was an IT guy and mostly worked overnight shifts is

[00:19:54] that the case yeah in fact it's because he was on the overnight shift the Air Force investigation

[00:20:00] failed there what that many people around which made it easier for him to print out documents

[00:20:04] without anyone noticing so yes so in the night he's sort of alone in this skiff for large periods

[00:20:11] of time and can just sort of with his clearance log on to Intellipedia or J Wix or any number of

[00:20:17] these databases at will and just print out whatever he wanted in your discussions with with the Air

[00:20:26] Force other experts does the IT guy need access to the contents of those systems I mean like if I

[00:20:33] wrote in a chapter that some character was just printing out dreams of documents that they had no

[00:20:39] real operational need to know I don't think anyone would would believe that it was that easy yeah

[00:20:44] yeah they so the quit it's a great question and I think it's one that frankly the military is still

[00:20:49] struggling with do they need access to the documents no but is seeing the documents an inevitable

[00:20:57] occurrence when they are working on the computer systems that how is the documents yes at least

[00:21:03] as the way the technology is constructed right now it's sort of like you can't yeah I'll use

[00:21:09] another like take gripping clumsy analogy but it's like it out if you are the guy repairing the

[00:21:14] refrigerator like you're going to see the contents of the refrigerator you can't repair it without

[00:21:19] seeing them but it's also not like Jack to share would be working on these networks and suddenly

[00:21:24] he's just confronted by hundreds of classified documents I mean he would have to get one to

[00:21:29] you know files and systems and branch down into them so it's really I think more that in the

[00:21:35] course of doing his work he would be likely to run across documents he might see top lines he might

[00:21:40] even have to open up let's say a file and look inside of it but what he's really supposed to do is

[00:21:46] just kind of ignore it and not retain that information and he's not supposed to you know transcribe

[00:21:51] it on paper as he did he's not supposed to print it out and take pictures of it as he did now some

[00:21:57] experts that we talked to in the course of our reporting said look there's a way that you could

[00:22:01] use technology to essentially put up like gates or barriers in front of these different networks

[00:22:09] where some directories if you want to think of them that way such that if somebody like Jack

[00:22:14] to share a word poking around and then it might say hey hold on a second it doesn't seem like for

[00:22:18] your tech job you need to be doing this so what are you doing here what's this about or do you

[00:22:23] need to have somebody looking over your shoulder while you do it and I think that those are kind of

[00:22:28] like you know solutions that the military is probably going to try and implement now to prevent

[00:22:33] things like this from happening in the future but I think the broader problem is that you know

[00:22:39] though after 9.11 the government went from this the intelligence community and the government

[00:22:44] went from this model of inference intelligence of access on a need to no basis which meant that

[00:22:50] you know things were kind of siloed and putting their own files and you only got access to things

[00:22:54] that you don't need to know toward what was called need to share right fusion yeah exactly the

[00:23:00] philosophy behind it was like we have to make all of this intelligence available to as many

[00:23:04] to a large number of people across the intelligence community in the military because we can't predict

[00:23:10] when this you know one piece of intelligence that Shane is working on is going to be of interest

[00:23:16] to this thing that maths working on but they're not talking to one another but they might make a

[00:23:20] connection and of course that makes total sense if you're trying to prevent something like 9.11

[00:23:26] where we know that the CIA for instance didn't tell the FBI that a kind of members it with

[00:23:32] monitoring had arrived in the United States and some of those guys turned out to be the hijackers

[00:23:37] so you can see why that the need for sharing is important but what it's done is create this system

[00:23:43] where because the kind of the information space is to flattened out and everyone who has a security

[00:23:50] clearance can now kind of hop on J-Wix if they want that's what means that that's why it is

[00:23:56] that like a 21 year old tech like Jack DeShara can hop on there the same way that you know a GS 15

[00:24:02] analyst at the CIA working on the Russia I can do it right apart from the concerns about his

[00:24:09] accessing all this classified material while on the job it was reported in his quadrant that

[00:24:15] that there were other sort of more personal concerns with him I believe it was quoted somewhere

[00:24:20] a colleague of his saying that he was basically like met all the red flags for like a mass shooter

[00:24:26] yeah said that that's right there were a number of colleagues who felt that way apparently some

