A United States Air National Guardsman, Jack Teixeira, 21, will appear in court on Friday in connection with the leak of highly classified government documents about the Ukraine war and other national security issues.
According to reports, Teixeira has been identified as the leader of an online chat group where the documents first emerged and was arrested by the FBI at his family home in Dighton, rural Massachusetts, on Thursday.
He is charged with the unauthorised removal and transmission of classified information and will appear in court in Boston, Massachusetts.
Teixeira joined the National Guard in 2019 and worked as an IT specialist in the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts National Guard, based at Otis Air National Guard Base in western Cape Cod. His official title is Cyber Transport Systems journeyman and he holds the rank of Airman 1st class.
The leaks revealed US assessments of the war in Ukraine as well as sensitive secrets about American allies, embarrassing Washington and raising fresh questions over the security of classified documents.
It was not until intelligence material was posted outside the chat room group that Pentagon officials became aware of the leak, prompting a massive search for the culprit.
The Pentagon says it will re-examine how classified information is distributed, but a spokesman said it was “the nature” of the US military to entrust young service members with high levels of responsibility.
Footage emerged of the arrest in Dighton, a town of 8,000 people about an hour south of Boston, shows a young man walking backwards with his hands raised to armed FBI officers, handcuffed and being led to a vehicle
US Attorney General, Merrick Garland said the suspect was taken into custody without incident but provided no further details on the investigation or the motive for the leaks.
Teixeira also oversaw an online chat room made up mainly of male teenagers, with whom he had allegedly been sharing top-secret information for months.
Starting several months ago, at least 50 but perhaps more than 100 classified documents were posted on Discord – a social media platform popular with gamers.
The Washington Post had earlier published an interview with one of the members of the chatroom where the documents initially appeared.
The Post reported that the man was the leader of a Discord chatroom whose roughly two dozen members swapped “memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat” and prayed and watched films together.
The members included people from Russia and Ukraine and a number of other countries in Europe, Asia and South America, the paper reported.
At first, the leaks were kept inside the small chatroom, but in early March members began posting them on other Discord servers, including ones dedicated to the game Minecraft and a Filipino YouTuber.
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