Since documents began to surface last week which reveal damning information about the US role in Ukraine and the espionage it conducts on its ostensible allies, questions have lingered about the identity and motives of the person responsible – and a suspect has finally been unveiled.
Americans got their first glimpse at the alleged source of the leaked Pentagon documents that have dominated the news cycle this week as 21-year-old Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira was taken into custody Thursday by heavily-armed federal agents at his home in Dighton, Massachusetts.
Teixeira is likely to be charged with violating the Espionage Act as Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier indicated that the service member was arrested over the alleged “unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.”
An initial court appearance for Teixeira is scheduled for Friday at the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
With the arrest, media focus has quickly shifted from the fallout surrounding the leaked materials – which indicated that US officials privately acknowledge the Kiev regime has little hope of victory, and that NATO special forces are fighting on the frontlines against Russian troops – to the identity of the alleged leaker.
Teixeira, a nearly four-year member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was reportedly assigned to manage and troubleshoot computers and communications systems for the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air Base, and comes from a military family.
BREAKING: Massachusetts Air National Guardsman named Jack Teixeira identified as the leaker of sensitive US intelligence documents. pic.twitter.com/BxRSYKgKoi
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) April 13, 2023
A spokesman for the Pentagon reportedly defended the DoD’s major intelligence breach by saying “we entrust our members with a lot of responsibility at a very early age.”
But regardless of his relative youth, it remains unclear why an enlisted airman, who hadn’t yet even reached officer status, would have access to high-level documents containing intelligence apparently compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
According to widely-circulated accounts by the Washington Post and New York Times, who effectively honed in on the alleged leaker's identity on those agencies’ behalf, Teixeira began leaking photos of highly-sensitive documents to a group of 20 to 30 of his mostly-younger friends online after they grew bored of reading mere transcriptions.
The Times quickly insisted that “Airman Teixeira was no whistle-blower,” seizing on an alleged video which apparently shows the young airman yelling racial and antisemitic slurs. But there are apparently signs that Teixeira had serious problems with the government he served.
According to the Washington Post, he told members of his group online that the US government “knew in advance that a white supremacist intended to go on a shooting rampage” at a supermarket frequented by Black shoppers in Buffalo in May 2022, but “let the killings proceed so they could argue for increased funding.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson pushed back on Teixeira’s behalf in a Thursday night monologue.
“So this 21-year-old Air National Guardsman from Massachusetts is ‘not a whistleblower,’“ mocked the popular conservative commentator.
“He revealed the crimes, therefore he’s the criminal,” Carlson explained, sardonically, adding, “that’s how Washington works: telling the truth is the only real sin.”
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks sent a memo to Pentagon officials Tuesday, warning employees against leaking classified information or downloading classified documents from unclassified sources.
"Do not access or download documents with classified markings from unclassified websites — either from home or work — as the data may be classified, it may be associated with hostile foreign elements, or it may contain malicious code or embedded capability that could introduce cyber threats into our information system," Hicks wrote in the memo obtained by Fox News
Teixeira’s career in the national guard progressed. A photo posted to the Facebook page for the 102nd intelligence wing of the Massachusetts air national guard in July 2022 congratulated him on an apparent promotion to Airman 1st Class. The post was still live on Thursday afternoon.
As the US has followed a trail to Teixeira’s home, the question of what might have motivated the leaker has become ever more pressing. The reverberations of the leak have spread from Kyiv to Seoul and to other global capitals, and left onlookers shaken by the hugeness of the leak and by evidence that the US has been spying on its allies.
The explanation furnished by members of the chat group has been startlingly mundane. The leaker, they insist, was not a whistleblower but a young man who wanted to show off to his young friends with the documents never intended to leave the chat group.
“He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” one member told the Washington Post.
But leak out they did. First as they were cross-posted on other social media channels and then as they were picked up by Russian channels.
Group members said OG would lecture them about international affairs and secretive government operations.
“This guy was a Christian, anti-war, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on,” said one acquaintance. “We have some people in our group who are in Ukraine. We like fighting games, we like war games.”
Equally shocking, as the story is emerging, is how that individual was able to remove classified material from a secure site without raising suspicions.
In a pointed tweet, Tom Nichols of the Atlantic, who himself had security clearance for 35 years, said: “I hope this guy isn’t the leaker, because I’m gonna have some questions about how a Mass Air Guard guy got CJCS [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] briefing slides.”
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