The IG recommends that the employee be reinstated to his job with backpay, while the Defense Department officials involved “receive appropriate action.” For one of them, that means just a note in his personnel file, as he retired before the investigation began.

“It is important to encourage personnel, at the DoD and throughout the government, to come forward when they see something they reasonably believe is wrong,” Inspector General Robert Storch said in a release. “Protecting such whistleblowers from reprisal is vital to the ability to detect and deter fraud, waste, and abuse within the Department of Defense.”

The report puts the next moves in the Army secretary’s hands, recommending action against the supervisor that fired the employee.

“The U.S. Army will review the Department of Defense Officer of Inspector General’s report findings released today and take appropriate action, consistent with the DoD OIG recommendations,” Col. Randee Farrell, spokeswoman for Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, told Military Times on Wednesday.

The investigation stems from a June 2018 complaint alleging that Army Cyber Command human resources was violating his employment agreement by first delaying, then reducing, then altogether stopping student loan repayments that were due to be finished by the end of 2019.

A year later, after spending months contacting a half dozen officials about resolving the issue, the employee filed a complaint with the command’s inspector general.

He later filed several more IG complaints, alleging that Army Cyber Command violated policies on performance evaluations, hiring practices, reimbursement for travel expenses and more.

That included time and attendance issues, like asking employees to report their time working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic as administrative leave, rather than create required telework agreements, and requiring staff to request comp days rather than be paid overtime when they were given assignments on tight deadlines that couldn’t be completed during the normal workday.

“If the lawyer finds [the complainant] to be correct, we have a lot of issues to deal with,” the employee’s supervisor wrote in an email after the employee pointed out that the law required overtime pay.

The retaliation began in summer 2020, after the employee filed multiple IG complaints, gave interviews in the investigations and noted his perceptions of a toxic work environment in a command climate survey.

His supervisor, called Subject 1 in the IG report, demoted him, gave him a poor performance evaluation and later worked to have him fired. He used documentation that the employee improperly filled out time sheets and inappropriately requested that a subordinate write a nomination for a performance award for him.

Another superior, known as Subject 2, signed off on the firing in November 2020 after meeting with the employee about the effort to have him fired, during which the employee disclosed that he had been involved in several whistleblower efforts against the command.

The IG concluded that the employee’s whistleblower disclosures were made too close to the proceedings against him to have been a coincidence, and that his firing was a result of trying to hold the command responsible for misconduct.

But while the attack bore similarities to dozens of recent strikes against U.S. bases in the region since October, it remained unclear precisely why Sunday’s attack was successful when prior attacks were either shot down or landed away from populated areas of American bases.

U.S. Central Command is investigating exactly what happened, Sabrina Singh said, and she declined to confirm or deny media reports that the drone used in the attack was mistaken for a U.S. drone that had been airborne at the same time.

The Pentagon believes it’s possible that the more than 160 similar attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria in recent months also intended to kill, even if they previously had not.

“Unfortunately, this attack was successful,” Singh said of Sunday’s attack on the base known as Tower 22 on the Jordan-Syria border.

That attack drone struck a housing building early in the morning, Singh said, which helps explain why it caused so many casualties, including the deaths of three soldiers assigned to a Georgia-based Reserve unit.

They are Army Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah of the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, out of Fort Moore.

Eight additional troops were medically evacuated to Baghdad for evaluation, and three of those will fly on to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for continued care, according to Singh.

More than 40 troops in all were injured in the attack, Singh said, a number that could continue to rise if troops experience delayed traumatic brain injury symptoms.

President Joe Biden on Sunday blamed Iran-backed militias for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes by such groups against American forces across the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

The attack brings the total attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in the Middle East to 165, including 98 in Syria and 66 in Iraq, with 80 non-life-threatening injuries between them.

Both the White House and Pentagon have described the attack in Jordan as an escalation of tensions, though Singh repeatedly said the Pentagon does not consider the attack in Jordan an expansion of any conflict.

The attack has the hallmarks of similar Iran-backed militia attacks in Iraq and Syria, Singh said, specifically those carried out by Khata’ib Hizballah.

