lawmaker, she was a well known conspiracy theorists through the partisan lead battle review in arizona, known as the so called arizona audit, she spread all kinds of outlandish lies. once an office, she held a hearing where she invited a conspiracy theories. there is abby to testify. and this person spread lies like the governor of arizona is laundering money for the mexican drug cartel. so here , the republicans said, that's our line. you are out, abby. fascinating story there. kyung lah thank you very much. and that does it for me. i'll see you back here tomorrow. there's more news coming up right now. this is cnn breaking news. thank you for joining us in the cnn newsroom at the top of the hour. i'm erica hill. and i'm bianna. golodryga we're going to bring you that breaking news. cnn has

learned. law enforcement is about to arrest a suspect tied to the leak of a trove of highly secret government intelligence, which is embarrassed the us and strained multiple alliances. today. several blockbuster reports expose who the suspected leader is. the new york times has named him as a 21 year old member of the massachusetts air national guard. cnn has not independently verified his identity, and it's not currently naming him both the times and the washington post said the man is the leader of a chat group on the online platform discord and his older than most members of the group of gamers who call him o. g. one of his friends who spoke anonymously on camera to the post obtained parental permission to do so. because that friend is underage. take a listen. he was. he was a young, charismatic man who loved nature . god who loved shooting guns and in racing cars. he did see himself as the leader of this group, and ultimately he was the

leader of this group, and he wanted us all to be sort of supersoldiers system degree informed fit with god. well, armed stuff like that. well the lakers i d just one of several big developments on this story. today the pentagon we've learned is that tightening its communication lines limiting who receives highly classified intelligence and the new york times discovered 27 new pages online, which reveal infighting based on what they saw among russia's government when it comes to the war in ukraine to all of that later in the broadcast, but first cnn's natasha bertrand has been tracking every new detail we are getting in, natasha, do we have any ideas to how soon an arrest could be made? read. we'll be on a law enforcement source tells my colleague evan perez. that arrest could be made imminently here. we don't know exactly when, but it is likely to be very soon. now this suspect this 21 year old air national guardsman, he was apparently the leader of an online group chat on a server called discord. and

he, according to a member of that group, chat, who spoke to the washington post was the one who was posting hundreds of classified documents on this server over the last several months now, his motivation asian at this point is not totally clear. however that friend of his did tell the post that he believes that this leaker was highly suspicious of the u. s government believes that the u. s intelligence community was hiding things from the general public, and he wanted the members of that group chat who were largely teenagers to be more aware of the world around them. now once these documents started to become public members of that group chat who are numbered and about the two dozens. they were very, very freaked out by this, to say the least, and they did not realize just how big this was until it all started spilling out into the public. here's what one of the members had to say to the post. there was about three other members in the voice chat with me when i first found out that these were public made public it felt like my heart was beaten out of its chest and my

legs were buckling and i could not believe that this was happening. we didn't realize the sheer just immense nature of these leaks until, um a bit later. so that really gives you a window here into just how inexperienced the members of this group chat were with these kinds of highly sensitive national security issues that this guardsman was exposing them to. and we are told that that the law enforcement community the fbi, which has been investigating this for over a week, now, they did begin to home in on this particular suspect in recent days, and an arrest is imminent. the pentagon , meanwhile, it has dramatically limited the district the distribution of the kind of highly classified documents that this guardsman was able to. get his hands on, and we'll see whether or not that stymies leaks like this in the future guys. yeah it is a really important question. natasha. appreciate the new reporting. thank you. president biden is weighing in for the first time about these intelligence leak.

he is of course currently in ireland on a state visit, where he met with the country's president earlier today in dublin. cnn's jeremy diamond is live at the white house. so what is the president saying jeremy about these leaks? well we do know that president biden has been getting constant updates about the state of the investigation into these leaks. and earlier today, the president reflecting what it appears that we're now learning this notion that we're hearing that an arrest may be imminent. the president earlier today not saying that exactly but saying that this investigation does appear to be progressing and saying that they appear to be getting close. to identifying the source of this listen. there is a full blown investigation going on. as you know, with the intelligence, including the justice department. and they're getting close. i'm not concerned about the latest. i'm concerned and that happen. but there's nothing contemporaneous that i'm aware. and now the last part of

those remarks by the president are very interesting because look, the president says, there's nothing contemporaneous year. nothing all that consequential, but we do know that these leaks have spurred on all out government effort to appease us allies, some of whom appeared to have been spied on based on these documents, some of whose embarrassing secrets have been revealed through these documents. and then as far as the contemporaneous nature of this look, i guess it depends on how you define contemporaneous, but certainly one thing that current and former officials girls have pointed out as one of the concerning aspects of these leaks is how fresh some of this intelligence is detailing, for example, dwindling ukrainian stockpiles of munitions going back just to last month and also talking about u. s plans to help bolster ukrainian defenses going into detail about u. s intelligence collection efforts within the russian military, all of which the revelation of which could potentially compromise the u. s efforts to help ukraine and say gather intelligence about

