FBI Arrests Massachusetts Air National Guardsman in Connection With Leaking of Classified Documents
The suspect is 21-year-old Jack Teixeira.
FBI agents arrested 21-year-old Jack Teixeira concerning the leaking of classified documents.
The documents detailed America and South Korea’s involvement in Ukraine:
Some of the most sensitive material — maps of Ukrainian air defenses and a deep dive into South Korea’s secret plans to deliver 330,000 rounds of much-needed ammunition in time for Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive — is revealed in documents that appear to be barely 40 days old.
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The 100-plus pages of slides and briefing documents leave no doubt about how deeply enmeshed the United States is in the day-to-day conduct of the war, providing the precise intelligence and logistics that help explain Ukraine’s success thus far.
They also reinforce how deeply American spy agencies have penetrated nearly every aspect of the Russian intelligence apparatus and military command structure.
The United States is providing detailed targeting data. It is coordinating the long, complex logistical train that delivers weapons to the Ukrainians. And as a Feb. 22 document makes clear, American officials are planning ahead for a year in which the battle for the Donbas is “likely heading toward a stalemate” that will frustrate Vladimir V. Putin’s goal of capturing the region — and Ukraine’s goal of expelling the invaders.
The New York Times identified the man, who belongs to the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard:
The national guardsman, whose name is Jack Teixeira, oversaw a private online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.
Two U.S. officials confirmed that investigators want to talk to Airman Teixeira about the leak of the government documents to the private online group. One official said Airman Teixeira might have information relevant to the investigation.
Federal investigators have been searching for days for the person who leaked the top secret documents online but have not identified Airman Teixeira or anyone else as a suspect. The F.B.I. declined to comment.
Starting months ago, one of the users uploaded hundreds of pages of intelligence briefings into the small chat group, lecturing its members, who had bonded during the isolation of the pandemic, 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 O.G. 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 O.G. had access to intelligence documents through his job.
Attorney General confirmed that officials arrested Teixeira regarding the “unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.” He will be arraigned in Federal District Court in Massachusetts.
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Comments
It just goes to show the government can find a leaker very quickly when then want to.
So far they haven’t been able to locate the Supreme Court leaker.
Makes you wonder if the feds found the “leaker” or a patsy, doesn’t it?
They’ve been telling us for days that only a limited group had access to the documents, and one of that group just happens to be a random, 21-year-old Guardsman they’re trying to make out to be a gun nut, white Hispanic supremacist, video gamer. What was his job and how did he just happen to have a TS/SCI clearance and access to the documents in question?
Asking for a friend.
Makes you wonder if the feds found the “leaker” or a patsy, doesn’t it? They’ve been telling us for days that only a limited group had access to the documents
I agree.
O.G., because the guy was real old, like 21. Jeesh.
When your 15, 21 seems old.
And when you reach a highway speed limit age, 21 seems newborn.
Or Flynn call leaker, or calls made by Trump to foreign leaders
The Supreme Court leaker? You mean Roberts?
Let me make sure we have this straight.
For months, the total surveillance and intelligence power of the United States Government was unable to locate the source of the largest unnoticed, undetected leak of U.S. classified intelligence in a decade.
But isn’t it amazing that within 12 hours, some journalists were able to visit a chat room and found a 21-year-old who still lives in his parent’s basement with all the answers?
Then, the NY Times sent reporters to Massachusetts to this gamer’s residence in advance and told his parents the FBI is coming. Talk about team work.
Got it.
This guy was a light weight, the real story is the incompetence that allowed this to happen at all.
The heavy armor, made for TV, SWAT raid was theater to give him more importance and a more threatening appearance to take the uninformed public’s eye off the ball. A cover up of another failure.
I wonder if anyone will be court-martialed for allowing a 21 year old part time service person access to such documents?
Which went undetected and undiscovered for months.
Non just access to but theft of. Reportedly he had hard copy documents.
So did Sandy Berger.
Stuffed them in his pants and a clerk just happened to notice and blow the whistle on him.
He, according to the article, was a member of the Mass ANG, in their intelligence unit – which means that as a minimum, he should have had an EBI conducted by the FBI, a TS security clearance, and a specific, written, authorization to access classified material, That doesn’t fall on any single individual’s head, it just means that his actions weren’t predictable through his past activities. The only way anybody else would share liability would be if his past actions were overlooked or ignored during the EBI, which used to be VERY thorough (I haven’t had one in a few decades, so maybe times have changed) and involve personal interviews with his family, references, educators, et al. Maybe somebody should have been monitoring his online activity. Maybe somebody should be monitoring yours and mine – but this isn’t China.