The administration has said it will launch retaliatory strikes, but hasn’t offered details of when or where. Previous retaliatory U.S. strikes have targeted weapons and training facilities Syria and Iraq.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The drone, rocket, mortar and missile attacks have injured 69 U.S. troops, but a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday that no troops have been injured since Dec. 25.

“When it comes to U.S. forces in the region, again, we’re there for one reason and one reason only, which is the enduring defeat of ISIS,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters during a briefing. “And so we will continue to call on these Iranian proxies to cease these attacks, but we won’t hesitate, as we’ve demonstrated in the past, to take appropriate action to protect our forces should we need to do that.”

The U.S. last struck a militia headquarters in central Baghdad on Jan. 4, killing Abu Taqwa, the leader of a militia known to have participated in strikes on U.S. troops.

It was the Pentagon’s second pre-planned strike inside Iraq since the barrage of attacks began in the fall, following a Dec. 26 retaliatory strike inside Iraq and three strikes on militia facilities in Syria in late 2023.

In the southern Red Sea region, attacks on international shipping lanes reached 27 on Thursday, Ryder said.

Ryder said he did not know how many international ships are now patrolling the southern end of the Red Sea as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian, an international effort stood up late last year to protect commercial shipping vessels from the Houthis continued attacks.

“Since the start of the operation, there’s been no Houthi [drones] or missiles actually fired into international shipping lanes that have actually hit any merchant vessels,” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, head of Naval Forces Central Command, told reporters Jan. 4.

That held true through Thursday, even after the Houthis on Thursday launched their largest attack on the Red Sea yet, deploying multiple drones and missiles.

That number includes 47 incidents in Iraq and 55 in Syria, the official said, “by a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and close-range ballistic missiles.”

Most of the attacks either didn’t reach bases or were shot down by U.S. defenses, the official added.

The small number that did, however, have resulted in 66 injuries to U.S. troops, a number that has held steady since Dec. 7.

The Pentagon has characterized the injuries, to include dozens of traumatic brain injuries, as “non-serious.” All of the troops have since returned to duty, the defense official confirmed.

The U.S. military has carried out three strikes on facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in Syria in response to the ongoing attacks, in addition to running down at least one group of perpetrators following an attack in Iraq.

Pentagon officials have declined to tie the surge in attacks to the U.S.’ support of Israel in its war against Hamas, but have warned that Iran’s support of these groups could further deteriorate the situation in the Middle East.

“Attacks by these Iranian proxies threaten the region’s citizens and risk a broader conflict,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a press conference on Monday in Israel. “Of course, the United States does not seek war, and we urgently call on Iran to take steps to de-escalate.”

While the service maintains that Teixeira acted alone, the Air Force’s investigation turned up four separate instances where Teixeira was observed looking at or discussing intelligence a person in his role would have no business accessing. His supervisors were aware of the issues, yet chose not to report them to security officials until months into his activities, according to an investigation released Monday.

“Had any of these members come forward, security officials would likely have facilitated restricting systems/facility access and alerted the appropriate authorities, reducing the length and depth of the unauthorized and unlawful disclosures by several months,” the report reads.

The investigation also found that workspaces were inadequately inspected and there was inconsistent guidance for reporting security breaches. Further, there was reportedly a lack of supervision and insufficient understanding among the command of who could access sensitive information.

The investigation specifically calls out the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron for a weekly intelligence briefing it provided, saying it created “ambiguity” around whether these tech support airmen were meant to be accessing classified material.

Teixeira’s job did not involve handling intelligence but did allow him to access it due to his maintenance of the computer systems on which it was stored and transmitted.

The Massachusetts guardsman is facing six federal criminal charges of unauthorized disclosure under the Espionage Act, to which he’s pleaded not guilty. A trial date has not been set.

Intelligence-seeking

A coworker first observed Teixeira on a top secret-sensitive compartmented information website in the summer of 2022. His supervisor did not document the incident in writing. In September, another coworker saw Teixeira on the site while he wrote notes on a Post-it. Teixeira was confronted and told to shred the note, but no one checked to see what the note contained or verified that it was shredded, the investigation found.

