A young national guardsman was arrested by FBI agents on Thursday on suspicion of a significant leak of sensitive information from the US government, including information about the war in Ukraine.
The arrest was made “in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information,” according to US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Garland addressed a news briefing and identified the suspect as 21-year-old airman Jack Teixeira, who was previously identified by US media as the alleged leader of an online chat room where the document trove first emerged.
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Garland stated that FBI agents took Teixeira into custody “without incident,” and he confirmed that Teixeira is employed by the United States Air Force National Guard.
In a forested area in North Dighton, in the northeastern state of Massachusetts, news helicopter footage showed the suspect, wearing red shorts and holding his hands behind his back, being loaded into an unmarked sport utility vehicle by heavily armed agents.
Teixeira was scheduled to appear in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts for the first time.
After The Washington Post reported that a man who worked on a US military base had posted hundreds of pages of documents on the social media platform Discord, the US media began to focus on Teixeira.
A “trail of digital evidence” pointed to Teixeira as the leader of the private Discord chat group known as Thug Shaker Central, where the documents surfaced, according to The New York Times.
The humiliating security break has uncovered US disquiet over the reasonability of an approaching counteroffensive by Kyiv’s powers against Russian soldiers as well as worries about Ukrainian air safeguards and highlighted the US keeping an eye on partners.
During a trip to Ireland, President Joe Biden talked about the leaks, saying that he was “concerned” about them but that the intelligence community and Justice Department were “getting close” to figuring out where they came from.
The alleged leaker, who went by the name “OG,” was said to have posted documents frequently in the disputed chat group for months.
According to the Post, which, like the Times, cited unidentified members of Thug Shaker Central, the group of approximately 24 individuals formed an “invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord” and shared a “mutual love of guns, military gear, and God.”
For national security implications; “Some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices,” OG told the group members, according to the Post report.
The newspaper reported that he initially recorded the contents of classified documents to share with the group and then began taking photographs while instructing other members not to share them.
According to the Post, citing one of the group’s members, OG had a “dark view of the government” and “spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark.”
AFP was informed by a spokesperson for Discord that the safety of its users is a top priority and that content that violates its policies can result in the ban of individuals, the shutdown of servers, and the notification of the police.
The spokesperson stated, “We are cooperating with law enforcement in regard to the apparent breach of classified material.”
“We cannot provide further comment at this time due to the fact that this remains an active investigation.”
Source: Guardian
