I do not believe this Pentagon "leaker" story.
It stinks of fabrication.
The mistake that was made in the construction of the story, was claiming this Airman pulled the information off of JWICS. Even if he had the SCI clearance required to enter and access a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Fascility), which is the only way to access JWICS, there would be a logged record of his searches associated with his ID, and a logged record of any printed documents. There is also no physical way to download documents from a SCIF to an external device, and JWICS is a closed intranet. The system is designed to prevent leaks. The claim that the New York Times supposedly found this person by matching the patterns of granite from his counter top, is at best, a fabrication. And then there is the matter of the documents themselves, and knowing where to find them. You dont just "see" documents like this in a SCIF. You have to know exactly where to look. Unless someone sends you an ICE mail telling you exactly where to look, (of which there would be a record), you would not find them. The way this whole story was presented, the behavior of the corporate media, the way the Pentagon officials talked, it reeks of a staged event. We have seen first hand how they really behave when a real leak occurs. The wild anger and rage they directed toward Snowden is an example.
I do not believe this story.
So the question becomes, why do this? Why lie? What would be the purpose?.
The answer to that is two fold. The first is an increasing sentiment within the U.S. bureacracy which sees its own constitution, and citizenry as an obsacle to its "job", which in their minds, requires more and more power. The second, related to the first, is answered by the demands they make in the wake of the event. What do they want?
Two things were expressed...
1. More power, funding, and control over the internet. It will be used to push Senate Bill 686, the Restrict Act. Or something similar, with the goal being complete control over all communication across the internet. You see, they have used the internet to destabilize and topple other countries. They are terrified of this happening to them. So now, by consequence, the 1st Amendment is a threat to their power. And since the Smith-Mundt act was gutted during the Obama administration (which Biden is a continuation of), the legal restrictions that prevented the CIA from running propaganda ops on the American public have been removed.
2. The inteviews about this "leaker" contained continual references to how he was a "God loving patriot". As the "War on Terror", which they created, winds down, and they need a new enemy to justify their massively bloated secred budgets, they want to create a new enemy. Their target it seems is the American public itself. Or more specifically, the majority of people who belive that government should be restrained, answerable, and transparent. To accomplish this, they intend to create a stereotype, and then use their corporate media partners to insist that this created stereotype is first real, second a minority, and third, a grave threat to "America".
I believe that there is a war going on inside all federal agencies right now. I think that if this Airman is not a prop, he was likely a part of an entrapment event, which are being run by the FBI and DOJ, who are searching all federal agencies for people who are willing to speak out in defense of the Constitution, when the see that the Government is breaking the law. They are trying to drive all of them out, leaving only those who show absolutely loyalty to Agency, and State, above Constitutional law.
What I suspect all of this is, is the out of control emergence of the Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address... the jugernaut, which if not stopped, would eventually threaten the People themselves, the liberty of everyone, and the nation itself.