While Teixeira received a memorandum for record telling him to stop such activities, the incidents were still not reported to security officials.

Then in late October, during one of the now-scrutinized intelligence briefings, Teixeira asked detailed questions and discussed select top-secret information “he did not have a need to know,” the investigation found. There was another memorandum for record drafted, but the incident once again was not reported.

In January 2023, after another coworker observed Teixera accessing intelligence, another memorandum was drawn up and security officials were finally notified, but with a “substantially minimized version of the concerns,” the report said.

Though Teixeira had been regulated at work, his superiors were unaware that he had been posting information he’d accessed on a Discord server called Thug Shaker Central for six months.

That changed in late February, when the information started showing up on other Discord servers, making its way to X, formerly Twitter, in March.

The Pentagon acknowledged in early April it had a serious leak on its hands, and the FBI arrested Teixeira days later.

‘Compliant but lacking’

Teixeira’s unit environment contributed to his ability to remove and leak classified information, the investigation found.

The 15 disciplined airmen included Cols. Sean Riley and Enrique Dovalo — the wing and group commanders relieved of duty in April, soon after Texeira’s arrest — as well as more junior officers and noncommissioned officers.

The investigation found that the intelligence oversight program in the wing overall was “compliant but lacking,” noting many airmen had yet to complete IO training and supervisors were not consistent with reporting violations or enforcing them.

The 102nd Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group, Teixeira’s unit, is no longer handling sensitive information, the Air Force said in a release Monday.

The attacks, 27 in Iraq and 28 in Syria, are part of an escalation in strikes by Iranian-backed militias in those countries that has steadily continued since Oct. 17.

In response, the Pentagon has deployed support troops and air defense units to the region to protect bases housing U.S. forces, as well as launched multiple strikes on facilities in Syria known to store weapons.

Singh pushed back on questioning as to whether the U.S. strikes have failed to deter the militias from further attacks.

“We have a very robust presence in the region right now,” she said. “That is sending, I think, a very strong message of deterrence. And while I certainly hear your question, we always reserve the right to respond in a time and place of our choosing.”

While U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have come under drone attacks from time to time in recent years, the escalation since the beginning of the Hamas-Israel conflict is unprecedented.

Pentagon officials have not directly drawn a line between the attacks and U.S. support for Israel.

“I think that we are all sensitive to the fact that there are tensions in the region … you are seeing, and we probably will continue to see, groups that may try to exploit the situation to benefit their own interests, to include Iranian proxy groups,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said during a briefing Nov. 2.

Three of those injuries, two of them traumatic brain injuries, came from a strike on Wednesday, Sabrina Singh told reporters.

“Between Oct. 17 and Nov. 9, U.S. and coalition forces have been attacked at least 46 times to date, 24 separate times in Iraq and 22 separate times in Syria, by a mix of one-way attack drones and rockets,” she said.

The Pentagon on Monday reported 46 injuries total, 25 of those TBIs.

While most of the overall injuries occurred during attacks Oct. 17 and 18 in Iraq and Syria, the numbers have ticked up as TBI symptoms have surfaced and been reported.

Singh could not say how many of the 56 are diagnosed TBI, but said all of the troops have returned to duty.

The U.S. has launched three retaliatory attacks on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated facilities in response to the strikes, the latest on Wednesday night.

“It was strategic, and it hit a weapons ammunition depot that we believe was very successful, and so we are minimizing what these groups are able to use the ― capabilities that they are able to use,” Singh said of the strike. “And we feel that these are proportionate responses.”

The Pentagon has warned that Iran-backed militias will continue the escalation of attacks on troops housing U.S. bases in the Middle East, though officials have not specifically linked the attacks to U.S. support for Israel in its war on Hamas.

In response to that conflict, and the increased attacks, the U.S. has increased its force presence in the Middle East, including two carrier strike groups, an amphibious ready group with embarked Marine expeditionary unit, Air Force fighter squadrons, multiple Army air defense battalions and 300 support troops send to undisclosed locations.