[00:24:31] called him at work the mass shooter kid that's good it's not good no it's not and what is

[00:24:38] the stamp from is an understanding that some of them had I guess some of the work had found out

[00:24:45] that when he was in high school he had been suspended for threatening to bring a gun to school

[00:24:50] and you know we were able to obtain through a records request took some doing the police report

[00:24:56] by the local police uh uh there who responded at his school and you know what you see I have to say

[00:25:03] is not just like an offhand down remark by a stupid kid who making a joke it's many students and

[00:25:09] teachers saying no he talks about guns all the time he talks about in guns school he makes a violent

[00:25:16] threats towards black people he said I want to kill all black people there are teachers who had

[00:25:21] gone through active shooter trading who once they went out said oh jack is exhibiting the signs

[00:25:26] of a potential shooter like it's that kid and and what was so important about that is that this comes

[00:25:33] up in his background check for when he is applying for a security clearance and the government for

[00:25:39] reasons that we still don't understand the defense department I should say determines that

[00:25:44] that is not enough of a reason to deny him a clearance so they they would they give him what's

[00:25:48] called a favorable adjudication and he gets a clearance well when he gets to work at this airbase

[00:25:54] odys airbase uh okay god people at work find out about this I we think because he tells them

[00:26:00] about it uh you know he's also still talking about his interest in guns and people understand

[00:26:07] of have become very nervous and what was so interesting to me is the Air Force Inspector General

[00:26:12] who looked at this found that look it's one thing you know one problem was that you saw this kid

[00:26:20] looking at classified documents multiple times and didn't pull him off the wide and suspect

[00:26:25] that he let him keep doing it but they said had you also taken more seriously this red flag that

[00:26:31] he had in his past you might have said hey hmm kid looking at intelligence documents he's not

[00:26:36] supposed to exhibiting defiant behavior there's also this weird thing about guns in his background

[00:26:41] this should even have elevated alarm even more is what the Air Force said when they should have

[00:26:46] said you put these things together and you should have seen that you were dealing with the

[00:26:50] potentially volatile individual who had no regard for rules uh and that's ultimately you know

[00:26:56] what they got I mean they they're saying basically had you taken the gun threat more seriously

[00:27:02] you may have responded more seriously to the fact that he was looking at classified documents

[00:27:06] shouldn't have been okay aside from concerns that were raised by others in the squadron right he has

[00:27:12] this documented in a police report this documented history of being obsessed with weapons making

[00:27:17] all kinds of racist statements and stuff all through high school right about killing ATF agents

[00:27:22] and other federal officials I mean teenage boys say and think and do stupid things all the time it's

[00:27:29] it's in their nature right and I nobody wants to be haunted for the rest of the lies by mistakes

[00:27:36] that they make as a kid but I just share with still this person when he enlisted right and I don't

[00:27:42] think you have to be like George Smiley or the ghost of James Angleton to see that this is like

[00:27:48] a potential issue does this point to some sort of greater systemic insider threat issue inside the

[00:27:59] country's national security enterprise I think it does we were struck by the relative ease of

[00:28:06] his getting a security clearance the warning signs that were ignored I was also struck by the

[00:28:12] by the Air Force Inspector General report which usually reports government reports are pretty

[00:28:17] dryly written you read this one and you can tell that the investigators are just baffled by the

[00:28:23] security breakdowns that occurred inside this intelligence unit where you know as I said he's

[00:28:28] observed multiple times reading classified documents that you shouldn't have been they have these

[00:28:35] meetings inside his unit where the commanding officer in an effort to demonstrate what a serious

[00:28:42] mission they all have and doing support for the military starts holding up classified documents

[00:28:46] as an example of the kind of work that they do and it's then the investigators are saying you don't

[00:28:50] need to do that like why are you why are you being cavalier in tossing around classified documents

[00:28:56] I think suggesting that they were creating an atmosphere in which rules for handling classified

[00:29:00] documents just work very well respected so you kind of go through every point the chain of how

[00:29:05] you got a clearance in the first place why didn't the background investigators talk to his friends

[00:29:10] on discord I mean we still don't know who the background investigator interviewed traditionally

[00:29:16] they would talk to maybe your neighbors maybe classmates maybe family members maybe employers

[00:29:22] there is no obligation for an applicant to disclose their social media history to say here are my