I agree, however, that no modern 21-year-old has the brains or maturity to clean commodes, much less handle TS-SCI.
That rank sounds all wrong for a TS-SCI, to me.
Not uncommon for E3/E4 to have a TS and SCI endorsement, particularly in Communication and Intel fields. The question I have is who ‘read him on’ to these files (decided he had need to know) and why? There’s a specific form listing out what jackleg made this decision and that poor SoB is gonna be in a world of hurt if not already.
I was 19 with a TS SCI/SSBI clearance. I was in Communications. There were two clearances above what I had. The TS/SCI with polygraph and Yankee White. he TS/SCI with polygraph and Yankee White. The TS/SCI with polygraph is self explanatory. The Yankee White is given out like candy to anybody associated to the White house, their staff, and any support personnel with little to no background check. Every clearance except Yankee White goes to inactive after two years of non-use.
I don’t know the specifics of the Mass ANG, and what kind of secure facilities they had, but I worked in a 24 hour SCF, and that stuff was just laying around everyplace because we were working with it. Anybody who was so disposed could have walked out with reams of documents in their pants, but back in the day, we were honest and to the best of my knowledge, it never even crossed anybody’s mind.
Since 1992 we have had at least 2 presidents who couldn’t have enlisted in the military without a morals waiver, much less been granted a security clearance, even though they ended up with the highest access levels there are.
Don’t get me started on their staffs, cabinets, and magic wand clearances/access but consider this, mililtary background investigations (SBIs) can, and often do, take more than a YEAR to be completed.
Somehow the politicians manage to hire people off the streets, grant them ‘interim’ clearances/access, and we are told that system to be secure. Yeah, right.
I got mine when I was an E-2 It isn’t the rank, it’s the job.
Based on your vast experience in the intelligence community?
IDK. As a 21yr old PFC I had a TS in an Airborne Unit running battlefield coms for interface with Brigade and Corp
What did the younger generation learn about the consequences and impacts of leaking classified information?
Obama pardoned Chelsea Manning.
Manning was pardoned because he’s part of the trans freak brigade, and Obama wanted to virtue signal.
Obama more likely wanted to have sex with him.
The list of politically related people who haven’t been charged with their leaks of classified information recently has had the very predictable effect of normalizing it, national security be damned.
As long as it’s for a “good” cause of course. Like getting your side elected or taking down a president you don’t like.
Interesting release of a name of a “person of interest”. Oh… and I read somewhere that he is a “gun enthusiast.” however that fits this. reminds me of the Iowa gun turret case… and the FBI with the Atlanta Olympics.
By the way…. GOP legislators’ closed door discussion of their actions to remove the two black colleagues was leaked to the press today. Who recorded that? Was the room bugged? Remember that Dem Florida couple that “accidentally” heard over their car radio closed door GOP discussion years ago.?
“a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.”
Thank you, New York Times.
When will you be printing the Tennessee murderer’s manifesto?
He’s a RACIST, thus discrediting the evidence against the Deep State of getting us involved in another Vietnam
That would be more clearly ‘racist according to the NYT’ which in common parlance is “One of our reporters looking over the chat stream saw something that offended xer.”
Based on other reports I’ve seen, it seems the NY Times did the detective work on this to identify the leaker, and they chose to publish the name, the fact they’d reported him to FBI/DoD, and they made the claim he’s being investigated as a “person of interest”.
If that’s all correct, it wasn’t a decision made by any law enforcment or DoD personnel to release the name of the “person of interest”.
You don’t suppose the New York Times finally got tired of coverups, obfuscation and lying on the part of our “intelligence community?””
The millennium has arrived.
No. This leak hurts the Buden admin and Democrats.
So, the NY Times was all over it.
Leaks that hurt the US get published by the Times. That will never change.
Half a century ago, at one location, I was custodian of classified documents. Getting into the safe was tough, getting out with anything was impossible.
Somebody wasn’t keeping procedures up. And that’s not the accused. Somebody let, accidentally or on purpose, him in and then out with the goodies.
