Memorial Day muse: Joint Base Cape Cod should exhale
A paranoid, unhinged kid creates pretext to do the right thing: Transform a military base
An adolescent serving at the military base on the Cape has been arrested for dribbling “defense” intelligence into the domain of teenage computer nerds. That has a strange patina to it.
Jack Texeira, 21, seems like an insecure boy playing video games, living sci-fi, threatened by people who answer to my description. He crossed a digital line into reality — far from a hardened intelligence operative or an Edward Snowden data-revolutionary.
“Bravado, not ideology,” is how one person described the motive.
He was a “cyber transport systems journeyman” at Otis Air National Guard, an entry-level title also disconnected from reality, one step above apprentice. Even so apparently he had enough access to post real-life intel about Ukraine on a gaming platform to impress virtual buddies.
Joint Base Cape Cod, as it’s formally called – given marijuana’s lingo I find that humorous – has long been home to intelligence activity. Back when, that meant sending planes roaming distant perimeters 24/7 to remain vigilant against Russian nuclear attacks.
These days I hear that people on “JBCC” have directed drone warfare in Afganistan and/or Iraq. I’ve never been able to confirm that, though I’ve observed drones and remote training on the base.
The idea that someone might drive through checkpoints in scrub pine, park at a video monitor, direct bombs on people thousands of miles away, then head to a Cape Cod beach to chill, blows me away -- no pun intended.
But that could be true.
Because of Texeira’s juvenile version of remote dangerousness (which the Defense Department says also has lethal potential), intelligence activity at the base was halted, temporarily. That’s enough reason for Andy Gottlieb, the feisty executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, to say that because the base is not serving its supposed function, it’s time for civilians to take control.
“With the mission change announced this week,” wrote Gottlieb in late April to Governor Maura Healey and a constellation of state officials, “the rethinking of the use of JBCC provides a generational opportunity to solve some of the Cape’s most difficult economic and environmental challenges.”
Gottlieb wants Massachusetts to revoke a 50-year lease renewal quietly signed before Governor Charlie Baker left office, using as justification a change of use necessitated by Texeira. He then wants the lower part of the base turned into affordable housing with the Commonwealth as landlord, the upper part a Water Supply Reserve.
Gottlieb pried almost 2000 pages of discussion about that lease renewal out of military files, using the legal forcing function known as the Freedom of Information Act, FOIA. His assessment is that this paper dump “reveals an overt effort to obtain the lease with minimal public process before the start of your (Healey’s) administration.”
He also filed a FOIA request to see exact lease language, looking for escape clauses.
This is a long shot, a political/tactical drone flown over Boston. Maybe Gottlieb and APCC want to remain an irritant even as the Environmental Protection Agency seems intent on blocking a new military firing range on the same swath.
Bigger picture, the goals are visionary. Nowhere else on Cape Cod is there enough land to create housing that would make a profound difference without wiping out habitat; on the southern part of the base, the military has already done a pretty good job of that.
With the Commonwealth versus a private developer, we’d have a much better chance of avoiding exploitation that often surfaces when “affordable housing” plans show up. Creating a public housing authority with muscular capacity (including bonding powers) would be smart and necessary.
The Coast Guard, the one branch that hands-on supports this community’s safety, could remain.
And the northern 15,000 acres could provide good water and green infrastructure to zero out carbon and energy impacts.
Maybe an unbalanced 21-year-old, likely to spend a long time in prison, created an opening that Governor Healey and our communities could exploit to great advantage.
I’m not betting on it, but I like it.
Makes perfect sense. Therefore, it will never happen. I'm feeling cynical today after SCOTUS gutted wetlands protection.
I find hope in your article, Seth!🙏🏻🤞🏼
So many good points !