Representative Mike Turner, a Republican from Ohio, asserted that the United States had overstepped its bounds in sharing top-secret material following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in an interview that aired on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning.
He said that in light of the recent disclosures of sensitive Pentagon papers on social media, authorities need to take another look at this matter.
The key lesson the US has learned from the 9/11 Commission, according to Turner, who now serves as chair of the House Intelligence Community, is the necessity of disseminating top-secret information more broadly so that Americans have “actionable intelligence.”
He claimed that this scenario, however, has “gone too far,” making it simple for someone in Massachusetts to obtain sensitive data that expose “war plans in Ukraine.”
Turner was alluding to the case of Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman who was detained by American authorities last week on suspicion of leaking the Pentagon’s confidential data.
These first showed up earlier this year on a Teixeira-run online gaming forum, but they then spread to some of the most significant social media sites, like Facebook and Telegram.
The material in the documents covered a wide range of topics, including Ukraine’s limited air power and suspected US espionage activities against several nations across the world.
Turner said that the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman had no cause to be aware of the kinds of data he could have had access to while serving his country.
According to the Ohio Republican, Teixeira shouldn’t have had access to this material and that access should have been terminated if someone had been monitoring the whole case.
Turner concluded by stating that more hearings on the stolen papers will be held by the House Intelligence Committee. He claimed that understanding the modifications required to the way knowledge is currently conveyed is the major objective.