russia going forward. so certainly u. s officials are not downplaying this. but the president there does appear to be trying to at least downplayed the consequential nature of these leaks now going forward. what's clear is that u. s officials do you plan on clearly prosecuting this case and getting to the bottom of who leaked this information, potentially arresting that person at some point soon, but certainly something that the president is staying close to, even as he continues his trip in ireland. yeah, this puzzling is to the president, saying these are not contemporaneous because , as you mentioned jeremy, they are relatively fresh. just a few weeks. a few months old. thank you. so much for your reporting. jeremy diamond. well, the young friend of the leaker told the washington post that initially he typed out the intelligence but then began posting hundreds of photos of the documents themselves. i was first made aware of these documents. i want to say about 6 to 8. months ago , i was in a discord server by the name of doug sticker

central. and in this channel, there was classified documents being posted by a user who i refer to as yogi. from this point. the documents were often listed as ukraine versus russia . first however, it's slowly spiraled into just intelligence about everything. slowly spiraled. kimberly dozier, the cnn global affairs analyst and senior managing editor at the military times. david priest is a former cia officer and author of the book the president's book of secrets. it's about top secret intelligence and how it's handled. he's also a host of the national security podcast chatter, retired air force colonel cedric leighton is a cnn military analyst. good to have all of you with us. colonel leighton, could i start with you as we look at what we're learning, and this is really evolving fairly rapidly, just in the last few hours. or so learning that this is a young 21 year old, according to the new york times in washington post a national air guardsmen someone who is that young mayor how they had access to some of this

information, the papers reporting that it could be based on a roll working in i t. but colonel, just give us a sense, even if somebody is working in a role like that, what sort of clearance what they need to have access given their job. yeah eric is so this is a very interesting case because i've worked with thousands of airmen who are younger than 21, who were able to quite coherently maintain their security clearance posture and handled highly classified information. you know, obviously he got ahold of a whole bunch of documents and briefings that are beyond what a normal person at that level of their air force would see. but one thing that did strike me was the fact that he may not have had the same formal training that active duty airmen get when it comes to intelligence handling procedures. that there is some training that occurs the kind of role that he had. he may have

been in the administrative assistant to a senior officer or even mid level officer. and in that role, he may have been able to see some of the documents and some briefings from the joint staff that he then put on that discord server. yeah it's stunning to see the washington post source, telling reporters that if you could think it, it was in those documents. in equally stunning david is just the amount of time and how long this suspect had been posting this intel online and i've been reading that a lot of intelligence agencies specifically are focusing on these online gaming sites as a way of really eyeing potentially recruiting spies in the future. this is a relatively well known site discord. does it surprise you that he had been able to get away with this and post for as long as he has been? the washington post is saying that this has been going on since late last year. it is a shift in terms of how leaked information is propagated and how it's sent

to the media. back in the old days. you used to find people leaking to reporters, and then there would be a mediating function where the reporter or the publisher of a newspaper would sometimes decide well, this has some public interest, but the lives at stake outweigh the public interest, and we're just not going to publish that. that's not the case here if people are putting information out onto discord or other platforms, there is no mediation . whoever has access to that server can get that information and in this case, it's not clear but from the reporting we're seeing that appears to be largely teenage boys that this person was trying to impress the information can get out there quicker. and it's also harder to detect than something that goes to a newspaper or to cnn that the publisher takes to the cia and says hi, we're going to report on this. do you want to offer commentary? do you want to give us any perspective? if it's being put up for just a second for that? david told that that we're gonna go straight to the

pentagon, where the press secretary is addressing this leak. let's listen in massachusetts air national guard is a person of interest in this leaked documents case. i have several other questions. so first of all, as i mentioned there is an ongoing criminal investigation and so anything related to that i'm going to need to refer you to the doj or the fbi. can you speak at all to if anyone in the department offense has reached out to this airman, do you know where he is? there are reports that law enforcement is closing in on this airman's location. um so has anyone been able to reach out to him again. tara appreciate the question but again, given that this is an ongoing investigation, i'm not going to be able to talk about the investigation or any potential doj action so i'd prefer you to them in the days after the leaks came to light, what steps has dearly taken to reduce the number of people who have access to not only these classified briefings, but classified material in general. sure so we continue to review a

variety of factors as it relates to safeguarding classified materials. this includes examining and updating distribution lists, assessing how and where intelligence products are shared in a variety of other steps. i would say, though, that it is it is important to understand that we do have stringent guidelines in place for safeguarding classified and sensitive information. this was a deliberate criminal act, a violation of those guidelines. and so again, i think that's important. understand. now we will continue to do everything we can to ensure that the people who have a need to know, uh, when it comes to this kind of information have access to that . we're always going to learn from every situation. um but again, this is something that will continue to look at. but you are taking steps to tighten that. i guess population who might have access to this level of information that's accurate again. we continue to review

