A 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman has been arrested and charged for allegedly leaking classified U.S. intelligence about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Jack Teixeira is accused of uploading hundreds of pages of intelligence briefings to a private Discord server known as "Thug Shaker Central," which was primarily dedicated to discussing video game tactics.
The documents revealed U.S. defense and intelligence information, especially in terms of the war in Ukraine, that officials said may have damaging effects on national security and relations with allies and other countries.
According to The Washington Post, Teixeira initially transcribed the documents when he started sharing them in late 2022, then he switched to uploading photos of the classified materials themselves. Eventually, the materials were shared on other Discord servers, Russian Telegram channels, 4chan message boards and Twitter. As the documents became more widely shared, they caught the attention of the government.
Teixeira was a Cyber Transport Systems journeyman who worked on the U.S. military's global communications network, and was stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base as a member of the of 102nd Intelligence Wing. According to CNN, Teixeira's job "was not to be the one packaging the intelligence for those senior commanders, but rather to work on the network on which that highly classified intelligence lived."
According to NBC News, Teixeira entered the Air National Guard in September 2019 and was promoted to airman first class last July. He also held the highest level security clearance granted by the federal government for top secret information, according to an internal Department of Defense email reviewed by Fox News.
Teixeira was arrested without incident by federal agents on Thursday at a home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, about 35 miles south of Boston. On Friday, he was charged in federal court in Boston with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information, and unauthorized removal of classified information and defense materials.
As it turns out, images of documents he posted ultimately provided background clues to his identification. According to New York Times journalist Christiaan Triebert, the FBI was able to track down Teixeira after finding a profile using his name on the gaming platform Steam. That Steam account was linked to an Instagram profile that showed the location where the leaked documents were first photographed.
"A breakthrough in our investigation came when the team identified a Steam profile in Airman Teixeira's name that led to an Instagram profile with photos of the exact location where leaked docs were photographed — a kitchen countertop in his childhood home," Triebert said on Twitter.
According to The New York Times, the leak contains "an array of national security secrets, including the breadth of surveillance the United States is able to conduct on Russia." The documents also include intelligence on China, the Middle East, and Israel -- and that the U.S. is spying on allies.
While Teixeira's motive has not yet been revealed, those who knew him online tell reporters that he was no whistle-blower. His goal, they say, was to let the chat group know what actual war was really like.
"This guy was a Christian, anti-war, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what's going on," a Discord group member told The Times. "We have some people in our group who are in Ukraine. We like fighting games, we like war games."
According to The Times, officials believe Teixeira acquired the documents by improperly accessing U.S. military computers. It's possible he also gained access to the documents in other ways, such as through daily emails on a classified computer network, the report noted.
Pentagon press secretary Patrick Ryder has called Teixeira's alleged actions "a deliberate criminal act." The extend of damage caused by the leak -- deemed the worst U.S. intelligence leak in a decade -- is still being determined.
Teixeira remains in federal custody. A detention hearing is set for Wednesday.
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