Interesting bunch. Too cute by half. Sort of a bitterly clinging irredeemable depolorables’ club.
And why the accused would think his adolescent buddies would quit with the shooter games to read about ammo purchases and spies spying on spies.
Sorry, but I’m not taking what the lying sacks of piss at the FBI and DoJ say at face value. If they say Texiera did it, then I just assume he’s 100% not guilty.
If Teixeira did it, he’s a hero
At this point, the National Guard should be arresting the FBI.
That may very well be the best take for now. Bits of truth and disinformation can exist side by side.
Does our government actually give a 21 year old National Guardsman ‘Top Secret” information over a wasteful war that we are basically losing?
What are we losing? We aren’t in a war. Russia is losing.
We’re losing our GNP, that’s all.
We are… and we hope. Don’t bet on a winner yet.
We have troops in Ukraine, not a violation of the Constitution or nothin’
We have always been at war with Eurasia
We sure are expending a lot of ammo and cash in Ukraine if we aren’t at war especially since we have advisors in place, supposedly confined to the Embassy.
The DoD didn’t send the Super Friends to sit in an Embassy and track logistics. Anyone who believes that nonsense Kirby is slinging should reconsider a great many things they think are true.
The Ukraine government and Volodymyr Zelensky are using American taxpayers’ funds to pay for diesel fuel that is keeping the Ukrainian army in its war with Russia.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/trading-with-the-enemy
We’ve had US soldiers in Ukraine since before the war started. One example is elements of the Florida National Guard who were conducting training for Ukrainian soldiers on the Javelin missile system (confirmed by news articles and the US military years ago, so there’s no classified revelations here. Go away, FBI. Shoo!)
We did have troops in Ukraine in the past but very importantly those troops were also ‘withdrawn’ from Ukraine prior to the current conflict according to DoD.
geroni is correct – we are not at war with Russia, any more than Russia was at war with us every time they’ve supported countries fighting US troops.
And, yes, Russia is losing. Look at a map of their initial invasion last year, the two pronged assault aimed at capturing Kiev, with a goal of then taking full control of all of Ukraine. Russia has NONE of that territory under their control now. Had to resort to firming up areas in the southeast that they held prior to last year’s invasion.
We’re spending a ton of $$ on this, but it amounts to the cheapest generational kneecapping of a rival power in history.
The current situation is essentially a stalemate, with Russia completely unable to make gain more than trivial amounts of territory in months-long offensives, and Ukraine unable to completely force them out of their country.
Yet the partnership with China grows stronger by the day, Egypt is playing both sides, the Saudi’s are separating themselves and the dollar is quickly losing its importance as a fiat currency.
Neither China nor Russia have any concept of “partnership.” Each seeks only to use the other. There’s no loyalty, no commitment, nothing but a deal where they shake hands while each holds a knife behind their back.
You are dreaming buddy. Yes the initial action to seize Kiev failed. However that was always going to be a secondary ‘nice to have’ accomplishment. The ‘must have’ is gaining control of Eastern Ukraine which seems pretty well doable. Russia has gone back to old school artillery barrages followed up by ground troops clearing out the survivors and moving more methodically.
This is what the Russian logistics train can support long-term so it isn’t likely to end anytime soon. The Ukrainian defenders of Bakhmut are being slowly pushed out by the inevitable grind.
As a geopolitical matter this is a huge failure. In essence the EU, GBR and US + AUS, NZ, Japan and South Korea are active participants providing ISR, cash, fuel, ammo, parts supplies and equipment to Ukraine as well as imposing economic sanctions and lots of saber rattling diplomacy. So the ‘west’ is all in (-committing significant troops) and Russians still haven’t stopped more than a year in. That’s an L.
Another L for the west is the internal fractures of the post WWII and in particular post cold war International finance systems. In addition to the BRICS we have many others in the global south aligning away from western economic and diplomatic leadership. OPEC, particularly the Saudis, is moving back to a more independent position. As is Turkey which has it’s own ambitions.
The West in general and the US in particular is less well off, less secure, has less international clout, more expensive everything especially energy as a result. We drained half the SPR and sent 1/3 ish of some categories of our ammo to Ukraine. Alliances are becoming frayed and new realities about the relative strength or lack of the US Dollar are becoming more clear. That’s an L.
The answer is Yes, they do in the military.
That’s weird. I have been reliably informed that the FBI cannot discuss ongoing investigations.
