US President Donald Trump said late on Monday he is filing a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, accusing the newspaper of serving as a “virtual’mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”
“The ‘Times’ has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole,” he said on his Truth Social platform.
“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW,” the post continued, adding that the lawsuit is being brought in Florida.
The New York Times did not immediately comment on Trump’s post.
Firefighters with the 27th Special Operations Civil Engineer Squadron test hose water pressure before an exercise Aug. 14, 2015, at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M. In January, New Mexico environment officials cited the base for a spill of wastewater containing firefighting foam with PFAS which soaked into the aquifer after a retaining pond leaked. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Alex Mercer)
In mid-July, Neil Dolly left Albuquerque near dawn and headed to Clovis. Under the New Mexico Hazardous Waste Act, he and his co-workers with the New Mexico Environment Department have the authority to conduct surprise inspections of hazardous waste sites, take samples and shoot photos.
Parked at a gas station near Cannon Air Force Base, Dolly called the base to confirm names and email addresses. About 30 minutes later, he emailed officials to say he was arriving.
Once inside, base officials and attorneys told Dolly and his assistant they wouldn’t be allowed to collect soil and water samples to test for PFAS. According to Dolly, they cited ongoing litigation between the state and the Pentagon.
No one paying attention to New Mexico’s PFAS saga should be surprised that the military kept Dolly from doing his job. But we should all stay alert to how the U.S. government thwarts the ability — indeed, the right — of states to protect their lands, waters and people.
Patented in the 1940s, PFAS, or Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances have been used since then in cookware, clothing, food wrappers, furniture and firefighting foams. The same qualities that make them useful — water and sunlight don’t destroy their molecules of joined carbon and fluorine atoms — also make them hard to clean up. Instead of breaking down over time, they move up the food chain, persisting in soils and waters and accumulating in the bodies of animals and humans. Some people refer to this toxic family as “forever chemicals.”
In 2018, the Air Force notified New Mexico officials that tests at Cannon — and Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo — detected perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Firefighting foams the military started using in the 1970s had contaminated groundwater with PFOA and PFOS, just two of the thousands of compounds in the PFAS family.
When New Mexico called for cleanup, the U.S. Department of Defense sued, challenging the state’s authority. Currently, the state is part of a multi-district federal lawsuit seeking past and future clean-up costs and all natural resource damages at Cannon Air Force Base, Holloman Air Force Base, Kirtland Air Force Base, White Sands Missile Range and Fort Wingate. And in June, the state filed another lawsuit, ordering the Pentagon to clean up the plume at Cannon under a new law that clarifies the state’s ability to regulate hazardous PFAS, even if the federal government has neglected to set standards for the chemicals.
By now, the contaminated plume is roughly six miles long, and New Mexicans have spent about $12 million on litigation. We’ve spent millions more testing well water and residents’ blood and connecting rural Curry County residents to a public water system because they can’t safely drink their well water.
“I spend a lot of time battling the PFAS monster that is just omnipresent every day with some new filing or some new denial of access or whatever it is,” NMED Secretary James Kenney told me in an interview. “There is no single more recalcitrant polluter, that is more litigious, than the Department of Defense.”
Kenney says he’s frustrated that the Pentagon keeps trampling the rights of states like New Mexico that are grappling with PFAS contamination. “Where is this notion of cooperative federalism, that states rights are supreme when implementing federal law?” he asks. “I feel like the Department of Defense is giving the middle finger salute to Congress, and they’re OK with it.”
Meanwhile, the toxic chemicals have traveled beyond Cannon into the Ogallala Aquifer, and into the blood of people working on and living near the base. A few years ago, Art Schaap, whose dairy farm overlooks Cannon, euthanized 3,500 cows because their blood — and milk — was poisoned.
More recently, the state released test results for 628 people who worked on or lived near Cannon, all but two of whom had at least one type of PFAS in their blood, and more than 90% of whom tested positive for multiple types of the toxic chemicals.
PFAS’ threat to human health is well known.
Beginning in the 1960s, manufacturers like 3M and DuPont knew from testing workers and nearby water supplies that different PFAS chemicals caused reproductive and development problems; birth defects; liver and kidney disease; and immune system problems. Additional studies have linked exposure to high cholesterol, low infant birth weights, and certain cancers, along with thyroid and hormone disruption.
As a longtime environment reporter, I have witnessed generations of state officials try to protect public health and rein in legacy pollution from federal installations. Despite the massive amount of money American taxpayers invest in the Pentagon — more than a trillion dollars this year alone — the federal government continues to punt on cleanup and put people, and our precious waters, at risk.
At Kirtland Air Force Base, for example, 24 million gallons of jet fuel leaked into the aquifer — and still hasn’t been cleaned up. Los Alamos National Laboratory has long polluted tributaries of the Rio Grande, and few people want to consider what lies in the sediment at the bottom of Cochiti Lake. At White Sands Test Facility, the U.S. Army and NASA have contaminated groundwater with multiple pollutants. Confirmed PFAS contamination also has been established at Fort Wingate Depot, the Santa Fe Army Aviation Support Facility, the Army National Guard’s Roswell Field Maintenance Shop and White Sands Missile Range.
New Mexico will become increasingly arid, and our water challenges will only get tougher. We can all see the parched forests and fields, shallow reservoirs and drying riverbeds. We should also be clear-eyed about the legacy of federal pollution, and what all that contaminated water means for the state’s future. That is water lost to farms, families and the future. And the recently renamed U.S. Department of War isn’t likely to prioritize cleanup anytime soon.
As the federal government openly challenges — or just ignores — the authority of states to protect their own lands, waters and people, New Mexicans can’t be kept in the dark about what we face from legacy or emerging pollutants. And New Mexicans on opposite sides of the political aisle should at least align with one another to protect the state’s waters. No matter what else is happening in the country, our water future here in New Mexico depends on transparency and unity.
An image taken from the building that housed the National Archives at New York City office on September 11, 2001. (Photo/National Archives)
Opinion.When the first jetliner crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, many believed it was a tragic accident. That perception changed just 18 minutes later when a second plane struck the South Tower—broadcast live across the nation. It quickly became clear: America was under attack.
Editor’s Note: This opinion was first published by Native News Online on September 11, 2021.
As the day unfolded, horror deepened. A third plane slammed into the Pentagon, and the heroic actions of passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 prevented further catastrophe by forcing the plane down in a Pennsylvania field. It was a day that shocked the world—and one that reaffirmed, for many Native Americans, the duality of our citizenship.
On 9/11, tribal leaders from across Indian Country were in and around Washington, D.C., attending key policy meetings. They were there not just as representatives of sovereign nations, but also as U.S. citizens. A statement from Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council Edward T. Begay, ran a statement in the Navajo-Hopi Observer on the same day, confirmed the safety of President Kelsey A. Begaye and the Navajo delegation, while plans were made to bring them home as soon as air travel resumed.