those distribution list. update them. make sure there is a need to know. but again. let me just emphasize my point that this was a we have rules in place. each of us signs a nondisclosure agreement. anybody that has a has a security clearance, and so all indications are again. this is a criminal act of willful violation of those and again another reason why we're continuing to investigate and support the o'jays investigation . just last question. um do you have a sense that this is just the act of one individual? and even if so, wouldn't members of his chain of command also be held accountable for this lost information again? i don't want to speculate or get ahead of the doj investigation. we need to allow that to run its course. and so i'd refer you to them. let me go ahead and go to board and then come back to gen. yeah but there's two questions one just to clarify in india. these efforts to change the way you do business in terms of protecting classified information apart

from the stuff that you do already is that diode led or is that joint staff fled? who's kind of directing? what on that , and the second question is just hypothetically. i know you like hypotheticals. if somebody was to be a charged what would determine whether the military would charge and indict and you know, carry out the legal process against that person or people or doj. so on your ladder question. you're right. i don't want to get into hypotheticals. i will say that you know, as always, every case is judged on its own merit, and we need to allow this investigation to run its course. and then, of course there'll be more to say on that, um, on your first question. ah again, it's important. understand that this is not just about d o d. this is about the u. s government. this is about how we protect and safeguard classified information. and as i highlighted, we do have strict protocols in place. so any time there is an incident anytime

there's an opportunity to review that and refine it, or, of course, going to take advantage of that within the department of defense. um as you've heard us, say, secretary austin has been convening daily meetings with his senior leaders to include the chairman to talk about, uh, reviewing the scope and the impact of this and also to look at mitigation measures and what we need to do across the department of defense to ensure that we're doing our utmost to reinforce existing policies, procedures and rules and if there are any areas where we need to tighten things up, we certainly will already that's correct is as i mentioned at her stop when i say diode, i mean the department of defense across the entire enterprise. okay, jen. general writer. you say that there are strict protocols in place. and yet at 21 year old airman was able to access some of the nation's top secrets. how

did this happen? and isn't this a massive security breach again ? we need to allow the investigation to run its course . well, of course no more when that is completed, so i would refer you to doj on that. what is your message to anyone who might be thinking of leaking these kind of documents in the future? um look again. we have procedures. we have protocols in place. we receive regular training on the proper handling of classified information. as i mentioned, we signed nondisclosure agreements, so those rules are very clear. and anyone who has a security clearance knows that. anyone who violates those rules is doing so willfully. can you put into context the damage that has been done by this leak again right now we're continuing to assess the scope and the impact and so that's work that will be ongoing. tony. how large was the distribution network for these documents say, um, prior to last thursday, when the disclosures came out, we talking in

thousands of people that have access inside the pentagon and outside the pentagon to include europe and bases around the united states, tony so i don't i don't have any numbers to provide you as as i'm sure you can appreciate the department of defense and all of our components. it's a global enterprise. doing work in all areas of the world. and so certainly we have people who have access to information that they need to do their jobs. but i don't have any numbers for you was widespread, though, versus you know, outside the pentagon, though, and two other military installations well, again, the department of defense we conduct global operations, so intelligence products. operational information products are shared with gop leaders and personnel globally throughout the world, whether it's a component command, whether it's in the services but again the important thing to understand about classified information. it's not just i want to have access to it because i have a clearance. it's all based on need to know. do you have a need

to know that information and that typically will grant you access if you have the appropriate clearances? thank you, travis. thanks pat. um i'm still confused on the access issue. you said that there were changes that were made. but you also said that you're reviewing things can you tell us where are there less people who have access to this type of information today than there were a week ago. so travis again? i'm not gonna i'm not gonna get down to numbers again . reviewing distribution lists, looking at who has a need to know, making sure those things are updated doing due diligence in the wake of these unauthorized disclosures. again though you don't want to emphasize that this was a deliberate criminal act to violate those guidelines and rules and the same way that if you locked your front door and somebody came into your house and took something, you you followed your procedures and you locked your door, but somebody went in your house and took something and put it out on the

street. that's what we're talking about. here. let me go to carla. just ae questions on this. and then i have a follow on something separate. um why did it take so long to brief the secretary about the leaks? he said that he was briefed on april the sixth. and would you classify that delay as a failure of the open source? intelligence teams? absolutely not. we were notified . you know, the department became aware on the fifth. the secretary was briefed hours later in the morning of the six. i don't consider that a delay. thanks to follow on that these documents were available. long before april 5th and sixth. so what took so long for d, o d and the intelligence communities to locate these documents? yes so that's really something that the investigation will tell us. that said. i think it's important. remember that that diodes, intelligence activities are primarily focused internationally, so to the extent that the department collects any information related

to u. s persons, for example, or gaming chat rooms. it would have to be conducted in accordance with law and policy and in a manner that protects privacy and civil liberties. so again, we'll know more at the culmination of this investigation. thank you. let me go to follow up. just the syria really quickly on the syria attacks from march. do we have a final conclusion on the tb assessments? how many us troops received tvs as a result of these attacks? um and do you believe that the u. s strikes have that happened on 3 23 the retaliatory strikes do you believe that they have deterred iranian backed groups? from targeting u s forces. yes so on the on the t b i my understanding is centcom has collected some additional information. so we'll get that to you and the press. team here in terms of deterrence again, we're going to continue to do everything that we need to do at a time and place of our choosing to ensure that we're deterring and safeguarding our folks. i'll

