Senior Biden officials are fighting the fallout amid further disclosures over the war in Ukraine
The Air National Guardsman accused of posting a trove of classified US intelligence documents on social media appeared in federal court to face criminal charges on Friday, after a week-long race to contain the most serious leak of American secrets in years.
Jack Teixeira, 21, was arrested by federal agents on Thursday after a frantic hunt to trace the source of the leak which, among other things, exposed sensitive battlefield information on the war in Ukraine and pointed to American spying missions that targeted allies and adversaries alike. He is believed to have posted more than a hundred documents since last year in a chat room on Discord, a social media platform popular with video gamers.
The New York Times reported that Teixeira had been on a call with other members of an online gaming community shortly before his arrest. “Guys, it’s been good. I love you all,” he said, according to Vahki, a member of the group. “I never wanted it to get like this. I prayed to God that this would never happen. Only God can decide what happens from now on.”
Teixeira is alleged to have shared classified documents on a Discord chat group
Teixeira was arraigned on charges under the Espionage Act
Handcuffed and wearing a beige jumpsuit, Teixeira entered the federal courthouse in Boston on Friday where he was arraigned under the Espionage Act on charges of the retention and transmission of national defence information and the wilful retention of classified documents. The charges carry a maximum of 15 years in prison in total if he is convicted of both.
He did not enter a plea and will remain in custody until a second hearing next week. He nodded to his family, and as the hearing ended his father shouted: “Love you, Jack.”
He replied: “Love you too, Dad.”
Teixeira, who was enlisted with the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested by the FBI at his mother’s home in Dighton, south of Boston, hours after he was named as the chief suspect in a report by The New York Times. Prosecutors have yet to reveal a motive for the leak, but friends of Teixera in his Discord chat room have suggested that he was driven more by bravado than ideology.
The leak has left President Biden’s administration scrambling to contain the military and diplomatic fallout. Egypt was said in the documents to have reached a covert deal to sell tens of thousands of rockets to Russia, and Israel and South Korea were alleged to be among the nations on which the US has spied.
Even as Teixeira appeared in court, further leaked documents emerged. A top secret US intelligence summary apparently assessed that China had agreed to provide covert military support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The incendiary document, dated February 23 and obtained by The Washington Post, suggested that China wanted the shipments to remain secret.
The intelligence was gathered by US agents eavesdropping on Russian secret service conversations.
The material posted by Teixeira has exposed the depth of CIA penetration into Russia’s defence and intelligence circles — raising fears in defence circles that that window into the workings of the Kremlin will quickly be closed.
The airman’s family outside the Boston courtroom
Federal agents are still combing Discord and other social media platforms to trace further documents that may be circulating online. Discord has said it is co-operating with the FBI inquiry.
The scale of the leak has raised questions about how such a junior officer had access to such sensitive material and was able to remove it from a secure facility and post it to his friends online with such apparent ease. The FBI has unfettered access and legal authority to monitor social media platforms, but failed to spot the leak for several months.
The Pentagon has launched a full-scale review of security clearance procedures. Defence officials have indicated that, as an IT specialist responsible for secure military communications networks, Teixera would have had a higher level of security clearance.
Friends of Teixera on his Discord channel, “Thug Shaker Central”, where he went by the name of “OG”, have insisted that he was not a whistleblower but was merely showing off his high-level intelligence access to impress younger members. The group of up to 30 young men and teenagers assembled during the pandemic, united by a love of guns and video games.
School friends of Teixeira have said that he and his circle of friends were obsessed with guns.
Teixera began posting transcripts of classified material he had seen last year, enthralling younger members with his insight into world events and the murky world of intelligence secrets. Members of the group have said that Teixeira would rant about “government overreach” and the secrets hidden from the public, suggesting that the intelligence community was “a sinister force that sought [to] suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark”.
When interest began to wane, however, he allegedly began posting photos of the documents themselves.
The leak prompted a political row after Marjorie Taylor Greene, a leading figure in the hardline wing of the Republican Party, hailed Teixeira as a hero. Greene, a close ally of Donald Trump and a member of the Homeland Security committee, is among a growing number of Republicans calling on the US to halt military and financial aid to Ukraine.
Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested that the Biden administration was “the real enemy”
“Jake Teixeira is white, male, Christian and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more,” Greene tweeted on Thursday. “Ask yourself who is the real enemy?”
Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman and an air force veteran, denounced Greene’s comments as “sick”, adding: “They’re going to turn him into a hero. He’s a traitor to his country.”
Source: The TImes