Indian Country’s connection to the World Trade Center predates the attacks. Hundreds of Mohawk ironworkers helped build the Twin Towers in the late 1960s and ’70s. After their collapse, Mohawk descendants returned to help with the cleanup at Ground Zero—a story documented in an exhibition at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York.
In the wake of 9/11, Native Americans once again stepped up. Enlistment rates in the U.S. military among Native people surpassed those of non-Natives. Osage photojournalist Steven Clevenger spent three years documenting Native soldiers during the Iraq War, culminating in his book America’s First Warriors: Native Americans and Iraq. His work explores the enduring warrior tradition in Native culture—defined since pre-Columbian times as “the protector of his people.”
Nearly 3,000 lives were lost on 9/11. But the tragedy didn’t end there. A recent report from the Watson Institute at Brown University estimates that over 929,000 people have died in the wars that followed, at a cost of more than $8 trillion to American taxpayers.
As we marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11, it’s worth noting that nearly one-third of Americans alive today weren’t even born when the attacks happened. For those of us who lived through that day, we witnessed the vulnerability of our homeland—and the unity that emerged from the rubble.
But twenty years later, we face new threats from within. The January 6th insurrection and the polarization around the COVID-19 pandemic reveal the fragility of our democracy and the importance of collective responsibility.
In the aftermath of 9/11, we stood together—across political, cultural, and racial lines. As we remember one of the darkest days in our nation’s history, we must draw on that same spirit of unity to face today’s challenges and continue working toward a safer, more secure future for all.
Thayék gde nwéndëmen – We are all related.
About the Author: “Levi “Calm Before the Storm” Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. Rickert was awarded Best Column 2021 Native Media Award for the print/online category by the Native American Journalists Association. He serves on the advisory board of the Multicultural Media Correspondents Association. He can be reached at levi@nativenewsonline.net.”
It’s 24 years since that morning in September when a collective America watched in disbelief as within two hours two hijacked passenger planes took down New York City’s two 110-story world trade towers.
By noon, two more hijacked planes went down, first, slamming into the Pentagon headquarters, followed by the forced crash of a fourth plane found incinerated in a field in Pennsylvania, its passengers having perished fighting the hijackers to avert them from their intended target thought to be the Capitol Building.
This page requires Javascript.
Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday aiming to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War — a long-telegraphed move aimed at projecting American military toughness around the globe.
“It’s a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now,” Trump said. He said the previous name was “woke.”
The order comes as some of Trump’s closest supporters on Capitol Hill proposed legislation that would codify the new name into law, with Congress having the sole power to establish, shutter and rename federal departments. Absent a change in law, Trump will authorize the Pentagon to use secondary titles.
“From 1789 until the end of World War II, the United States military fought under the banner of the Department of War,” Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube, an Army veteran, said in a statement. “It is only fitting that we pay tribute to their eternal example and renowned commitment to lethality by restoring the name of the ‘Department of War’ to our Armed Forces.”
Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, are introducing companion legislation in the Senate.
The Department of War was created in 1789, then renamed and reorganized through legislation signed by President Harry Truman in 1947, two years after the end of World War II. The Department of Defense incorporated the Department of War, which oversaw the Army, plus the Department of the Navy and the newly created independent Air Force.
“We decided to go woke and change the name to Department of Defense,” he said. “So we’re going Department of War.”
Pentagon leader Pete Hegseth, who spoke alongside Trump, said, “We haven’t won a major war since” the name was changed. He said, “We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense.”
Trump has said he wants to change the name back to the Department of War because it “just sounded better,” and Hegseth recently hinted that the switch was around the corner.
Speaking to an auditorium of soldiers Thursday at Fort Benning in Georgia, he said he might have “a slightly different title tomorrow.”
In August, Trump told reporters that “everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War. Then we changed it to Department of Defense.”
When confronted with the possibility that making the name change would require an act of Congress, Trump told reporters that “we’re just going to do it.”
“I’m sure Congress will go along,” he said, “if we need that.”
Trump and Hegseth have been on a name-changing spree at the Pentagon as they uproot what they describe as “woke” ideology, sometimes by sidestepping legal requirements.
For example, they wanted to restore the names of nine military bases that once honored Confederate leaders, which were changed in 2023 following a congressionally mandated review.
Because the original names were no longer allowed under law, Hegseth ordered the bases to be named after new people with similar names. For example, Fort Bragg now honors Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II paratrooper and Silver Star recipient from Maine, instead of Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.
In the case of Fort A.P. Hill, named for Confederate Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill, the Trump administration was forced to choose three soldiers to make the renaming work.
The base now honors Union soldiers Pvt. Bruce Anderson and 1st Sgt. Robert A. Pinn, who contributes the two initials, and Lt. Col. Edward Hill, whose last name completes the second half of the base name.
The move irked Republicans in Congress who, in July, moved to ban restoring any Confederate names in this year’s defense authorization bill.
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican who co-sponsored the earlier amendment to remove the Confederate names, said that “what this administration is doing, particularly this secretary of defense, is sticking his finger in the eye of Congress by going back and changing the names to the old names.”
Associated Press writer Matt Brown contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon believes it has identified the mechanical failure that led to a fatal crash of an Osprey aircraft in Japan and the grounding of the fleet for two months, a U.S. defense official told The Associated Press. It is now weighing how the aircraft can be returned to service.
The Pentagon’s Joint Safety Council is now working with the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps on their plans to get Osprey crews ready to fly again, said Navy Rear Adm. Chris Engdahl, chairman of the council and commander of Naval Safety Command.
The Air Force investigation is continuing into the Nov. 29 Air Force special operations command CV-22 crash, which killed eight service members. The crash led to a rare grounding on Dec. 6 of about 400 Osprey aircraft across the three services. Japan also grounded its fleet of 14 Ospreys following the crash.
The official who said the mechanical failure had been identified declined to say what the failure was. It has opened the door to discussions on return to flight because mitigations can be put in place. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.
While each service will determine when it returns its own fleets to the skies, the council is talking with “commanders across the services on what are their plans to come back to flight, what are their risk decisions,” Engdahl said. “In aviation, they’ve done this before, but probably not on this broad scale with a platform like we have in the V-22” Osprey.
That could include getting service-wide input on how many simulator hours are needed to get a crew back to proficiency, with what type of flying, and what maintenance is needed on each Osprey before they go up in the air again, Engdahl said.
Flight safety is dependent on pilots maintaining currency on an aircraft — meaning that they are flying regularly enough to be proficient in all types of flying, such as night missions, close formation flying or refueling. After 60 days of being grounded, that will be one of the key issues the services must prepare for as the Ospreys return to flight.