just leave it at that. thank you. we go to. can you just tell us what the mission of the 101st 102nd intelligence wing for the massachusetts international guard, was and are you going to release this airman's service record in response to i'm sure the thousands of requests you've already gotten. so david on the service record again. we'll take that and will provide an update when we're able to in terms of the 102nd intelligence wing. i don't have that in front of me. i'm positive. they have a website. we can quickly find the fact sheet up there in general intelligence wings throughout the air force. support is what what you might imagine air force intelligence requirements worldwide to support a variety of types of intelligence missions and requirements. so which include active guard and

reserve components, so we go brandy and i'll come to orange. thank you so much. general writer. what technologies is the pentagon applying right now to both spot leaked documents online and track potential indicators of leaking type practices. do you plan to be investing in more again? brandy show when it comes to this particular situation will know more when the investigation is concluded. um, as i highlighted. when it comes to intelligence collection within the department of defense that's focused primarily in an internationally i'm not going to get into the specifics of where how and when we conduct our intelligence activities, but we're always looking at, um potential gaps, potential vulnerabilities, and that's something that will just be ongoing work using technologies right now to spot potential leakers of future documents. um it's you're asking me a hypothetical basically again. we're always going to be

on the lookout. we're always going to be on the lookout for any potential insider threats again. we get training on how to spot insider threats. but again as i mentioned to travis, you've locked your door. you've learnt some keys to your friends. if one of those friends decides to give the keys away, you know, hopefully you've been able to clue in on those signals, so we'll continue monitoring lost on anyone in this room that this is all happening at the same time that deputy secretary hicks is conducting a review of the pentagon's classification practices and at times over classification, so can you talk about how this incident is informing that ongoing review? again i think that there's the investigation that the doj is conducting. and then you're talking about something separately, which is again our review of classification requirements, acknowledging that where we need to be better in terms of classification, so having no impact on hicks's room to orange. i want to come back

to the question of distribution from two different questions. given the gravity of the situation. are you actively paring down the distribution list? now is this a process that's moving quickly, or is it going to take time for there to be meaningful, substantive changes to the distribution and then is d o d or has taken additional measures to restrict the access to classified information of others in the massachusetts air national guard? so orrin, broadly speaking, i think i've already answered the question that yes, we are taking and have taken steps to review distribution lists and to ensure that the folks receiving information have a need to know but again to belabor the point. we have safeguards in place. we have processes we have procedures will continue to do due diligence as part of this review. to ensure that we're doing everything we can to prevent potential unauthorized disclosures in the future. recognizing that again. this was a criminal, deliberate act.

thank you again. i don't have anything on that. grow. thank you very much. general resurrected me ask you a question about china to questions about china. free free the room, bro. yeah yeah, um, that china conducted three day exercises around taiwan and still continue the combat raining around taiwan. so do you assess china has overreacted to the meeting between presents i and speaker mccarthy. yes, thanks, rose. so, um we obviously continue to monitor the situation in the taiwan strait very closely as well as the prc's military exercise. um you've heard, other others say that from a u. s government perspective, these military exercises undermine peace and stability across the taiwan strait. which is critical to

global prosperity, you know, they estimate you know upwards of a few trillion dollars of global commerce going through that that straight regularly, uh and show as we've said all right. we have been listening to a pentagon briefing on the massive leak of classified documents we heard from brigadier general ryder really deferring a lot of the questions to doj and fbi. but erica making clear did he calls this and the government calls this a deliberate criminal act and some of the steps that they are currently taking right now is tightening access to this type of classified information. i want to go now to evan perez, our cnn senior justice correspondent with some breaking news on this topic, evan. yeah that's right. bianna and erica. we believe now that the fbi has arrested the person who they suspect is behind the leaks of these documents. his name is jack to share a 21 year old

member of the masses. massachusetts air national guard . there are some pictures there are coming in. i believe, showing some of the law enforcement activity there at the family home in massachusetts. where the arrest was made. this is now obviously in the hands of there, you see the pictures of someone who is being we believe to be teixeira , who is being taken into custody of the fbi was preparing to do this. they had hoped to have a little more time as part of this investigation, but the identity of this person was made public by some of the news media reports in new york times and, of course, the washington post, which has been doing a lot of reporting on this over the last few days. reported on his identity. so i'm told by sources that the investigation kind of accelerated as a result of the his identity becoming public. so now we expect that he's going to be taken to federal court there in massachusetts in boston. where the procedure will begin

