Marine who disclosed classified information to protect his troops reinstated

Washington Examiner:
A Marine Corps reserve officer who leaked classified information to warn fellow troops about an insider attack should be allowed to continue serving, a military panel has determined.

Maj. Jason Brezler faced a second board of inquiry in New Orleans last week after spending six years fighting to reverse his 2013 discharge. His original board's punishment was thrown out by a U.S. district court in 2016 when a judge ruled Brezler did not have access to records he needed to mount a proper defense.

"The Board finds that none of the reasons listed above warrant Maj. Brezler's separation from the naval service and recommends closing the case," the new decision read.

Brezler was found to have taken classified documents out of Afghanistan during an earlier deployment. He was accused of including the classified information in an email sent from his personal computer and email address to fellow Marines, warning about an allegedly corrupt Afghan police chief named Sarwar Jan. Brezler was familiar with the chief, having kicked him off an outpost in 2010 after allegations that he was engaged in sex trafficking boys and had ties to the Taliban.

Jan had previously been accused of extortion, operating illegal security checkpoints, and selling weapons and police uniforms to Taliban fighters. An inquiry conducted by the Marine Corps in 2012 found no evidence supporting Jan's involvement in sex trafficking or sexual misconduct.

The warning ultimately went ignored. Two weeks later, on Aug. 10, 2012, Marine Staff Sgt. Scott Dickinson, Cpl. Richard Rivera, and Lance Cpl. Greg Buckley were killed in an attack carried out by a boy with ties to Jan. Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents questioned Jan about the attack in 2014 and he denied any involvement.

While Brezler might have been acting in good faith, mishandling classified information can still lead to severe consequences. Boards of inquiry, which are made up of military officers senior to the person in question, are held to look into allegations of misconduct and suggest action. Gary Soltis, a former Judge Advocate General judge and law professor at Georgetown University, believes the board came to the right decision.
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Why would the military want to keep this information from the troops they had sent in harm's way?  It seems inexplicable that they would not tell the troops at risk who to watch out for.  If there was anyone who needed to know this information it was the troops working around this Afghan weirdo.

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