When I was a platoon leader in the early 1990s, I had to give a safety briefing to my soldiers every Friday afternoon before our company’s final formation. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t drink and motorboat. Don’t drink and hunt. Don’t have unprotected sex. If you’re taking a road trip and get tired, pull over. Standard stuff.
It’s a time honored tradition, passed on from generation to generation. A battle buddy of mine sums it up as, “do not add to, or subtract from, the population.” Sage advice.
We would all roll our eyes each time we went over the information. But there are times when, as an older and hopefully wiser man, I see how necessary it was to repeat the same information time and time again. It’s because some of you are thick as a brick.
My digital nuclear scrapbook
If something should go without saying, I’ve learned, it’s probably a good idea to say it a few more times. Things like, “when you have access to nuclear secrets, do not make copies of the information and store them at home, even if you aren’t actually planning on ever giving them to people who shouldn’t have them.”
Which brings us to the case of Weldon Marshall of Sherman, Texas, who was sentenced Wednesday to 41 months in prison and one year of supervised release by the U.S. District Court for the Southern Texas.
Clearly, no matter how many times Marshall heard the briefing, the lesson didn’t stick.
Back in March, Marshall pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully retaining national defense information and faced up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Marshall served in the U.S. Navy between 1999 and 2004, gained a Secret clearance around 2002 and a Top Secret clearance around 2003. According to the Department of Justice,while in the Navy “he had access to highly sensitive classified material, including documents describing U.S. nuclear command, control and communications.”
The system Marshall worked on in the Navy is called TACMO, an acronym for “TAke Charge and Move Out.” It is the system the military uses to maintain communications between nuclear forces and the National Command Authority. Here’s a hint, for those who still aren’t tracking: that is the kind of information that needs to stay secured at work.
Like manning, only not as clever
There’s no way someone with a Top Secret clearance doesn’t know what is and what is not acceptable behavior. But Marshall burned lots of that information to a CD which he cleverly labeled “My Secret TACMO Stuff.” Seriously? At least Chelsea Manning had the wherewithal to label his cache “Lady Gaga.”
It’s one thing to keep what amounts to a classified digital scrapbook of your time in the Navy. But when you become a contractor and continue to save personal classified mementos, you’re just asking for trouble. Marshall deployed to Afghanistan as a contractor, during which time he mailed hard drives home to Texas.
While not part of his guilty plea, Marshall allegedly stole five Cisco network switches in August, 2014 . A grand jury indicted him for the theft in January 2017, but the indictment was sealed. Marshal’s indictment in the classified information case is not public, but it’s a fairly safe assumption that the theft of the hardware led to the discovery of his treasure trove of nuclear goodies.
Marshall will have nearly four years as a guest of the nation to contemplate the massiveness of his screw-up. So let me tell you all once again, in case the lesson hasn’t taken yet: classified information stays properly secured in an accredited facility. It doesn’t come home with you, even if you try to pass it off as a Lady Gaga CD.