…unless they find it expedient.
So far they haven’t disclosed that his middle name is “Patsy.” And at what point will Jack Ruby show up to cut off the trail.
How would an Air National Guardsman have access to these documents if they are so secret?
He was apparently a network tech for the classified networks. There must be a design problem when a mere network tech has access to the classified content of those networks.
By volunteering to fill an augmentation billet at a Joint Operation Center where he serves for a short period on active duty. That’s how many non-permanent staffs and such fill their personnel requirements.
This might also involve him receiving an interim clearance and access.
There is only ONE reason that the NYT would reveal the name of the leaker: He is NOT a socialist
Can you think of any other reason?
Maybe he knows Hunter?
No one buys this.
Biden’s wheelman? Hunter’s pimp?
I thought I heard that the NYT got to his house before the FBI.
Odd, no?
They were tipped, just like CNN has been tipped before every Biden/Garland FBI raid.
They’re all in league with each other, against us.
The NYT did the FBI a solid by planting their copy of the classified info the FBI didn’t have.
There are some irregularities with this whole scenario. Texeira, in the pictures I’ve seen, is in uniform, but the insignia on his lapel doesn’t appear to be USAF, and he has no stripes on his sleeves, which would make him an AB at the time of the picture. I haven’t checked out all possible sources, but I haven’t seen any source that specifies his rank, and Garland never referred to him except by name.
I’ve finally found a NY Post article that ID’d him as an A1C (E-3).
Shoot, as an E-3 he hasn’t been in any branch of the armed services long enough for a proper security check to be completed.
The pictures available strike me as ones taken in boot-camp. The “US” lapel pins he is wearing are appropriate.
dementiajoe’s military
Think they sent enough guys to arrest this kid?
50+ guys in full military gear, an armored personnel carrier, etc, etc, etc., to put handcuffs on one kid in shorts and a t-shirt.
The CIA, DoD, NSA, FBI, DHS and all of the combined systems of the United States intelligence apparatus, the kind that can isolate your location through the mirrored image on a convenience store CCTV camera was unable to find the 21-year-old originating leaker who was posting details, images and classified data for months in a chat room online.
But miraculously the Washington Post and New York Times were able to visit the chat room, isolate, locate, interview, record, broadcast, and then name the suspect within 12 hours.
Too cozy huh?
Discussing the alleged perp is interesting I suppose, but I want the discussion to turn toward what was disclosed. If we have “boots on the ground” engaging Russian troops where is the declaration of war?
I am not so interested in that as I am interested in the damage done. Here we’re told that it’s upset a lot of plans and rattled several of our allies. There’s the damage.
Now, in the case of all those documents Trump squirreled away at Mar-a-Lago, I’ve heard a lot of yawping about the peril he put us in, but no details about what that peril was. I conclude most of them consisted of a) stale to very stale intelligence reports that detailed conditions that no longer prevail and are now irrelevant and b) the sort of stupid intelligence report that consists of stuff somebody cut out of the foreign affairs section of the WaPo, rewrote, and stamped Secret or silly blue-sky speculation by underworked bureaucrats.
Note that Biden apparently had an equivalent number of documents stashed in his garage above the motor oil and antifreeze and we hear nothing about persecuting him for it.
I’d suspect the materials Trump had were ones which supported decisions he made as those can inconveniently disappear just when one needs to use them in their defense. Or in his case, to resume the offense.
In a completely unrelated matter, I once heard of a logbook which proved someone’s innocence. It mysteriously disappeared before the investigators/prosecution had a chance to make it disappear. Not all railroads have two tracks.
Ok. I’m just trying to do the math.
How to get a security clearance. First, six months for the national criminal records check to get a GENSER Secret clearance. Then fill out a detaileded questionnaire essentially putting yourself under a microscope from birth to dare. Give 5 references the FBI, DIA, NCIS, et al won’t bother interviewing because EVERYONE only lists references who like them. They’ll spend 2 years trying to find who hates you.
Sure. Start this process as an 18 y.o. enlistee.
Then turn 21 and get U.S. warplans inenlisted.
I’m totally buying it.
On the other hand, after seeing the CIA recruiting video which was basically. “Let’s put on glitter and face paint and totes decorate my wheelchair into a float for the pride parade,” I am still getting it.
The “otter” hand…
Sigh.