A 21-year-old Air Force soldier has been arrested in the US and charged with leaking secret military documents, which also contained information about the war in Ukraine, the BBC writes.
The FBI arrested Jack Teixeira at his family home in rural Massachusetts on Thursday, the 13th of April. The documents first came to light in an online discussion group, and Teixeira has been identified as its leader. He is accused of unauthorized transfer and distribution of secret information.
Dozens of leaked documents reveal US involvement in the war in Ukraine,
as well as sensitive secrets about US allies, thus embarrassing Washington and raising the issue of the security of classified information.
Teixeira served in the Massachusetts National Guard and served as an IT specialist in the Intelligence Division. His position was relatively low level.
Moment US intelligence documents leak suspect Jack Teixeira arrested https://t.co/cNH5dlbeBN pic.twitter.com/sxhqcDWRZ4
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 13, 2023
It is not known what Teixeira’s clearance level was, but according to information on the Air Force website, only a basic background check is done for his role. Pentagon officials only became aware of the leak when the documents surfaced outside the private chat room.
Although
Teixeira is known to be skeptical of the government, his friends have said the young man is neither a whistleblower nor a foreign agent.
The Pentagon, for its part, has indicated that it will review the procedures for working with classified information, however, its representative informed that the US Army considers it a normal practice to assign high-responsibility duties to junior employees.
Teixeira has been running an online chat room of mostly teenagers, where he is believed to have been sharing classified information for several months.
Initially, the documents were only available to members of the chat room, but in early March they started publishing them on other Discord servers. From there, the information went to 4chan and Telegram channels, which were mainly pro-Russian. In some cases, the documents were altered to increase the number of Ukrainian losses. The US Department of Defense said it was continuing to work to assess the extent and impact of the leak.
Read also: Fighting continues in Donetsk; US search for the source of the leaked documents