to remove him and bring him down to the washington, dc, area where we expect that the charges are going to be filed for the again for his connection to the leaking of these documents. um at this point, there's not a lot we know about the exact charges . we expect we might hear more from the attorney general. and from the justice department soon whenever they decide to make public the charges that are to be announced, but we do know obviously, that they as you can hear from that briefing just now at the pentagon, you know they're treating this as a criminal matter there believe that there's great some serious national security damage that has been done by the exposure of these documents in washington post said that there's many as 500 documents that they had seen on various platforms, including on these chat rooms, discord, which is a which is a gaming platform. and so that's of course, now in the hands of the justice department of prosecutors, who are going to be

bringing the federal charges this young man again, 21 year old jack teixeira. 21 years old member of the massachusetts air national guard again. those are pictures we believe after share are being taken into custody by the fbi and by the investigators there who've been working this case frantically over the last few days. diana erica. evan thank you stay with us. also joining us cnn security correspondent josh campbell, josh as we look at the way all of this is unfolding and get folks are just joining us. you're looking at these pictures from our affiliates there from just moments ago. ah of jack to share. we believe this is that the family home indictment massachusetts, which is in the southern part of the state, just a little bit south of taunton, mass. as one of the things that stood out, so we just heard in this pentagon briefing. there are specific questions about whether certain platforms like discord are being monitored. how long were these documents out there? and what we heard twice?

was that part of what he does there really monitoring more on an international level, not as much domestically. josh so when we look at what is or is not out there, what is your sense of who is monitoring potential activity on these sites that could include sensitive intelligence documents? do we know. i can tell you after every major spy case that we've seen arrest in u. s history, going back to aldridge ames in 94 robert hansen, who was an fbi agent in 2001 after chelsea manning after reality winter after all of these espionage cases, the government doesn't after action and tries to determine what were the vulnerabilities. how was this information compromised? and although you know this arrest is going down right now, we believe that that is the suspect there on your screen. you know, the spy hunters are obviously celebrating that this person is now. been taken into custody. they are preparing themselves for the accusations, the ridicule the criticism that's to come and that is, how could this information has been

compromised because compromised and it gets exactly what you were just saying there as far as the systems what monitoring is being done? what trip wires are out there and so again, you know, the good news for the spy hunters is that this person is now in custody, but they have a lot of work to do to determine what the best practices may have been violated. what new best practices may need to be implemented. as we look at this video, i do want to point out one thing you know, those watching may be wondering why. why this overwhelming show of force here where you have fbi tactical agents who are now taking someone into custody who isn't accused of a violent act, this person accused of disclosing information and properly fbi agents. as they prepare their arrest plan. they will work to determine gather every piece of intelligence that they can as they assess. is this a dangerous person we know from that stunning washington post report recently that the individual who led this group on this platform who we believe to be this air guardsmen who has now been taken into custody had talked about being a gun enthusiasts had been at gun ranges. he's obviously a member

of the military. and so the fbi is factoring that into their determination about what type of force you bring to this residence in order to take this this person into custody as we saw at the beginning of the video, this arrest obviously taking place outside and this is very much textbook. the fbi operators there want to control the situation. they don't want to rush up to the house and rush up to the suspect. what you saw on that video is the fbi agents commanding that officer that suspect right there, calling him back to the vehicle. you can see the agents there safely tucked behind that up armored bear cat . they're bringing the suspect to them. they have control of the situation. you see that his head. his hands are on top of his head that obviously so he doesn't try to reach for a weapon. they need to ensure that he secured and so we're seeing that very textbook. they have the indication that this person may own a gun. maybe a gun enthusiast. they don't want to. take any chances and then we move to the next step. you know that that home now is a crime scene as we've seen in all of these major spy cases in

previous history, the feds will be there for a long time, because of course they need to determine. are there additional classified documents that are inside that residence? what we've seen in past cases, the feds will get their search warrants lined up ahead of time in order to go in and search that top to bottom, essentially any where that a document could be disclosed any social media you know that this person may have been in on any computer device any type of phone anywhere where he digital file could be that could pose a risk to disclosing information. from the federal government will be searched, and so we'll have to wait and see what happens next. obviously authorities will be looking to determine whether other co conspirators you know other people who might have access as well. but at least the first step in bringing this to some type of resolution is now appears to be happening. and that is the arrest of this person. but, of course, the investigation there's still so much left to be done. and a reminder that dax has shera the suspect that you see on the screen now is 21 year, 21 years old employed by the 102nd intelligence wing of the

massachusetts air national guard , and i want to bring our panel back. josh stay with us. evan, stay with us as well. i want to bring back in kim dozier, dave priests and colonel cedric leighton and david. let me get back to you because it really stood out to me to hear the brigadier general. um basically compared this to a home where the owner locked the door. the owner, i would say in this case he was comparing to the u. s government locking the door and then a burglar somehow got in. so he suggesting that everyone signs a nondisclosure agreement and that they did their part. and this is the reason this man broke his contract with the us government. i mean, is that something that that you buy a as justification or guess an explanation for this being allowed to happen, with all due respect to somebody's property at home, that may be priceless for them, but national security being compared to that? it's an interesting analogy, and you