[00:29:28] discord user names and we're living in an era in which people who want security clearances you know

[00:29:34] they have see we all have significant online lives and in jack's case his most significant

[00:29:40] relationships were online not in real life and so if you really wanted a picture of Jack Tashira

[00:29:46] you had to talk to his discord friends otherwise you're missing this whole piece of him

[00:29:52] had they talked to one or even two of those people they might have surfaced you know the racism

[00:29:57] the paranoia the threats to ATF agents the things that were just common occurrences for him and so I

[00:30:04] think that's a huge hole in the way that the government protects classified information grants

[00:30:09] clearances and then clearly at this base in Otis there was just a at Otis Air Force Base

[00:30:15] there was just a breakdown in an understanding of what having a clearance even means like the idea

[00:30:21] that having a clearance just means you can look at whatever you want the air forces but your general

[00:30:26] found that that was a misperception there I have to believe that if it's happening at this

[00:30:31] air national guard base in Massachusetts it's happening at other intelligence facilities as well

[00:30:36] maybe not in the CIA proper who knows but it's some of these kind of outposts that are doing

[00:30:42] intel support work where perhaps they don't have as much of a history with protecting information

[00:30:48] and they're young you know I think maybe this is more commonplace and who knows maybe it's

[00:30:53] happening at an SNC I did too but it was a pretty baffling breakdown that I think he's probably

[00:30:59] not unique to this war capability no that's always something that's really stood out to me about

[00:31:05] even from the start is how egregious and obvious it was his squadron was under the larger 102

[00:31:15] intelligence wing what sort of consequences has there been for that wings mission and its leadership

[00:31:21] uh the commanding officer I believe was relieved since there's been some other senior level discipline

[00:31:27] for a time their work on intelligence support was suspended I think the future of that work is a

[00:31:34] little bit TBD at this point but you know there hasn't been any kind of discipline higher up than that

[00:31:42] all of it has been very isolated to uh Odessa National Guard base into the facility the intelligence

[00:31:48] support wing they are we just have to say that I would expect that there would be any more higher

[00:31:53] level you know fire rings when this seems like a pretty isolated you know this is this incident was

[00:31:58] isolated to that base but what I'm very curious to know is whether or not the people who approved

[00:32:04] a security clearance are going to come in for any kind of scrutiny or the process itself but the

[00:32:08] immediate fallout was at fairly senior levels there um at the intelligence support way we're going

[00:32:14] to take a quick break and then we'll be right back with more

[00:32:35] have had these leaks to your knowledge resulted in any sort of permanent or lasting harm to US

[00:32:42] intelligence sources and methods I don't think that they have um and that's one of the things

[00:32:45] that's been notable about these leaks is that they were highly revelatory uh you know particularly when

[00:32:53] it came to what US officials knew and estimated about the war in Ukraine and the likelihood for

[00:32:59] success of the counteroffence of which hadn't happened yet basically showing that US officials knew

[00:33:04] privately that the situation in Ukraine was more dire than they portrayed it publicly as far as I

[00:33:10] know though there has not been a leak that led to a source or a method of acquiring intelligence

[00:33:16] drying up that said you know there are some documents that spoke to or reveal sourcing that was

[00:33:25] highly sensitive that we either did not publish because we determined it was so sensitive or

[00:33:31] we withheld of the request of government officials and including in European governments not just

[00:33:35] United States so there was some stuff in there that definitely it was you know if it had gotten out

[00:33:42] more widely it could have definitely done damage but this is not in a case where like with the

[00:33:48] Snowden leaks where you know many government officials have have uh attested that um there were

[00:33:54] lines of collection that were compromised and dried up because of those leaks we haven't seen

[00:34:00] that with a discord base there's been some resolution to this story earlier this week so we're

[00:34:05] recording this on on March 7th tell us about that yeah so uh that was on Monday uh this week we're

[00:34:12] talking using March 7th um Jack Tashira appeared in a district court in massive shusets uh and changed

[00:34:20] his earlier plea of not guilty to guilty on six counts including the willful retention and dissemination

[00:34:28] of national defense intelligence so leaking that's the legal way for saying leaking uh so he

[00:34:36] took responsibility for everything that he was charged with and um I was there on the court room

