U.S. authorities claim to have identified the man responsible for the leaking of classified U.S. documents. As reported by several U.S. media outlets, 21-year-old Jack Teixeira was arrested on Thursday, April 13th.
According to The New York Times, the suspect, a member of the Air National Guard, was taken from his Massachusetts home by half a dozen armed FBI agents. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the FBI had arrested Teixeira “in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information.”
According to an internal government document, which Fox News had access to, Teixeira was employed full-time to work on military intelligence systems. Recently, his security clearance and therefore his access to classified government systems was revoked.
In widely circulated footage made of the arrest, officers in what looks to be military-grade attire command the young man, dressed in a gray t-shirt and red shorts, to approach the back of a military vehicle, where he is cuffed and then led away to another vehicle.
At a press conference Thursday, Pentagon Press Secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder called the leaks a “deliberate criminal act,” and said that the Pentagon entrusts its members “with a lot of responsibility at a very early age”— addressing the obvious question as to why such a young individual would have access to documentation of such a sensitive nature. He explained,
You have received training and you will receive an understanding of the rules and requirements that come along with those responsibilities, and you are expected to abide by those rules, regulations and responsibility. It is called military discipline. And in certain cases, especially when it comes to sensitive information, it also is about the law.
Last week’s series of leaks, numbering 27 documents in total, caused alarm and embarrassment to Washington and its allies all over the world, in particular because they painted a less-than-rosy-picture of the Ukrainian war effort.
Since it was not clear whether more such documents could be leaked in the future, security agencies had been frantically searching for the identity of the leaker(s) ever since.
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the perpetrator was said to be a “young, charismatic gun enthusiast” who posted messages on the chat platform Discord under the name “OG.” In an online 20-30 people strong group called ‘Thug Shaker Central’ he chatted with like-minded people about their love of guns and video games, one of its members told the newspaper.