know that if you listened, he had to modify it in real time when he referred back to it a second time, he said. oh, it's not that they're breaking in. he mentioned that you lent the keys to this person. that's a little bit closer. it's not that this information was hacked from somebody on the outside, which is first analogy would lead you to believe this is somebody that the united states government with the proper background checks and all of the procedures that he kept referring to allowed this person to have access to this information, and , of course, he's not the only one. it's been estimated that there is close to three million people with security clearances in the united states with over a million of those having access to top secret. information and the idea is you give people the keys to the rooms in the house where they need to access that information. they're going to be legitimate questions about how many keys did this individual have? how many rooms was he allowed to go into to take things out of as part of his job ? and did he really need that? as part of his job? the analogy

gets much more complicated. but those are the kinds of questions that investigators will be looking at. you know, it's interesting, too, as we were talking about the fallout earlier this week, ukrainian officials i was struck by the fact that ukrainian officials initially said they weren't overly concerned because they've been pretty careful about what they're putting out there, citing concerns about washington's ability to actually keep these secrets safe. and kim, i find that interesting, too, in the context of what we heard from the president just a short time ago this afternoon, essentially downplaying this, saying it wasn't contemporaneous information that he was concerned not concerned about the leak, but is cern that it happened. how damaging is all of this overall? how damaging have these past few days been. every single u. s ally will right now be looking at what did we share with the u. s and might it be exposed by this leak? and one of the things that investigators will be looking at is which networks in the pentagon system did this young military

intelligence, um, technician have access to? there are different places like the joint worldwide intelligence communications system. it's one of the ways to network that the pentagon uses. to share amongst itself but also remember after the attacks of 9 11 1 of the things that the 9 11 commission concluded. was that a lack of intelligence sharing lead to not the right people knowing about this imminent attack, so the momentum went in the other way, put it on these worldwide networks that are shared amongst the state department, the pentagon, other intelligence services, so that say, you're chasing a terrorist suspect. you can almost google this data and see what everybody else has on the same person. now then the question becomes, when you have things like, um chelsea manning leak and now this one. how much access do we allow? which technician? at what level? um it

seems like this guy had too much. one of the reasons i think that they were really careful with the arrest is josh was talking about that that they were very deliberate about this is they didn't know how much this person had pulled down off of the systems and perhaps were fearing that they do a massive dump. um because they knew that they were about to be jailed. colonel according to the new york times. excuse me, the washington post reporting this suspect apparently had a dark view of the u. s government. he viewed it as a sinister force that's not to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark, and he ranted about quote government overreach. i'm just curious. how worrisome is that to you? knowing that this isn't just some average citizen? this is somebody with top intelligence clearance, it seems to be and somebody who's working as a national guardsmen. yeah you know, it's clearly brianna very concerning and a one of the

key things to think about here is that you know is a you know, as we were talking about earlier , we had this paradigm shift from need to know to need to share in the intelligence world and one of the other problems that is part of this is that the missions of air national guard units have actually expanded in recent years, giving them a global mission. global mission that is in the ways connected to the intelligence community, so they're going to have access to intelligence systems like j. wickes and the other systems that are used to communicate on the intelligence community and within the military's intelligence organizations, so it is very concerning that somebody who you know takes a very dark view of the u. s government has a in essence had access to this and it doesn't really understand the kind of role that the government it is playing here in gathering, it's in the information on foreign adversaries, i and others that

are legitimate intelligence targets. so this becomes a you know, a very critical element where we have to put together not only the training aspect for the individual airman, but also how much this person has actually seen. and you know what kind of internal threat people like him opposed to not only the intelligence structure but his home unit, as well as the u. s. s government itself. you know, josh, we heard our colleague oren liebermann, asking about any measures to restrict access within this unit. the 102nd intel unit there for the massachusetts air national guard. we didn't get a full answer on that. but it does raise the question. just we talk when we look at even the intel community. how are members of the intel community and we should remind our viewers? of course you spend time in the fbi. how are they monitored? well after these major disclosures that we've seen the most high profile disclosures over the last three decades, i would say the intelligence community learns lessons. for

example, after robert hansen was arrested inside, the fbi officials learned that not only was he able to print out documents and carry them out the front door of fbi headquarters, but he also had free range access to both the fbi's classified network as well as the state department's classified network, and he could sit in his office all day with the door, closed and browse and troll for secrets. we've seen a shift since that. time for instituting what's called you a m user access monitoring, and it's essentially the u. s government the security divisions in each of the respective intelligence agencies monitoring their own people looking at their keystrokes, looking at what they're searching for looking down to even what they're clicking print on what they're, you know, downloading and taking out of that machine, and in fact, whenever you log into a classified system in the u s government, you actually get a banner that pops up that says you are being monitored you as an employee access and classified information. you have no expectation of privacy. and so we've seen those kind of standards being put into place. but for example, after chelsea

manning, who of course, was the army private who was arrested in iraq associated with the wikileaks disclosures, there was this question about removable media and using thumb drives to put into the system we know on her computers, at least, according to an army forensic examiner who testified in her case that they found hundreds of thousands of documents the source code on her computer. and of course, there was a question about how can some one just so easily put a thumb drive in and then cart away all of these documents and so they continue to lock down the systems over time after they learn from each new vulnerability will have to wait and see exactly here. how this suspect actually got access to these top secrets. this top secret information there. officials are alluding to it. we know based on cnn's reporting, and as the pentagon spokesman said, a short time ago, there's this issue of distribution list so every morning for those who are working in intelligence, you get intelligence reports based on the type of cases that you work based on the type of topics that you cover. you'll get information from the nsa from cia. not not source information