They also must make sure the aircraft are ready. Both the Air Force and Marine Corps have been running the Osprey’s engines; the Marines have been conducting ground movements to keep the aircraft working.
Marine Corps leadership is also working on a message to send throughout the service that could give each unit up to 30 days to recertify their crews and ensure they are ready to return to flight, said a second defense official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details that have not been announced publicly.
Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Alyssa Myers said the service is cooperating closely with the Air Force and Navy “to make an informed decision for the MV-22’s return to flight. The safety and well-being of our personnel and the reliability of the V-22 continues to be a priority in our discussions as we determine our return to flight.”
The Osprey is a fast-moving airframe that can take off like a helicopter and then tilt its engines and rotor blades to a horizontal position to fly like an airplane.
While the current Osprey standdown is one of the largest military aircraft groundings in terms of affecting three services’ flight operations, it’s not the longest. When the Osprey was still in development, two Osprey crashes in 2000 killed 23 Marines and led the Marine Corps to ground the program for nearly 18 months.
The Joint Safety Council was established by Congress to get a stronger services-wide look at safety issues following a string of deadly aviation crashes in 2018.
(Reuters) – An attack on an American warship and commercial vessels in the Red Sea on Sunday risks reigniting investor worries about a widening of the war between Israel and Hamas, potentially complicating the outlook for a rally that saw U.S. stocks crest a fresh closing high for the year last week.
The Pentagon said it was aware of reports regarding attacks on an American warship and commercial vessels in the Red Sea on Sunday, while Yemen’s Houthi group claimed drone and missile attacks on two Israeli vessels in the area.
Also on Sunday, a U.S. military official told Reuters the United States carried out a self-defense strike in Iraq against an “imminent threat” at a drone staging site.
The developments risk inflaming fears that the Israel-Hamas war could widen into a broader conflict encompassing the U.S. and regional players like Iran. Such worries flared after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel but subsided in recent weeks.
Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist at LPL Financial, said a widening conflict could push some investors to take profits on the recent rally in stocks. The S&P 500 rose nearly 9% in November on signs of easing inflation and hopes the Federal Reserve is done raising interest rates. The index is up almost 20% on the year after notching a 2023 closing high on Friday at 4594.63.
“The market is sensitive to any expansion of this conflict,” she said. “I think active managers in any event are more likely to lock in their gains if this is a harbinger of a deeper military conflict that involves the US.”
Past spikes in geopolitical tensions have made investors head for popular havens such as gold, Treasuries and the U.S. dollar. Signs of an intensifying Middle East conflict could also boost oil prices, which have slumped in recent weeks.
Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Hermes, said rising tensions in the region could send West Texas Intermediate crude prices up to between $80 and $90 per barrel. Prices on Friday stood at $74.07.
The developments come as investors eye factors that could sway stocks in coming weeks. A U.S. employment report due on Friday could bolster the case for those arguing that a cooling economy will keep the Fed from raising interest rates further and possibly loosen monetary policy sooner than expected.
Other potential catalysts include the Fed’s monetary policy meeting on Dec. 12-13, as well as seasonal factors such as tax-loss selling and the so-called Santa Claus rally.
Orlando said a spike in geopolitical tensions could drop the S&P 500 by “one or two hundred points.”
“There’s no question this represents an opportunity for investors to take profits,” he said. “However I’m still convinced the index ends the year at 4,600.”
(Reporting by Krystal Hu and Ira Iosebashvili; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
The Marine Corps has ordered a two-day pause in flight operations following a mishap involving a F-35 fighter jet. David Martin has the latest on the investigation from the Pentagon.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Attorneys for former President Donald Trump have informed the Justice Department that they have been unable to locate a classified document related to Iran sought by investigators that was discussed during a recorded meeting, two people with knowledge of the case confirmed to CBS News.
The classified document in question came to the Justice Department’s attention through an audio file it obtained in the course of special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into the former president’s retention of sensitive records and alleged obstruction of the investigation. The audio, recorded by a Trump aide, includes remarks Trump made to two ghostwriters for his last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, related to Iran and how to confront it militarily, the people said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
One person said it was not clear if the document exists, or if Trump was misidentifying something to the group assembled during the recording. They added that the tape is in the possession of prosecutors.
CNN first reported the existence of the recording and that Trump’s lawyers told the Justice Department that they were unable to find the classified document referenced.
The recording — from a July 2021 meeting at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey — is a crucial piece of evidence that prosecutors obtained in recent months and presented in grand jury proceedings examining the former president’s actions related to sensitive records, CBS News has previously reported.
CBS News has reported that, according to two people familiar with the matter, Trump can be heard on the recording conceding that there were national security restrictions on the classified memo because it detailed a potential attack on Iran. It is not clear from the recording whether Trump was in possession of the document at the time or was just describing its contents to at least three people who were present during the meeting, the people said. CBS News has not listened to the audio.
Trump aide Margo Martin, who recorded the meeting, and the other individuals who were working on an autobiography of Meadows were present at the meeting, CBS News previously reported. The sources said that on the audio, the former president mentioned the classified document when he was talking about Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who according to The New Yorker, had fought in the last days of the Trump administration to keep the president from attacking Iran.
Witnesses brought before the grand jury, per the people with knowledge, have been asked about this exchange and any other mentions by Trump of any classified documents or maps or talk of Milley.
The subpoena for the document was issued in or around March, a person with knowledge said. The subpoena was first reported by CNN.
Representatives for Trump were unavailable for comment.
Robert Costa, Catherine Herridge and Robert Legare contributed reporting.
A Chinese fighter jet performed an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” in an intercept of a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft last week, according to a U.S. Indo-Pacific Command statement.
The pilot of a Chinese J-16 fighter flew directly in front of — and within 400 feet of the nose of the RC-135 — forcing the U.S. aircraft to fly through its wake turbulence. The intercept occurred while the reconnaissance plane was operating in international air space over the South China Sea on May 26.
“The United States will continue to fly, sail, and operate – safely and responsibly – wherever international law allows,” the statement said. “We expect all countries in the Indo-Pacific region to use international airspace safely and in accordance with international law.”
In Sweden Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. plane was flying on a “routine mission” in international airspace “the Chinese pilot took dangerous action in approaching the plane very, very closely.” He added, “There have been a series of these actions directed not just at us but at other countries in recent months.”
On Wednesday, Beijing blamed U.S. “provocation” for the incident, according to Agence France-Presse.
“The United States’ long-term and frequent sending of ships and planes to conduct close surveillance on China seriously harms China’s national sovereignty and security,” AFP quotes foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning as saying.
The Pentagon released a video of the interaction on Tuesday. The video, taken from the cockpit of the U.S. reconnaissance plane, shows the Chinese jet appearing to approach just in front of the plane before veering off, and then the video shakes as the U.S. plane hits turbulence.
