"Face the Nation" on April 16, 2023
Interview
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Thank you.
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Not completely, but clearly there's damage that's done. I mean we have documents classified because we don't want them to get in the hands of our adversaries, and these have been widely circulated. So, obviously, these are - are - are damaging both to the United States and to our allies.
You know, what's troubling here is when you look at the documents that were circulated, that, you know, without the care of its handling, these relate to actual real people. The marks on maps are - are real people. And they can impact people's lives. And that's certainly our concern.
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Well, I can tell you, President Zelenskyy certainly would be concerned and so would our other allies. Whenever we're trusted with information, we're working in partnership with someone, you know, our intelligence gathering, our intelligence information, if it is released, can represent a vulnerability to them. So, obviously, it's an issue that's troubling and that needs to be addressed.
In the - the outcome for the Ukraine conflict, though, it's early enough, and these are static documents, meaning they're pictures of an exact period of time.
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And mitigation can happen, people can change their strategies, and - and that can change the outcome.
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Right. So, some of these documents would be in the form of management documents. When you look at inventories or depleting inventories, they, too, are static. What they show is a to-do list. And what we need to do, and our allies need to do to help Ukraine replenish those. It doesn't indicate that they have no other sources and, in fact, they'll - they will - will run out and be completely open and vulnerable to Russia.
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Yes.
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Right. Absolutely. And if you look at the actual complaint and affidavit that was filed when he was arraigned, you - you have the - the also admission from the Department of Defense that they are able to track his movements. So, clearly, he was having access to documents that he should not have had access to and someone should have been paying attention, tapping him on the shoulder and - and ending that access.
But in this instance, as you just indicated, you know, through life patterns that were clearly signals that - that he was -- might be a likely leaker of information in the future and then also the access that he was having to this information should have been cut off. He should have never been having access to this level of classified information that could hurt the United States.
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Right. He had no reason -- there was no need to know for him of the information that he was accessing. And the Department of Defense admits in the affidavit that they had the ability to track him. That's going to be the questions my committee is going to be having.
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So, we're going to be having hearings on this. And what we need to do - and from the 9/11 Commission we learned that we needed to more widely disseminate classified information so that people had actionable intelligence that they could piece together puzzles.
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Clearly, we've gone too far. And where we have an instance where someone in Massachusetts who's looking at documents with respect to war plans in Ukraine, and the Department of Defense knows, and that's what our committee is going to be looking at is, how do we make certain we make changes.
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First off, let's be clear, there are - there are no U.S. troops on - on the ground in Ukraine, other than there are troops that are normally at an embassy protecting the embassy.
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We do not have the boots on the ground.
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We do not have - have - have troops on the ground. So it's absolutely incorrect assumption from the documents that - that this individual leaked.
The other aspect is, he's guilty of - of -- if he's brought through this process and he's found guilty, it will be of espionage. It's of being a traitor to your country. That's not someone who -- to look up to. That is someone who has compromised his country and has certainly compromised our allies. That's not the oath that he took. That's not the job that he took.
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Right. No, so the Department of Justice has not been forthcoming in this. And they've been somewhat disingenuous. And certainly both the House and the Senate are going to have to address this. One, the documents that were delivered to Congress are not complete. And, secondly, they don't identify whose documents they were. Whether they came from the trove of Biden's behind the Corvette, or whether or not they came from Mar- a-Lago. That, obviously, has to be addressed.
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Timing ought to be able to tell us.
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But, still, at the same time, to deliver those documents without even designating whose documents they were clearly shows, you know, a -- an unwillingness to be -- work closely with Congress.
And this also it's incomplete. I can tell you this, in the reviews that we've had so far of indexes that do include the documents, there's no nuclear codes here. There's no -- no one had anything that - that - that was of an extreme imminent threat to the United States.
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We've seen the - the index of them.
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We've gotten some of the documents delivered to us. But the Department of Justice really needs to - to come clean. They need to deliver the documents to Congress. They promised them to us. And they - they need to work with us so that we can get an assessment of what happened here.
There are laws that need to be changed so that we can more protect our classified documents and those who handle them.
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And so we - we need them to work with us.
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I have.
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The -- well, so the -- I'm -- I'm very concerned that the Biden administration is looking more for fault, blame -- and blame than really action items as to what we need to do.
What - what clearly happened here in the abrupt departure from Afghanistan is a number of mistakes were made. We can only make certain that we don't repeat those mistakes if we're able to -- to really understand them. Congress has put together an Afghan commission that is reviewing our time there and our exit. I think that's going to be a very helpful avenue also of getting an understanding of what happened and how do we not do this again.
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Thank you.
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Thanks.
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