press secretary did about just why this this 21 year old air national guardsman was allowed, apparently to have access to such classified material and what pentagon press secretary writer told reporters that essentially the military and trust highly classified information to people of all ages, including very young service members, essentially depends on what your job is and what you need to do that job. he gave the example of course of very young service members at leading people into combat. he said that basically it doesn t matter what your age is. it is just the job that you need to do. and so the pentagon did say, however, that they are taking steps to mitigate any potential leaks like this in the future. they are limiting the amount of information, for example, that they are disseminating widely across the u. s government. we have been told that people who were receiving these kinds of highly classified documents over the last several months have simply stopped receivin
this 21 year old guardsman he joined in 2019. he s very new to this and he was a cyber transport. systems journeyman. he was essentially responsible for i t for this particular wing of the air national guard in massachusetts. so it is totally unclear at this point whether he had access to these documents himself, whether he took them how he printed them if he even printed them himself. just a lot of questions here that investigators are going to be looking at jake as they look into his background and motive. i don t think of the idea. the question is about being 21. i think it s a question of like he s obviously if his story is to be believed. incredibly immature. so why would somebody who s immature if that s preferential language to your friends at the pentagon. why would he get access to the classified documents? natasha bertrand at the pentagon for us, thank you so much. i want to bring in a maliki brown. he s a senior story producer on the new york times visual investigations team