Its a situation that is not commonly recognized and rarely if ever talked about in the military – namely the compromise of secrets by personnel serving within the ranks of our Armed Forces.
When I served in the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, NC back in the 1980’s – I knew a soldier once who served as our communications clerk that used to show us classified material marked “secret”. I guess he got a kick out of carrying it around. On numerous occasions he would carry that material “off post” and leave it inside his unlocked vehicle when he frequented strip clubs in Fayetteville to get drunk on alcohol.
These documents revealed certain codes and procedures relating to radio communications at the company level.
In this case the man was not a spy – or I would have personally killed him myself – he was just an a fool.
His actions however compromised the unit. I tried on numerous occasions to council him that this was a very bad idea – to no avail. When I tried to report it – officers in my unit were more concerned by the fact that I saw the material instead of the soldier’s mishandling of the secret document in the first place. Of course, in that situation my trust was betrayed and the other soldier denied the allegations and I was unofficially reprimanded in that case.
I also met soldiers at Ft. Bragg who were very careless, generally speaking with materials relating to Special Forces manuals and training materials marked “confidential”, which they acquired during training and were allowed for whatever reason to keep, even after washing out of the Q-course for Special Forces and after being reassigned to our front line infantry unit. I would often spend hours reading those materials myself which I shouldn’t have had access to begin with.
In another incident a lower enlisted soldier within our unit had an affair with an officer’s wife and related how he found classified material at his home, when he would engage in acts of adultery with the man’s wife at this home. He even went so far as to take documents from his home to show his buddies back in the barracks. These documents were then carelessly mishandled and shown to a variety of people, including girlfriends and civilians who were not authorized to see or handle the material. I should mention that the officer in this case was a “drunk”.
In another incident soldiers talked about officers on base who frequented the officers club leaving documents inside their unsecured vehicles. Some of these soldiers bragged about stealing documents and other items from the officers vehicles who they knew were alcoholics and careless, including those who served at Brigade and Division HQ. So where talking very senior level officers here.
More recently, I talked with a soldier at Ft. riley, Kansas who mentioned the same kind of stuff goes on at his unit, usually involving laptops not briefcases full of documents. In one case in particular he mentioned that a decorated senor level commander serving with the 1st Infantry Division frequently kept secret documents on his laptop computer and in one incident misplaced or lost a thumb drive containing over 100 classified documents relating to unit readiness.
Apparently the thumb drive was found by another soldier and the two of them connected it to their laptop computers and were shocked by what they found. Its not known what happened to that thumb drive by the way – the incident happened in 2010 and I have since lost touch with that man – who I only knew by his first name.
Such incidents of the compromise of secret information abound, I am afraid to say. Part of the problem is that lower enlisted ranks are not trained in how information is classified. Part of the problem is that lower enlisted ranks are not trained in how information is classified.
See related article: Digital espionage are you at risk? https://groundreport.com/digital-espionage-are-you-at-risk-2/
See article: Social networking sites and the military https://groundreport.com/social-networking-sites-and-the-military-2/