Recently, the United States has been rocked by a startling revelation: a young air national guardsman, just 21 years old, has been arrested by the FBI for reportedly leaking sensitive information from the Pentagon. This incident has understandably caused significant concern, particularly as it raises questions around the security of one of the country’s most important institutions. In this article, we’ll explore the details of the case, examine what might have motivated the guardsman to leak the information, and discuss the potential fallout from this alarming breach of security.
On Thursday, US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a suspect in the recent leaks of US intelligence online, had been arrested. Teixeira, an employee of the United States Air Force National Guard, has been arrested in connection with the unauthorised removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information. FBI agents took Teixeira into custody without incident, and he will have an initial court appearance in the US District Court of the district of Massachusetts.
According to investigators, Teixeira allegedly led the online chat group where the documents were posted. FBI agents converged on his home on Thursday, and heavily armed tactical agents took a man into custody outside the property. The investigation is still ongoing.
The arrest came soon after US President Joe Biden said that US authorities were close to catching the leaker on Thursday. There is evidence of US spying on allies, and their reluctance to arm Ukraine, as well as material about Russian forces and decision-making in Moscow that could help the Kremlin better understand the strengths and weaknesses of US intelligence collection efforts in Russia.
Some newly-reported documents show knowledge of infighting between the Russian intelligence and the defence ministry. In one document, US officials describe how the Federal Security Service (FSB) had “accused the defence ministry of trying to cover up the extent of Russian casualties in Ukraine”.
Members of the group have told the investigative journalism organisation Bellingcat, the Washington Post and the New York Times that the documents were shared on Thug Shaker Central in an apparent attempt to impress the group, rather than to achieve any particular foreign policy outcome. The leak began months ago when one of the users uploaded hundreds of pages of intelligence briefings into the small chat group, lecturing its members on the importance of staying abreast of world events.
The New York Times spoke with four members of the Thug Shaker Central chat group, one of whom said he has known the person who leaked for at least three years, had met him in person, and referred to him as the OG. The friends described him as older than most of the group members, who were in their teens, and the undisputed leader. One of the friends said the OG had access to intelligence documents through his job.
While the gaming friends would not identify the group’s leader by name, a trail of digital evidence leads to Teixeira. The New York Times has been able to link Teixeira to other members of the Thug Shaker Central group through his online gaming profile and other records. Details of the interior of Teixeira’s childhood home posted on social media in family photographs also match details on the margins of some of the photographs of the leaked secret documents.
Teixeira is enlisted in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Posts on the unit’s official Facebook page congratulated him and colleagues for being promoted to Airman 1st Class in July 2022. However, it was not immediately clear if a young Air National Guardsman could have had access to such highly-sensitive briefings. Officials within the US government with security clearance often receive such documents through daily emails, one official told the Times and those emails might then be automatically forwarded to other people.
Members of Thug Shaker Central said that the documents they discussed online were meant to be purely informative. While many pertained to the war in Ukraine, the members said they took no side in the conflict. The documents, they said, only started to get wider attention when one of the teenage members of the group took a few dozen of them and posted them to a public online forum. From there, they were picked up by Russian-language Telegram channels. The person who leaked, they said, was no whistleblower, and the secret documents were never meant to leave their small corner of the internet.
“This guy was a Christian, anti-war, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on,” said one of the person’s friends from the community, a 17-year-old recent high school graduate. “We have some people in our group who are in Ukraine. We like fighting games, we like war games.”
The leaked documents have laid bare secrets about Ukraine’s preparations for a spring counter-offensive, US spying on allies such as Ukraine, South Korea and Israel, and the tensions between Washington and allied capitals over arming Kyiv.