[00:34:41] with my colleague Sam Okford it was a notable event because in the past year that we've been writing

[00:34:46] about Jack Tashira we had never been in a room with him I mean he was it's in jail by the time

[00:34:51] we discovered or I'd better rest it at the time we discovered who he was and so we never had access

[00:34:56] to him so just physically being 15 feet from him was kind of an interesting experience but uh he stood

[00:35:03] there and talked to the judge and as the prosecution went through all of the charges and what they

[00:35:08] would prove at trial which is all the things that we've been talking about that he was alleged to have

[00:35:13] done the judge said now do you understand and acknowledge that if you went to trial they would be

[00:35:18] able to prove this and he said yes you're out of it I do so he admitted to it and he will be sentenced

[00:35:24] later in September uh his lawyers are asking for an 11 year prison sentence uh the government is

[00:35:31] asking for uh closer to 17 years 16 years name months so he is going to spend somewhere between

[00:35:38] 11 and 8 and 16 years in prison which as a stiff of a penalty is that is um I think is actually a pretty

[00:35:46] good deal for him because he was looking at potentially 25 to 30 years to stop more so you know if he

[00:35:53] serves 11 years he'll get out when he's 32 33 and still have much of his life ahead of it uh which

[00:36:01] considering the the brazenness of his actions as the prosecution sees that would be a fairly generous

[00:36:07] outcome for him I think yeah yeah part of the plea agreement as I understand it was that he'll

[00:36:12] cooperate with the feds in a full damage assessment of what classified information he released and

[00:36:18] how far it might have spread do you have any details you can share about that we don't know about that

[00:36:22] yet and that will be conducted by the defense department and the intelligence community but I think

[00:36:27] what we can presume will happen as these things generally it's a pretty typical element of

[00:36:32] a plea deal like this is that he will have to sit down with investigators and say exactly how he

[00:36:38] did it and I think he will probably be expected to the best of his recollection talk about individual

[00:36:45] users that were in the discord server and the ones that the government has keyed it on and its

[00:36:52] public statements and in its court filings are foreign nationals who were in the discord server

[00:36:58] uh it's something that we learned very early on when we were interviewing members of the server that

[00:37:02] yeah there were people who seemed to have been in Ukraine and possibly in Russia the government's

[00:37:07] going to want to know everything he could tell them about that and that's also going to be really

[00:37:12] important because when the FBI was pursuing Jack he deleted the discord server where he shared

[00:37:21] this information and we interviewed executives at discord who told us that they have no record

[00:37:27] of that server so the evidence that could have helped investigators like say okay give us

[00:37:32] get the screen names of people the handles that were in these rooms that's gone so it's going to

[00:37:38] require to some degree Jack DaShira I would suspect trying to remember individual screen names and

[00:37:44] accounts that he could tell them so that the government could follow up on that and you know find out

[00:37:49] whether those people were working for a foreign government or had their computer sack back for

[00:37:54] a government yeah that was going to be my my next question just be clear about that point that

[00:37:59] does the government suspect that any of the foreign nationals in that server were there on purpose

[00:38:04] for that reason to my knowledge no but I can't definitively say that because I don't know if the

[00:38:11] answers now but to my knowledge no and he was not charged with like you know giving it to a foreign

[00:38:18] national yeah before we wrap up here as I said at the top of the show you and your colleagues at

[00:38:23] the post have been deeply involved in covering this story from the start you partnered with

[00:38:29] PBS is front line on a documentary about DaShira and the leaks you've reported on pretty much

[00:38:36] every major US national security story in the last 20 years is there something about this one

[00:38:41] in particular or how you've covered it that's felt different or special to you yeah and in fact

[00:38:47] I'm glad you asked that because it reminds me of you know when Sam and I first started reporting

[00:38:53] the story and we're talking to somebody who knew to share from this discord server and you know

[00:38:59] we're coming into the story talking to this person not knowing okay how do these classified documents

[00:39:04] end up online where did they come from and this you know person starts telling this story about this

[00:39:10] you know young guy working for the military who is sharing documents to impress a bunch of

[00:39:16] teenagers essentially and I remember distinctly kind of looking at Sam oh this look like

[00:39:22] aren't hearing this correctly because I've got a lot of leak investigations you know they're usually