Chinese fighter jet harasses U.S. Air Force spy plane over South China Sea on May 26, 2023.
screen grab from video captured from cockpit of spy plane, U.S. military video
The Chinese pilot’s menacing behavior occurred as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin departed Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for his seventh trip to the Indo-Pacific region. Late Monday, the Pentagon said China had rejected an invitation for a meeting between Austin and Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu on the sidelines of an annual defense summit they’re both attending in Singapore.
Blinken called it “regrettable” that Austin was not able to meet with Li said it underscored “why it is so important that we have regular, open lines of communication, including – by the way – between our defense ministers.”
The unsafe maneuver is part of a broader pattern, according to the Pentagon. A spokesperson for U.S. Indo-Pacific command said the U.S. has seen “an alarming increase in the number of risky aerial intercepts and confrontations at sea” by Chinese military aircraft and vessels.
For instance, in December, a Chinese jet flew within 20 feet of the nose of a U.S. RC-135 and forced the RC-135 to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision, the command said in a statement.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators asked the Department of Defense to launch an investigation into longstanding price gouging by defense contractors Wednesday.
In a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Mike Braun (D-IN) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) said they were prompted by a six-month investigation by 60 Minutes that uncovered extensive price gouging. Experts told 60 Minutes that military contractors overcharge the Pentagon on almost everything the DOD buys each year.
“Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and TransDigm are among the offenders, dramatically overcharging the Department and U.S. taxpayers while reaping enormous profits, seeing their stock prices soar, and handing out massive executive compensation packages,” the senators wrote. “These companies have abused the trust government has placed in them, exploiting their position as sole suppliers for certain items to increase prices far above inflation or any reasonable profit margin.”
In March, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced the largest Pentagon budget ever: $842 billion. Almost half will go to defense contractors.
“Dollars that are wasted on overpriced weapons or spare parts cannot be spent to counter adversaries or support service members,” the senators wrote.
The five senators’ letter, addressed to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, cites that in 2020, the defense department’s Office of Inspector General reported that roughly 1 in 5 of its ongoing investigations were related to procurement fraud. The Department of Defense has been on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list for financial management since the 1990s.
“The DOD can no longer expect Congress or the American taxpayer to underwrite record military spending while simultaneously failing to account for the hundreds of billions it hands out every year to spectacularly profitable private corporations,” the senators wrote.
Shay Assad, now retired after rising to become the defense department’s most senior and awarded contract negotiator, pointed 60 Minutes to the Patriot weapons system as one example. In 2015, Assad ordered a review and Army negotiators discovered Lockheed Martin and its subcontractor, Boeing, were grossly overcharging the Pentagon and U.S. allies by hundreds of millions of dollars for Patriot PAC-3 missiles.
Lockheed Martin told 60 Minutes it, “constructively and ethically works with the U.S. government to support its national defense, intelligence, and international security cooperation objectives.” “We negotiate with the government in good faith on all our programs to meet its mission needs with the best and most effective technologies and systems in compliance with Federal Acquisition Regulations and all other applicable laws.”
“…[W]e take very seriously our responsibility to support the warfighter and our commitments to the U.S. government and taxpayer,” a Boeing spokesperson said.
Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan, who oversaw the purchase of some of the country’s most critical weapons systems, pointed 60 Minutes to another problematic Lockheed Martin contract. He took the reins of the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program in 2012, when the program was seven years behind schedule and $90 billion over the original estimate. Bogdan said the biggest costs are yet to come. Support and maintenance could end up costing taxpayers $1.3 trillion.
Lockheed is delivering the aircraft the Pentagon paid to design and build, but under the contract, the company and its suppliers retained control of some of proprietary information — the design and repair data — needed to fix and upgrade the plane.
The 60 Minutes report also looked at Raytheon, where Assad was a top executive before going to work at the defense department. Army negotiators said Raytheon made “unacceptable profits” from the Patriot missile defense system by dramatically exaggerating the cost and hours it took to build the radar and ground equipment. Raytheon stated that it is working to “equitably resolve” the matter and the company has informed investors that it has set aside $290 million for probable liability.
TransDigm, a fast-growing company led by CEO Nick Howley, was also part of the 60 Minutes report. TransDigm has taken over companies that make spare parts for the military. Last year, Howley was called before Congress a second time over accusations of price gouging. Assad’s review team found the government will pay TransDigm $119 million for parts that should cost $28 million.
TransDigm told 60 Minutes that the company follows the law and charges market prices.
On Thursday, the company told 60 Minutes in an emailed statement: “TransDigm companies manufacture over 500,000 parts for mostly commercial aircraft used all over the world and are also proud to supply the DoD with reliable, high-quality aircraft products. … TransDigm has engaged directly with the DoD to ensure better exchange of information and will continue to work with the DoD to improve the procurement process as it relates to its business with TransDigm. …”
The Department of Defense previously responded to 60 Minutes’ report from Sunday, writing in part: “The Department is committed to evaluating all DoD contracts for fair and reasonable pricing in order to minimize cost to the taxpayer and maximize the combat capability and services delivered to the Department. Robust competition within the defense industrial base is one of the surest ways to obtain reasonable pricing on DoD contracts. For some defense requirements, however, the Department is reliant on single suppliers, and contracting officers must negotiate sole-source contracts using statutory and regulatory authorities that protect the taxpayers’ interests. …”
CBS News has also reached out to Raytheon for comment regarding the letter from the senators.
With the U.S. supplying billions-of-dollars of munitions to Ukraine and growing tensions in the Taiwan Strait, some Pentagon generals are sounding alarms about the dwindling supply of U.S. weapons … at a time when the cost of replacing them is skyrocketing – we wondered why the Pentagon is finding it hard to procure weapons it needs at a price taxpayers can afford? A six-month investigation by 60 Minutes found it has less to do with foreign entanglements than domestic ones – what can only be described as price gouging by U.S. defense contractors.
Shay Assad: The gouging that takes place is unconscionable. It’s unconscionable.
Perhaps no one understands the problem better than Shay Assad, now retired after four decades negotiating weapons deals. In the 1990s, he was executive vice president and chief contract negotiator for defense giant Raytheon. Then he switched sides… under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Assad rose to be the Defense Department’s most senior and awarded contract negotiator. The Pentagon, he told us, overpays for almost everything – for radar and missiles … helicopters … planes … submarines… down to the nuts and bolts.
Shay Assad: This, Bill, is an oil pressure switch that NASA used to buy. Well, their oil switch cost with all of the cabling cost $328. This oil switch we paid over $10,000 for it.
Bill Whitaker: So what accounts for that huge difference?
Shay Assad: Gouging. What– what else can account for it?
To Assad’s former defense industry associates, he was “the most hated man in the Pentagon” for his dogged scrutiny of their pricing practices.