The total number of injuries is now 46, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said, more than double the 21 the Pentagon initially reported on Oct. 25.

While the injuries are considered minor and the troops returned to duty soon after, according to Ryder, reports of traumatic brain injury tend to trickle in after a blast, as symptoms can sometimes take days or weeks to surface.

Though the Oct. 17 and 18 attacks are still the only incidents resulting in U.S. casualties, Ryder said the number of total attacks since Oct. 17 has risen to 38, with eight of those coming over the weekend.

Defense Department officials have warned of increasing attacks on troops in the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war, though officials have stopped short of saying the increase in attacks is directly related to U.S. support of Israel.

“I think that we are all sensitive to the fact that there are tensions in the region … you are seeing, and we probably will continue to see, groups that may try to exploit the situation to benefit their own interests, to include Iranian proxy groups,” Ryder said during a briefing Nov. 2.

The Pentagon ordered two strikes on Iran-backed militia facilities in Syria on Oct. 26 in retaliation for the attacks.

In response to overall security concerns in the Middle East, including force protection of U.S. troops, the U.S. has positioned two carrier strike groups in the eastern Mediterranean, along with an amphibious ready group with an embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit, several Air Force fighter squadrons and multiple Army air defense units.

On Oct. 31, the Pentagon announced 300 U.S.-based support troops would deploy to an undisclosed location.

“These additional troops will provide capabilities and explosive ordnance disposal, communications and other support enablers for forces already in the region,” Ryder said.

The flights began following Oct. 7, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.

“In support of hostage recovery efforts, the U.S. is conducting unarmed UAV flights over Gaza, as well as providing advice and assistance to support our Israeli partner as they work on their hostage recovery efforts,” he said.

On Thursday, Ryder reiterated during a briefing, “Just to be crystal clear, that it is [Israel’s] operation, they’re running their operation” when it comes to strikes on Gaza. But the U.S., Ryder said, is helping with planning and intelligence for hostage recovery.

Senior officials have said since the days following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the militant group Hamas that the U.S. would not be sending combat troops to Israel, nor would it be sending its own forces into Gaza to recover American hostages.

“The Israelis have made it very clear that they don’t want foreign troops on their soil, that they want to prosecute these operations on their own,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said during a briefing Oct. 12. “The Israelis have made it clear that they would not welcome [foreign involvement] in any event.”

The U.S. has repositioned troops to other parts of the Middle East, however.

Two carrier strike groups, an amphibious ready group with embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit, several Air Force fighter squadrons and 300 support troops have all been tapped to deter further escalation of the Israel-Hamas war and to increase U.S. force protection in U.S. Central Command.

That amounts to at least 14 attacks in Iraq and at least nine attacks in Syria since Oct. 17, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

“Many of these attacks were successfully disrupted by our military,” the official added. “Most failed to reach their targets thanks to our robust defenses.”

Some did successfully detonate, however, leaving a total of 21 U.S. troops injured so far.

Those “minor injuries,” after which troops returned to duty, occurred during separate attacks on al-Asad airbase in Iraq and al-Tanf garrison in Syria on Oct. 17 and 18, Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Wednesday.

While bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have come under somewhat regular attacks from Iran-backed militias, the attempts have ticked up significantly in October, as the U.S. has pledged support to Israel in its response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

The U.S. response has included moving two carrier strike groups and an amphibious ready group with an embarked Marine expeditionary unit to the eastern Mediterranean and putting 2,000 troops on 24-hour prepare-to-deploy orders.

In response to the drone attacks, the U.S. on Thursday struck two sites eastern Syria linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is known to collaborate with local militias.

“I think we’ve been crystal clear that we maintain the inherent right of defending our troops and we will take all necessary measures to protect our forces and our interests overseas,” Ryder told reporters during a Pentagon briefing that day.

The U.S. has also heightened force protection in the Middle East in anticipation of more of these attacks, including activating a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery and two Patriot missile air defense battalions to locations in U.S. Central Command.