Well he would have had technical authorization to transfer files to a CD (I've burned classified CDs myself). It's hard to prepare a classified briefing for you

Well he would have had technical authorization to transfer files to a CD (I've burned classified CDs myself). It's hard to prepare a classified briefing for your chain-of-command without a way to get the files onto the air-gapped presentation computer without network access, and there are known security issues relating to USB thumb drives so it would make perfect technical sense to require CD drives be used. You just have to label it properly, handle it properly, etc. You could argue that the system could have technical measures in place to see that the CD-R was being filled, used repeatedly in a short period of time, etc. but that could be worked around too. He's exactly right that trusting an insider is a perfect example of how not to do INFOSEC, but that was a risk the military judged was of lower danger than the risk associated with artificial constraints on the ability of the military and government to cooperate on anti-terrorism. Pretty much any measure the gov't and military put in place in this area to protect against the future Mannings of the world will at least slightly inhibit their ability to detect and prevent future terrorist strikes, I guess we'll have to see what they've chosen to do. :-/