Shay Assad
60 Minutes
Shay Assad: No matter who they are, no matter what company it is, they need to be held accountable. And right now that accountability system is broken in the Department of Defense.
Bill Whitaker: So does that affect our readiness?
Shay Assad: There’s no doubt about it. You just can only buy so much, ’cause you only have so much money. And that’s why I say, is it really any different than not giving a Marine enough bullets to put in his clip? It’s the same thing.
Assad points to the Patriot weapons system, a pillar of air defenses for the U.S., NATO, Ukraine and Taiwan. In 2015, Assad ordered a review and Army negotiators discovered Lockheed Martin and its subcontractor, Boeing, were grossly overcharging the Pentagon and U.S. allies by hundreds of millions of dollars for the Patriot’s PAC-3 missiles.
Shay Assad: And over a seven-year period these companies just keep rakin’ it in.
Bill Whitaker: What level of profit are we talking about?
Shay Assad: Well– if the average profitability that was negotiated in a firm fixed price contract was typically between 12% and 15%, so a company could make–
Bill Whitaker: –that’s a good profit.
Shay Assad: Sure.
But Shay Assad told us Pentagon analysts found total profits approached 40%.
Shay Assad: Based on what they actually made, we would’ve received an entire year’s worth of missiles for free.
Bill Whitaker: An entire year worth of missiles.
Shay Assad: We woulda got ’em for free.
Boeing declined our request for comment. Lockheed told us: “we negotiate with the government in good faith on all our programs.” But after the review, the Pentagon negotiated a new contract with the company, saving $550 million.
Shay Assad: Well that’s how you become the most hated man in the Pentagon. When you say, “No, no, we’re– we’re actually gonna pay attention to this.”
Army negotiators also caught Assad’s former employer Raytheon making what they called “unacceptable profits” from the Patriot system by dramatically exaggerating the cost and hours it took to build the radar and ground equipment.
Bill Whitaker: You called Raytheon on the carpet.
Shay Assad: Yes, I did. You know, of course, I reported that information up the chain. But then I went to the inspector general. And– I also went to– the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. And I said, “I want this looked into.”
Raytheon told us it is working to “equitably resolve” the matter, and in 2021 CEO Gregory Hayes informed investors the company would set aside $290 million for probable liability.
CEO Gregory Hayes (in 2021): “I will say this is an ongoing investigation by DOJ… We think these were one-off events that occurred… should not have occurred, but they did.”
Bill Whitaker: One-offs?
Shay Assad: No, it’s not one-off. And it’s not one-off with a lotta companies.
A Department of Defense study released last month found major contractors flush with tens-of-billions-of Pentagon dollars to hand out to shareholders.
Shay Assad: We have to have a financially healthy defense industrial base. We all want that. But what we don’t wanna do is get taken advantage of and hoodwinked.
Bill Whitaker: And the U.S. has nowhere else to go?
Shay Assad: We have nowhere else to go.For many of these weapons that are being sent over to Ukraine right now, there’s only one supplier. And the companies know it.
It wasn’t always like this. The roots of the problem can be traced to 1993, when the Pentagon, looking to cut costs, urged defense companies to merge. Fifty one major contractors consolidated to five giants.
Shay Assad: The landscape has totally changed. In the ’80s, there was intense competition amongst a number of companies. And so the government had choices. They had leverage. We have limited leverage now.
The problem was compounded when the Pentagon, in another cost saving move, cut 130,000 employees whose jobs were to negotiate and oversee defense contracts.
Bill Whitaker: The watchdogs in the government,
Shay Assad: The watchdogs, the negotiators, the engineers, the program managers. Over 50% was removed.
Bill Whitaker: It was the era of, you know, downsizing–
Shay Assad: Absolutely.
Bill Whitaker: The government, getting government outta… let business-
Shay Assad: Let business do their thing, right? It was ultimately a disaster.
Bill Whitaker: And the government was complicit.
Shay Assad: Yes. They were convinced that they could rely on the companies to do what was in the best interests of the war fighters and the taxpayers.
The Pentagon granted companies unprecedented leeway to monitor themselves. Instead of saving money, Assad told us the price of almost everything began to rise. In the competitive environment before the companies consolidated, a shoulder fired stinger missile cost $25,000 in 1991. With Raytheon now the sole supplier, it costs more than $400,000 to replace each missile sent to Ukraine … even accounting for inflation and some improvements that’s a seven-fold increase.
Chris Bogdan: Industry’s motivations and objectives are different than the Department of Defense’s.
Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan
60 Minutes
Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan spent his career overseeing the purchase of some of the country’s most critical weapons systems.
Chris Bogdan: They are companies that have to– to– to survive, make profit. The Department of Defense, on the other hand, wants the best weapon systems it can have as quickly as possible and as inexpensively as possible. Those are opposite ends of the spectrum.
Bill Whitaker: But in our system, there’s nothing wrong with profit.
Chris Bogdan: No, there isn’t. But taken to an extreme industry may not make the best decisions in the best interests of the government.
General Bogdan says we’ve only begun to feel the full impact. In 2012, he was tapped to take the reins of the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program – it was seven years behind schedule and $90 billion over the original estimate. But Bogdan told us the biggest costs are yet to come for support and maintenance, which could end up costing taxpayers $1.3 trillion.
Chris Bogdan: We won’t be able to buy as many F-35s as we thought. Because it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to buy air– more airplanes when you can’t afford the ones you have.
The Pentagon had ceded control of the program to Lockheed Martin. The contractor is delivering the aircraft the Pentagon paid to design and build, but under the contract, Lockheed and its suppliers retained control of design and repair data – the proprietary information needed to fix and upgrade the plane.
Bill Whitaker: So you spend billions and billions of dollars to get this plane built. And it doesn’t actually belong to the Department of Defense?
Chris Bogdan: The weapon system belongs to the department. But the data underlying the design of the airplane does not.
Bill Whitaker: We can’t maintain and sustain the planes without Lockheed’s–
Chris Bogdan: Correct. And that’s because– that’s because we didn’t– we didn’t up front either buy or negotiate getting the– the technical data we needed so that when a part breaks, the DOD can fix it themselves.
F-35 on a runway
60 Minutes
When a part breaks, it’s likely to come from a subcontractor like TransDigm, which has seen its stock soar as it buys up companies the military depends on for spare parts. Founder Nick Howley has twice been called before Congress over accusations of price gouging. Shay Assad’s review team found the government “will pay” the company “$119 million” for parts that “should cost $28 million.”
Rep. Robin Kelly (during a congressional hearing): Could you sell to the DOD these parts at a lower price and still make a reasonable profit?
Nick Howley (during a congressional hearing): I don’t believe that’s the question for us.
