Who is Jack Teixeira, the suspect arrested over Pentagon documents leak?

FBI agents on Thursday arrested Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old national guardsman on suspicion of being behind a major leak of sensitive US government secrets – including about the Ukraine war.

The arrest has further escalated concerns about how secret US intel documents are stored especially given that a joiner ranking employee allegedly had access to them.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the arrest was made “in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.”

Who is Jack Teixeira?

• Garland confirmed that Teixeira is an employee of the United States Air Force National Guard, and said FBI agents took him into custody “without incident.”

• According to a CBS report, Teixeira joined the USAF in 2019.

• His official title is cyber transport systems journeyman and he holds the rank of Airman 1st Class, the report added.

• According to The New York Times, a “trail of digital evidence” pointed to Teixeira as the leader of the private chat group on Discord, called Thug Shaker Central, where the documents surfaced.

How did the arrest happen?

News helicopter footage showed the suspect, in red shorts with his hands behind his back, being placed by heavily-armed agents into an unmarked sports utility vehicle, in a forested area in North Dighton, in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.

US media began honing in on Teixeira after The Washington Post reported that hundreds of pages of documents had been posted on the social media platform Discord by a man who worked on a US military base.

The embarrassing security breach has revealed US’ doubt over the viability of a coming counteroffensive by Kyiv’s forces against Russian troops as well as concerns about Ukrainian air defences, and pointed to Washington spying on allies.

President Joe Biden addressed the leaks during a visit to Ireland, saying he was “concerned” but that the intelligence community and Justice Department were “getting close” to identifying the source of the leak.

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Reports said the alleged leaker, who went by the nickname “OG,” regularly posted documents in the chat group in question for months.

The group of around 24 people, including some from Russia and Ukraine, bonded over their “mutual love of guns, military gear and God,” and formed an “invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord,” reported the Post – which like the Times cited unidentified members of Thug Shaker Central.

With inputs from agencies

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