Air base resumes suspended intelligence mission after leak scandal

The intelligence mission at a Massachusetts military base will resume after a suspension of more than a year, the Air Force said on Friday, following a sprawling leak of military secrets online that led to the conviction of an Air National Guard member.

The return of intelligence operations to Otis Air National Guard Base comes after a lengthy recertification process and an Air Force inspector general review last year that found a “culture of complacency” and “lack of supervision” that allowed Jack Teixeira to search for, smuggle out and post online images of hundreds of classified military documents until his arrest in April 2023. He shared hundreds of photographs of top-secret files in a chatroom on Discord, a chat app favored by gamers, and the information spread rapidly from there.

Teixeira, 22, pleaded guilty in federal court in March to six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information and now faces a potential court-martial after the Air Force launched separate criminal proceedings this month. He faces a sentence of up to 16 years in the federal case, and the possibility of additional confinement if also convicted in military court.

The recertification and return of the mission, effective Saturday, was approved by Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, the head of Air Combat Command, the Air Force said in a statement. The 102nd Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group has “a new organizational structure” to boost oversight of its operations after inspections were carried out by Air Force officials, the service said.

The unit has an active-duty mission to gather and process classified information to be seen by senior U.S. military officials.

“The inspection teams, with participation from members of the headquarters staff, evaluated the remaining open deficiencies, as well as sampling security procedures and culture across the wing,” the Air Force said.

The lengthy suspension had led to questions about whether the intelligence mission would be permanently taken from Otis, a former active-duty installation that predates World War II. Local officials had raised concerns that the scandal left the base vulnerable, after earlier realignments had stripped away its active-duty status in the 1970s and a National Guard fighter jet squadron in 2008.

Donald Quenneville, a retired Air Force general who served for years at Otis, said he didn’t ever hear concern from senior leaders that the mission’s suspension could become permanent, “but you never know.””You always like to see us come out the other side of these not-so-great happenings,” he said. “I’m glad they were able to fix these issues that the Air Force found.”

While Teixeira is the only service member to face criminal prosecution in the leak, at least 15 other service members at Otis were disciplined for failing to take action when they saw suspicious behavior from the airman.

Air Force investigators found that members of his unit “had information about as many as four separate instances of his questionable activity,” but those instances were “not fully disclosed above the squadron level,” according to a report released last year. Members of his Teixeira’s unit who had seen him looking up classified information outside the scope of his job “intentionally failed” to report him, the report said, with some fearing that security officials might “overreact” if they did.

Among those cited were Col. Sean Riley, then-commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing, and Col. Enrique Dovalo, the former commander of the subordinate 102nd Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group at Otis. Riley was removed from command, while Dovalo already had moved on to another role in the military.