TransDigm told us it follows the law and charges market prices. But in 2006, Shay Assad says Apache helicopters were unable to fly without a crucial valve. TransDigm had taken over the manufacturer and hiked the price of the valve by $747, up almost 40%.
Shay Assad: We said, “Look, we need these parts to go on aircraft that are in Iraq.” They simply said, “We’re not gonna ship it until you cough up.”
Bill Whitaker: To the battlefield?
Shay Assad: That’s correct. This was going to the battlefield.
Mark Owen, Kathryn Foresman and Julie Smith
60 Minutes
By 2018, the valve would grow to cost almost $12,000. A Pentagon report called it “extortion”… in March, the Pentagon announced its largest budget ever: $842 billion – almost half will go to defense contractors. While contract spending is going up, Pentagon oversight is going down, through cuts and attrition. We met with recently retired auditors Julie Smith and Mark Owen, and contracting officer Kathryn Foresman: who are part of the downsizing. They told us with less oversight and Shay Assad now gone, the Pentagon is losing the battle to hold down prices.
Bill Whitaker: So– explain to me, why can’t the Department of Defense just step up to TransDigm and say, “No, we’re not gonna pay that?”
Julie Smith: ‘Cause we don’t have another source for a lot of the spares that they provide right now. They are the literally only game in town in order to make– an aircraft fly. So we’re at their mercy.
Bill Whitaker: Does that make sense to any of you?
Kathryn Foresman: No. It is very concerning to me. Contractors see that they can do this, they are the ones that hold the power.
Mark Owen: So it’s not really a true capitalistic market because one– one company is telling you what’s gonna happen.
Bill Whitaker: So if it’s not a capitalistic system, what is it?
Kathryn Foresman: It’s a monopoly.
Mark Owen: Monopoly.
Shay Assad: If you’re happy with companies gouging you and just looking you right in the eye and say, “I’m gonna keep gouging you because I know you don’t have the guts to do anything about it.” Then I guess we should just keep doing what we’re doing.
In reporting this story, the Defense Department allowed 60 Minutes some background interviews with analysts, but ultimately decided not to provide any one to speak on camera.
Produced by Sam Hornblower. Broadcast associates, Mabel Kabani and Natalie Breitkopf. Edited by Stephanie Palewski Brumbach.
New court documents filed Thursday revealed that Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Air National guardsman charged with leaking highly classified Pentagon documents, had been warned several times about his alleged unauthorized access to highly classified information. Catherine Herridge has more.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — The Massachusetts Air National guardsman accused of leaking highly classified military documents kept an arsenal of guns and said on social media that he would like to kill a “ton of people,” prosecutors said in arguing Thursday that 21-year-old Jack Teixeira should remain in jail for his trial.
But the judge at Teixeira’s detention hearing put off an immediate decision on whether he should be kept in custody until his trial or released to home confinement or under other conditions. Teixeira was led away from the court in handcuffs, black rosary beads around his neck, pending that ruling.
The court filings raise new questions about why Teixeira had such a high security clearance and access to some of the nation’s most classified secrets. They said he may still have material that hasn’t been released, which could be of “tremendous value to hostile nation states that could offer him safe harbor and attempt to facilitate his escape from the United States.”
In Teixeira’s detention hearing, Magistrate Judge David Hennessy expressed skepticism of defense arguments that the government hasn’t alleged Teixeira intended leaked information to be widely disseminated.
“Somebody under the age of 30 has no idea that when they put something on the internet that it could end up anywhere in this world?” the judge asked. “Seriously?”
Teixeira entered his hearing in Worcester in orange prison garb, smiling at his father in the front row. His handcuffs were removed before he sat down and put back on when he was taken out.
The judge could order Teixeira to be confined at his father’s home or conditionally released while awaiting trial, if not held in jail.
“You have a young man before you who didn’t flee, has nowhere to flee,” said Brendan Kelley, the defendant’s lawyer. “He will answer the charges, he will be judged by his fellow citizens.”
But Nadine Pellegrini from the Massachusetts U.S. attorney’s office told the judge the information prosecutors submitted to the court about the defendant’s threatening words and behavior “is not speculation, it is not hyperbole, nor is it the creation of a caricature. It is … directly based upon the words and actions of this defendant.”
The defense asserted Teixeira no longer has access to any top-secret information and had accused prosecutors of providing “little more than speculation that a foreign adversary will seduce Mr. Teixeira and orchestrate his clandestine escape from the United States.”
The prosecution’s filing reviews what it says are Teixeira social media posts, stating in November that he would “kill a (expletive) ton of people” if he had his way, because it would be “culling the weak minded.”
Court papers urging a federal judge to keep Teixeira in custody detailed a troubling history going back to high school, where he was suspended when a classmate overheard him discussing Molotov cocktails and other weapons as well as racial threats. More recently, prosecutors said, he used his government computer to research past mass shootings and standoffs with federal agents.
He remains a grave threat to national security and a flight risk, prosecutors wrote. Investigators are still trying to determine whether he kept any physical or digital copies of classified information that hasn’t surfaced yet.
“There simply is no condition or combination of conditions that can ensure the Defendant will not further disclose additional information still in his knowledge or possession,” prosecutors wrote. “The damage the Defendant has already caused to the U.S. national security is immense. The damage the Defendant is still capable of causing is extraordinary.”
Teixeira has been in jail since his arrest this month on charges stemming from the most consequential intelligence leak in years.
Teixeira has been charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized retention and transmission of classified national defense information. He has not yet entered a plea.
His lawyers argued in court papers that appropriate conditions can be set for his release even if the court finds him to be a flight risk — such as confinement at his father’s home and location monitoring.
“The government’s allegations … offer no support that Mr. Teixeira currently, or ever, intended any information purportedly to the private social media server to be widely disseminated,” they wrote. “Thus, its argument that Mr. Teixeira will continue to release information or destroy evidence if not detained rings hollow.”
Prosecutors wrote that he kept his gun locker within reach of his bed and in it were handguns, bolt-action rifles, shotguns, an AK-style high-capacity weapon and a gas mask. Ammunition and tactical pouches were found on his dresser, they said.
Jack Teixeira’s father answers questions from his attorney as he takes the stand during a detention hearing for Jack Teixeira, a member of the U.S. Air National Guard who is facing criminal charges for leaking top-secret military intelligence records online, at the federal courthouse in Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S., April 27, 2023 in this courtroom sketch. REUTERS/Margaret Small
MARGARET SMALL via Reuters
He is accused of distributing highly classified documents about top national security issues in a chat room on Discord, a social media platform that started as a hangout for gamers. The leak stunned military officials, sparked an international uproar and raised fresh questions about America’s ability to safeguard its secrets.