, not raw information, but you'll get the finished reports which you know if you are intent on carting away secrets that and of itself, even though it's not the sources and methods could prove damaging and so we'll have to wait and see what this person's role was. what their job was how they actually got access. i will say that you know, i've worked, you know, i was in the fbi working overseas alongside us military personnel intelligence analysts. of them very young. they were extremely professional. so i don't think we'll read too much into the age of this person because i can tell you firsthand that there are young people in the military that do incredible work in the intelligence field around the world. the question here will be what was the profile of this person and were there any warning signs every year, you know, military officials, intelligence officials, you get trained on the info sec training , which most most people loathe having to go through that training every single year, but it actually teaches you how to safeguard information but also how to be on on the lookout for insider threats attributes in your colleagues that might be concerning we'll have to wait and see from officials whether this person exhibited some of

those characteristics. and of course, if that's the case why they weren't picked up on the last thing i'll say is well, and this especially specific comes down to the military. you know, there's long been criticism of the military compared to other u. s intelligence agencies about its use of the polygraph in order to gain access to top secret information. for example , in c i, a and the fbi all employ boys and condition of their employment are polygraphed , and then they're reinvestigated. periodically they have five year re investigations where you know that you have to go through a polygraph iq. you know, over time. i've done it myself multiple times and the question they ask you in each of those investigations, one of the questions is have you disclosed information to someone without a need to know the problem here in the pentagon. you know, the defense department, which comprises the bulk, the largest number of personnel in the u. s intelligence community. it's not uniform. you can get access to top secret information without ever having been polygraphed are going through that reinvestigation. of course, the polygraph itself is often controversial. some say that it's you know, it's not actual science obviously doesn't hold

up in court. but we know what talk to security officials. it certainly does serve as a deterrent if you know that in a year in three years and four years that you're going to be on the box, as they say, and at being asked the question, did you disclose classified information that could actually dictate your behavior? but again? we don't know specifically what this person what their clearance was. you know what parameter were in place whether they're polygraph, but i bring that up because that's something we've heard time and time again and as congress and inspectors, general and oversight officials look back on this case, we certainly expect they will be uncovering some lessons learned, and i think these security issues will probably be among those really helpful information. josh for those who are just joining us the breaking news is that an arrest has been made the suspect behind the massive security leak of classified documents we are expecting to hear from attorney general merrick garland in any moment right now, you're looking at images of this 21 year old suspect jack to share a he is an employee of the 102nd intelligence wing of the

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welcome back if you are just joining us here on cnn. we're following the breaking news out of north titan massachusetts, where, as you can see in the pictures on your screen just moments ago, an arrest was made . this is of the person who is suspected of leaking those documents. these highly sensitive intelligence documents online, jack to share a each 21 air national guardsman, someone who both the new york times and the washington post had identified earlier as a leader of an online chat group where these leaked documents first. appeared we want to bring back in our panel, and if you're just joining us to in terms of what we know, at this hour we're waiting to hear from the attorney general. we did hear from the pentagon in a briefing, not a lot of details, as you can imagine the pentagon saying that they are reducing access in terms of who has access to the classified materials being very clear that they consider this a deliberate criminal act. one come up is the age and people trying to put together i guess a better idea of who this person maybe who had leaked the

documents before we had names. we're getting some details from this reporting from the washington post overnight, and david priests want to bring you back in here. based on your time in the cia, we look at what we know in terms of this reporting that this is a 21 year old man he's described as a gun enthusiast feels like in some of these descriptions, somebody who's hungry for power that he would get angry if the people in his chat group weren't paying enough attention. to some of the information that he was posted. what type of a profile does that start to paint for you, david? yeah i would like to caution people against getting sucked into a couple of vortexes that are really easy. right now. one of them is to say, well, he was 21. he was clearly too young to have access to that kind of information. if so, then we have a real problem in national security because there are a whole lot more 21 year olds in the u. s military and the national security enterprise. than there are people who are older than 50 or 60 years old age does not correlate with criminal activity and

willingness to sell out one's country by handing over classified information. the other one is a concern that you know, we need to be watching. gonna interrupt you briefly. we're going to go back to the attorney general america, ireland who was speaking on this topic. the justice department arrested jack douglas to shera in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information. to share. it is an employee of the united states air force national guard. fbi agents took to share into custody earlier this afternoon without incident. he will have an initial appearance at the u. s district court for the district of massachusetts. i want to thank the fbi, justice department, prosecutors and our colleagues at the department of defense for their diligent work on this case. this investigation is ongoing. we will share more information at the appropriate time. thanks everyone did he have lawful access to these documents. relatively short