[00:39:28] done by people who have a political motivation but they want to expose what they see as wrong doing

[00:39:34] they may have some kind of axe to grind on the policy level I've never seen a leaker who did it

[00:39:40] to impress about your teenagers and I kind of had to like I felt a little thrown off by this

[00:39:46] because of that just just sounds implausible what is going on here this doesn't make sense

[00:39:51] and you know for me because I you know I report on you know government officials and you know

[00:39:58] grownups basically they don't always handle it grownups but to kind of you can immerse into this world

[00:40:04] of teens in on a gaming platform as being at the epicenter of one of these huge national security

[00:40:12] leaks that was just unique for me I'd never experienced anything like that but the more that we got

[00:40:18] into it it became apparent to me and I think to say out too that this is precisely where future

[00:40:25] lease light come from because you have this environment in which so many people have access

[00:40:30] to classified documents and could be sharing them online with friends and in fact since Jack

[00:40:36] to share his arrest we've seen a couple more instances of people letting documents at work

[00:40:42] sharing them with people on nine in some cases they're accused of actual espionage so I think

[00:40:47] that what we kind of came onto here is perhaps like what the future of leaking is going to look like.

[00:40:53] Yeah I think that's a you make an interesting point there there's a quote in one of the articles

[00:40:59] you've put out over the year that was a friend of his on the discord server who was like full

[00:41:07] on sobbing when to share it got arrested and he said well like well he's my best friend and I mean

[00:41:13] I'm only like a generation removed from these kids but to me that's not a friendship you know it's

[00:41:19] this weird kind of quasi thing in between and now you think of like the classical counterintelligence

[00:41:26] thing that like okay some voluptuous blonde sits next to intelligence officer at a hotel bar

[00:41:33] you know and it sort of begins that way but this just opens up a whole new spectrum of potential

[00:41:40] issues here yeah absolutely and I think that there's long been a concern in government that

[00:41:46] foreign intelligence services could target people through gaming platforms so you can imagine

[00:41:50] a scenario in which it's not jack to share or a jack to share up like person doing the leaking

[00:41:56] but rather that person is being worked over and targeted by a fourth by who says you know like oh

[00:42:02] show me some of the things that you see at work oh I'm so impressed so interesting this is actually

[00:42:08] a case in the news in the past week that looks like that actually that we're just trying to look into

[00:42:13] but I think you know it's it's and you mentioned you know the kid who said who is sobbing when

[00:42:18] jack was arrested and I've lost my best friend I don't think that that person fully understood

[00:42:25] the degree to which jack to share up had put him at risk yeah that put him at legal risk

[00:42:31] this kid's got lucky this kid's got very lucky and what's interesting to me is that can tell you

[00:42:35] that one person who did very much appreciate the risk that jack to share up with that kid and

[00:42:42] was his mother who was not and it is part of this I mean it is experience we did talk to the

[00:42:49] parents of some of these people who were minors when we were talking to them we needed a

[00:42:53] permission from their parents and you know I think a lot of these parents were just built

[00:42:58] wilderness by what their kids were doing online they didn't know they're just they're on the computer

[00:43:05] playing games who are these friends they're talking to I don't know and you know when we first

[00:43:09] reported on these stories so many friends and colleagues came to me like in the office or just

[00:43:15] email being said you know my kid is on discord and I have no idea what he is doing and it just

[00:43:21] revealed to people that there is a that this is not them just playing a game that they are in fact

[00:43:27] any community online these relationships are meaningful to them but they're spending hours of

[00:43:35] their waking time with these people and their parents have no clue who they are yeah well we'll

[00:43:42] leave it on that note where can listeners find more about your work you can read my work at the

[00:43:47] Lush & Post you can also follow me on twitter at Shane Harris but if you just google Shane Harris

[00:43:54] Washington Post you'll get a list on the site of all library articles and you can read those there

[00:43:58] yeah we'll have links to that in the show notes including the front line documentary that you

[00:44:02] guys worked on uh that was really well done um and I think listeners will find it quite interesting

[00:44:07] Shane Harris thanks so much for coming on it's always great to speak with you

[00:44:10] yeah you too Matt thanks for having me

[00:44:25] thanks

[00:44:36] thanks for listening this is secrets and spies

[00:44:54] you