The leaked documents appear to detail U.S. and NATO aid to Ukraine and U.S. intelligence assessments regarding U.S. allies that could strain ties with those nations. Some show real-time details from February and March of Ukraine’s and Russia’s battlefield positions and precise numbers of battlefield gear lost and newly flowing into Ukraine from its allies.
Prosecutors wrote that Teixeira repeatedly had “detailed and troubling discussions about violence and murder” on the platform where authorities say he shared the documents. In February, he told another person that he was tempted to make a minivan into an “assassination van,” prosecutors wrote.
In 2018, they allege, Teixeira was suspended after a classmate “overheard him make remarks about weapons, including Molotov cocktails, guns at the school, and racial threats.” His initial application for a firearms identification card that same year was denied due to police concerns over those remarks.
The Justice Department said it also learned through its investigation that Teixeira used his government computer in July to look up mass shootings and government standoffs, including the terms “Ruby Ridge,” “Las Vegas shooting,” “Mandalay Bay shooting,” “Uvalde” and “Buffalo tops shooting” — an apparent reference to the 2022 racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket.
Those searches should have triggered the computer to generate an immediate referral to security, which could have then led to a more in-depth review of Teixeira’s file, according to Dan Meyer, a lawyer who specializes in security clearance issues. The Air Force’s investigation will probably discover whether a referral was generated — and whether security officers did anything with the information.
The Air Force has suspended the commander of the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron where Teixeira worked and an administrative commander until further investigation.
Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder wouldn’t discuss the specifics of Teixeira’s case. “We do want to allow the investigation to run its course,” Ryder said.
Teixeira’s lawyers said he has no criminal history. The incident at his high school was “thoroughly investigated” and he was allowed to come back after a few days and a psychological evaluation, they wrote. That investigation was “fully known and vetted ” by the Air National Guard before he enlisted and when he obtained his top-secret security clearance, they said.
Months later, after news outlets began reporting on the documents leak, Teixeira took steps to destroy evidence. Authorities who searched a dumpster at his home found a smashed laptop, tablet and Xbox gaming console, they said.
Authorities have not alleged a motive. Members of the Discord group have described Teixeira as someone who wanted to show off rather than inform the public about military operations or influence U.S. policy.
Billing records the FBI obtained from Discord helped lead authorities to Teixeira, who enlisted in the Air National Guard in September 2019. A Discord user told the FBI that a username linked to Teixeira began posting what appeared to be classified information roughly in December.
A 21-year-old Air National Guardsman charged with leaking troves of highly classified U.S. military secrets appeared in federal court Thursday for a detention hearing. In new court documents, prosecutors said that rifles and AK-style weapons were found in Jack Teixeira’s bedroom. Catherine Herridge has more.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
The commander of the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron and the detachment commander overseeing administrative support have both been temporarily suspended from their leadership positions and have temporarily lost access to classified systems and information.
The commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts made the suspensions last week.
Teixeira, the 21-year-old who allegedly posted hundreds of classified Pentagon documents online for months, worked as a systems administrator in the 102nd Intelligence Wing in the Massachusetts Air National Guard.
The two commanders are suspended pending further investigation by the Air Force inspector general. As more information becomes available, more members of Teixeira’s unit could face suspension or removal.
The Air Force reassigned the unit’s intelligence mission to other units earlier this month and ordered the inspector general to probe the unit’s policies and procedures related to the handling of national security information.
Investigators with the IG’s office arrived at Otis Air National Guard Base Tuesday.
The Justice Department argued Wednesday night that accused Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira must remain in detention before he is tried on charges related to his alleged unlawful retention and transmission of national defense and classified documents.
Jack Teixeira, Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of leaking secret Pentagon documents
Facebook
In a detention memo filed with the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, prosecutors presented several reasons that the 21-year-old member of the Air National Guard should not be released to the custody of his father before his trial. Teixeira’s detention hearing is to be held Thursday.
Investigators say they found evidence that Teixeira attempted to thwart the investigation into his alleged leaks; included in the prosecutors’ memo are samples of over 40,000 messages they say Teixeira sent on Discord — many about the allegedly leaked documents.
In March, he offered information to users in his group on the instant messaging and social platform Discord, according to a chat found by investigators.
Government exhibit
Investigators also captured conversations that showed Teixeira instructing others in the Discord group to “delete all messages.”
“[i]f anyone comes looking, don’t tell them sh**,” he allegedly wrote to one user. And he told another, “Try to delete all my messages in civil discussions.” He came up with one plan to have a Discord user invite him to a chat and then ban Teixeira and use the “option to delete all my messages.” The user informed him, “it only goes to past 7 days.” Teixeira responded with a profanity.
Investigators say when they arrived at his mother’s home earlier this month, they found a tablet, laptop and XBox smashed in his trash. Also at the house, the FBI found a gun locker where multiple weapons, including handguns, rifles, shotguns and high-capacity weapons were stored “two feet” from his bed, the filing says.
Jack Teixeira’s room at his mother’s and stepfather’s home in North Dighton, Massachusetts
Government exhibit
Teixeira was suspended from high school in 2018 after a classmate heard him talking about weapons and Molotov cocktails. He claimed they were references to a video game but when he applied for a firearms identification that same year, he was rejected because of those remarks. He applied again in 2019 and was again denied the permit. In 2020, he argued that the position of trust he held with the U.S. government qualified him to possess a gun.
Teixeira also allegedly posted violent rhetoric online. The detention memo notes that last November, he wrote that if he had his way, he would “kill a [expletive] ton of people” because it would be “culling the weak minded.”
Earlier this year, in February, he allegedly told a user that he was tempted to make a type of minivan into an “assassination van.”
In July 2022, using his government computer, investigators say he searched numerous terms associated with mass shooting, including “uvalde.”
The Justice Department noted in the memo that Teixeira faces 25 year in prison and “potentially far more,” hinting that he may face more charges. The lengthy potential maximum sentence could make him a significant flight risk, prosecutors argue, and the value of the information he obtained — as well as his low current net worth of about $19,000 — could make him vulnerable to offers from countries unfriendly to the U.S.
“He accessed and may still have access to a trove of classified information that would be of tremendous value to hostile nation states that could offer him safe harbor and attempt to facilitate his escape from the United States,” the memo said.
The Justice Department warned that if released, Teixeira could pose an even greater threat now that his identity is known. “Those same adversaries have every incentive to contact the Defendant, to seek additional information he may have physical access to or knowledge of, and to provide him with the means to help him flee the country in return for that information.”
According to the government’s memo, beginning in February 2022, Teixeira had access to “hundreds of classified documents containing national defense information that had no bearing on his role as essentially an information technology (“IT”) support specialist.”
In the Discord group, investigators say, he acknowledged on multiple occasions that he posted classified material and even asked other members what they wanted him to post.
