Jack Teixeira was arrested at his home in North Dighton by FBI agents. Footage shot by a news helicopter shows the young man being made to walk towards a team of agents standing next to an armored vehicle, dressed in camouflage and bulletproof vests, pointing their rifles at him.
In Washington, US Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed the arrest, saying Teixeira was detained “in connection with an investigation into the alleged theft, retention and unauthorized transmission of classified national defense information.”
Garland said the Air National Guardsman will make an initial appearance in Massachusetts District Court.
Teixeira is believed to have been the leader of an online chat group where hundreds of photos of secret and classified documents were first uploaded between late last year and March. The online group calls itself Thug Shaker Central, consisting of 20-30 young men and teenagers who are passionate about guns, military equipment and video games. Racist language was a common feature of the group.
Former members of Thug Shaker Central said the documents were shared in an apparent attempt to impress the rest of the group, rather than to achieve a particular foreign policy outcome.
The author of the leak, known on chat under the pseudonym OG, started posting messages of a military nature last year. In the months that followed, he released messages in which he appeared to transcribe classified information from US documents.
They were what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of secret classified intelligence documents that the OG indicated he brought home from his job at a “military base,” which the member declined to identify.
OG said in the chat that he spent at least part of the day inside a secure facility that banned cellphones and other electronic devices that could be used to document classified information hosted on or running government computer networks from printers.
The Guardian has seen around 50 of the secret documents that have leaked into the public domain. But there are indications that many more were posted on Thug Shaker Central. The New York Times has seen about 300 documents, only a small fraction of which have been reported so far, indicating that the damage to national security may be more serious than previously recognized.
We have rules in place. We each sign a non-disclosure agreement, so all indications are that this is a criminal act. (…) It is important to understand that it is not just about the Department of Defense. This is about the US government. It’s about how we protect and safeguard classified information. We have strict protocols, so every time there is an incident there is always an opportunity to review it and improve it.
Author: Patrick Ryder, Pentagon Spokesman
The leak investigation will examine how a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member gained access to top-secret material vital to US and allied security interests, including battlefield deployments in Ukraine . The Pentagon announced it is reviewing its policies for protecting classified material, including updating distribution lists and evaluating how and where information is shared.