statement there from the attorney general once again confirming what we have been reporting, and that is the arrest of 21 year old jack to share a he is an employee of the 102nd intelligence wing, the massachusetts air force national guard. he will be appear before a court their first in massachusetts, and again, no questions were asked. he left after that statement. i want to go back to our panel, and i'm sorry that we keep interrupting you, david, but obvious. this is a breaking news development. if you can go back to the point you were making earlier. yeah we're starting to get some reporting about the potential motivations here, and we're hearing things like that this suspect was heavy into gun culture. he may have had some views against the u. s government. there were racist and misogynist things being said on this server, and those are potential motivations. but when you look at the motivations for

someone to spy or to do things like released classified documents, they almost always fall into one or more of four categories. on the acronym mice actually helps you remember it. m is for money. they're selling the secrets to get money as ideology. they have some kind of anti government ideology. and that may be the case here see is compromised or coercion and e is ego. now, in this case, the reporting we've seen so far really points to the ladder of those that this person appeared to want to impress. these men and boys on this private server and was upset when they weren't as excited about seeing the classified information as he thought. that's not the kind of motivation we often see in these investigations. but focusing on that is what the investigators are really going to be doing now to figure out what drove this person to use his privileged access to actually release this classified information into the wild. evan you first brought us the news of this arrest. we started to hear rumblings. give us a sense. how quickly was all

of this unfolding. well i think everything kind of took a turn. once the f b. i realized that the media was about to identify to share a, which was just a few hours ago. certainly this morning, we knew that they had a very good idea of the of the suspect. they were doing some of the background work before they can execute a search of the home there. they do a lot of work to try to make sure they understand what they're getting into. they try to try to figure out who? maybe there. they want to make sure they get the obviously to get a judge's permission for all of this, so some of that was happening earlier and then and you know, all of their plans really accelerated once the media made public the name of the suspect, and that happened just just a couple of hours ago. of course, we knew that the fbi had made a lot of progress just over the last few days. you know , we knew that there were thousands of people who had access to some of these

documents that were being made public that we now seen publicly. but you know, they married, managed to land narrow it down pretty quickly over over the course of days. they spent the weekend doing interviews with people who are associated with this group that was online on discord. and so they narrowed the home then on to share a very, very quickly. and by today they knew that he was the person that they were going to try to go for. it was just a matter of time. and so everything kind of accelerated in the last couple of hours because of his identity being being made public what we expect now, bianna and erica is we expect that he's going to be processed there in in boston. if he wants to make any statements, obviously, they will take those but most likely, you know, he has he'll have an attorney now representing him, and then they will try to they will start the procedure of removing him to bring him back to the washington , dc, area where we expect that the charges are going to be

filed, probably in the northern district of virginia, which is where the department the pentagon is located, which is the jurisdiction. obviously that owns the documents. so that's the reason why we're expecting him to eventually be facing those charges that the attorney general just briefly announced, which is the dissemination, the retention, illegal access and dissemination of national security information classified national national security information. you know, to the point that you guys have been making. i think he's 21 years old. and as i think the pentagon briefer was saying, you know, you've got so many people of that age group who are trusted with a lot of you know, million dollar equipment in the in the u . s military, their trusted with everything. so this guy is not emblematic certainly of the average 21 year old who is trusted with this kind of information, but one thing that has emerged in this investigation is that the pentagon has a lot of work to do to button up. you know who has

access and how it tracks these people who are trusted with this information. it's something that you're going to emerge. it's going to emerge over the next few days. that is true. and i think you know, for most of our viewers at home. i know i speak for eric and myself. we were talking off line about this. it's just the fact that we keep referencing his age. not necessarily because of any intentions that he may or may not have in terms of financial gain. but just the fact that it's surprising. i think too many people unlike those in the know, like evan and josh, and our guests here that so many young people have access in our privy to such classified information, josh one final question to you. what type of sentence usually goes along with some of the charges he may be facing. i'm glad you brought that up because it actually impacts how this arrest went down as well. we'll have to wait and see what the actual charges are. i mean, quite frankly, you know, under the espionage act if they throw the book at him, he could. he's looking at serious, significant time. one thing we've seen in some cases is

depending on you know, if he has a good lawyer that's able to perhaps do a plea. the government is interested often in two things. and that is first. what is the extent of the damage here? they still have a damage assessment to be done. and so we've seen in past espionage cases, where in exchange change for laying everything out telling us everything. where is all the information? how did this happen? walk us through exactly what happened that can lead to. you know, i won't say light sentences, but that's a consideration the justice department could make if he cooperates, but the second thing is, you know, you have to understand you have a suspect now who will go through the judicial system and be prosecuted if he doesn't plea, the government, especially in classified document cases, is always concerned about the fact that at trial classified information could be revealed in the very act of trying to prosecute this person. now there is something called sepe. the collapses fide information procedures act, which is i used it in my past cases where it's the ability of the justice department to basically negotiate with