In March, he allegedly told the group he would no longer share classified materials and in April, he reemerged with a different username, encouraging others to delete messages.
The filing also contains numerous agreements Teixiera signed about his job at the Air National Guard, FBI affidavits, and pictures of his room.
The U.S. government is investigating more than 650 potential UFO sightings, a Pentagon official confirmed Wednesday.
Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, made the revelation in an appearance before a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The sightings are concentrated off the East Coast and West Coast of the U.S., in the Middle East and in the area of the South China Sea, Kirkpatrick said.
Newly declassified video of an American military drone conducting surveillance in the Middle East showed an unidentified object zipping in and out of frame. If the video is slowed down, it appears to show a metallic sphere. But where it came from and what it was doing remains one of many such mysteries to the Pentagon.
According to the Pentagon, there is no credible evidence any of the still unidentified objects came from outer space. However, the Pentagon said a small number of them exhibited advanced flight characteristics which indicate they may have been developed by China.
This acknowledgment comes after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report in January which disclosed that its office had tracked a total of 510 UFO sightings since 2005.
That was up significantly from 2021, when ODNI had reported just 144 total sightings. Of the 366 new sightings reported in the January report, 26 were characterized as drones, 163 as balloon-like objects and six as aerial clutter, with the remaining 171 unexplained, some of which exhibited “unusual flight characteristics or performance, and require further analysis.”
Jack Teixeira faces up to 15 years in years in prison if convicted of charges he’s facing over his suspected connection to the disclosure of dozens of secret documents that revealed sensitive intelligence and defense information.
Teixeira, a 21-year-old airman in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, made his first court appearance Friday as he faces charges of unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents.
What do we know about Teixeira so far?
Teixeira joined the Massachusetts Air National Guard in September 2019, according to federal court filings. He was granted Top Secret security clearance in 2021, according to an affadavit filed by an FBI special agent. Teixeira also maintained sensitive compartmented access, or “SCI,” to other highly classified programs, according to the affidavit.
Since May 2022, he has been serving as an E-3 Airman First Class, stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, according to court documents.
Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School superintendent Bill Runey confirmed that Teixeira graduated in 2020, CBS Boston reported.
What do prosecutors allege Teixeira did with that clearance access?
A highly sensitive government document posted on a social media platform was accessible to Teixeira because of his work for the Air National Guard, the affidavit says. According to a U.S. federal agency, which has access to logs of documents he accessed, the 21-year-old accessed a government document in February 2023, about one day before a contact of Teixeira’s reposted the information on the internet, according to the affidavit.
That contact told the FBI the information he reposted was originally posted on a server by an individual the FBI believes to be Teixeira. The FBI affidavit even says Teixeira used his government computer to search classified intelligence reports for the word “leak.”
An undated picture shows Jack Douglas Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the U.S. Air National Guard, who was arrested by the FBI, over his alleged involvement in leaks online of classified documents, posing for a selfie at an unidentified location.
Social Media Website/via Reuters
President Joe Biden weighed in on the arrest Friday.
“I commend the rapid action taken by law enforcement to investigate and respond to the recent dissemination of classified U.S. government documents,” Biden said in a statement. “While we are still determining the validity of those documents, I have directed our military and intelligence community to take steps to further secure and limit distribution of sensitive information, and our national security team is closely coordinating with our partners and allies.”
United Nations – Fallout from the leaked trove of classified defense and intelligence documents continues, as some of the material purports to show possible surveillance by the U.S. of the United Nations secretary-general and a disagreement over the handling of a key initiative to help export grain from Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion.
Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old airman in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, has been arrested for his alleged connection to the leaked documents, some of which may have been doctored.
Leaked documents first reported by BBC focus in part on the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a series of agreements brokered by the U.N. and Turkey to move grain out of Ukraine’s ports and assist Russia in the export of fertilizers.
One of the documents appeared to reveal that the U.S. felt that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ “actions are undermining broader efforts to hold Moscow accountable for its actions in Ukraine,” in order to protect the grain deal, which he considers key to addressing global food insecurity. Gutteres has gone so far as to tell Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the U.N. will continue efforts to improve Russia’s ability to export, even if that involves sanctioned Russian entities or individuals, the documents showed.
Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, Western governments have coordinated harsh sanctions against Russian officials and entities, aimed at crippling the nation’s economy and the ability of its citizens and companies to do business with the rest of the world.
But Ukraine’s U.N. ambassador pushed back on the characterization of Guterres as friendly to Moscow. “He made an important contribution to allow Ukraine and U.N. together with Turkey sign the Istanbul agreement within his Black Sea Grain Initiative,” Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told CBS News on Thursday.
The documents, if authentic, also reveal surveillance by the U.S. of the U.N. chief. In particular, the retelling of a discussion between Miguel Graca, the Director of the Executive Office of the U.N. Secretary-General, and Gutteres in which the U.N. chief appeared annoyed at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request for Gutteres to travel to Kyiv. Guterres has made several trips to Ukraine since the start of the invasion, including his latest trip to Kyiv last month.
“The secretary-general has been at this job, and in the public eye, for a long time. He’s not surprised by the fact that people are spying on him and listening in to his private conversations,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told CBS News. “What is surprising is the malfeasance or incompetence that allows that such private conversations to be distorted and become public.”
Dujarric on Thursday told reporters, “We take whatever measures we can, but the need to respect the viability of U.N. communications applies to every member state.”
Ukraine also dismissed the insinuation that the U.N. sides with Russia in the conflict.
“Secretary-General Guterres made his position on the full-scale aggression of Russia against Ukraine very clear on the night of the invasion, a position now guided by several U.N. General Assembly resolutions supported by the overwhelming majority of the member states,” Kyslytsya said.
“The secretary-general has never misled me. He is very attentive to the issues I bring to his attention. He follows on my requests even when he travels,” Kyslytsya said, adding, “I think that Antonio Guterres is a world-class statesman with many decades of experience of dealing with many dramatic challenges.”
Guterres has shuttled back and forth between U.N. Headquarters, Moscow and Kyiv since the war began last February. He has known Russian President Vladimir Putin for many years, having first met him in 2000 when Guterres was prime minister of Portugal. Guterres in 2016 visited the Kremlin as one of his first foreign trips after he was elected to steer the U.N.
“Guterres has been commendably frank in criticizing Russia, but the Black Sea deal was a big win for him and he is locked into defending it,” Richard Gowan, an expert on the global body and director of the U.N. International Crisis Group, told CBS News.
It was still unclear as of Thursday how much of the information in the leaked documents, some of which officials have said are from late February and early March, is accurate. Some of the images appeared to have been manipulated.
Sources told CBS News that the Department of Defense and the intelligence community are actively reviewing and assessing the validity of the photographed documents that are circulating on social media.
— Eleanor Watson and Camilla Schickcontributed to reporting
