FBI arrest US Air Force National Guard Jack Teixeira over the leaks of top-secret Pentagon docs

Today, the Department of Justice

arrest

ed Jack Douglas Deshara in connection with an investigation into the alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified

national

defense information. Tashara is an employee of the United States Air Force National Guard. she will have an initial appearance in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. I want to thank the FBI Justice Department prosecutors and our Defense Department colleagues for their diligent work on this case. This investigation is ongoing. We will share more information at the appropriate time thank you all the department is taking the problem of this unauthorized disclosure very seriously we continue to work around the clock with the interagency and intelligence community to better understand the scale of the scope and the impact of these

leaks

and just as we are limited in what we can say about the doj's ongoing investigation will also be very limited and what we can say about any of the documents themselves and while we certainly understand the interest of the media in asking questions about the content of these documents, I will stress that as a longstanding matter of policy just because classified information is posted online or elsewhere does not mean it has been declassified by a classification authority and those of you who have been covering The Pentagon has long known that we are simply not going to discuss or confirm classified information due to the potential impact on Homeland Security, as well as the Safety and Security of our personnel and those of our allies and partners, and for that reason we will continue to encourage those of You who are reporting this story to take these latter factors into account and consider the potential consequences of posting documents or potentially sensitive information online or elsewhere in the days after the

leaks

broke.

What steps has the DOD taken to reduce the number of people who have access to not only these classified reports but also generally secure classified material, so we continue to review a variety of factors related to the protection of classified materials, this includes examining and updating distribution lists, assessing how and where intelligence products are shared in a variety of other steps, although I would say it's important to understand that we have strict guidelines in place to safe

guard

confidential and classified information, this was a deliberate criminal act, a violation of those guidelines, and again, I think it's important to understand that now we're going to continue to do everything we can to ensure that people who have a knee need to know when it comes to this kind of information, they have access to that, we're always going to learn. of each situation, but again, this is something that we will continue to look at, but they are taking steps to adjust it.

I'm guessing the population that might have access to this level of information that is accurate again we continue to review those mailing lists updating them to make sure it's necessary to know but again let me emphasize my point that this was a we have rules in place each of us We sign a confidentiality agreement. Anyone who has a security clearance, so all indications are again, this is a criminal act, an intentional violation of those, and yet another reason why we continue to investigate and support the Department of Justice investigation.