The New York Times identified on Thursday the leader of an online group where hundreds of photos of classified U.S. military documents were leaked as a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who was based at Fort Bragg at the time of the leak.
The newspaper identified the leader as Jack Teixeira, of Bristol, Mass, who allegedly oversaw a private Discord server called “Thug Shaker Central” that was comprised of a couple dozen like-minded men and boys.
The report said that U.S. officials want to talk Teixeira because they believe that he “might have information relevant to the investigation.”
The New York Times showed up to Teixeira’s family home and was informed by his mother that he was a member of the Air National Guard and that he changed his phone number in the last few days.
The Times said that a person who appeared to be Teixeira later drove up to the home and that when the Times and asked if he was willing to speak to them, a man on the driveway told them that was not a good idea.
“He needs to get an attorney if things are flowing the way they are going right now,” the man told the Times. “The Feds will be around soon, I’m sure.”
Shortly after The New York Times published its report, Reuters reported: “An Air National guardsman suspected of leaking classified Pentagon documents will be arrested today in Massachusetts.”
BREAKING: An Air National guardsman suspected of leaking classified Pentagon documents will be arrested today in Massachusetts pic.twitter.com/7U3tuDvqsu
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 13, 2023
A member of the group told The Washington Post that the alleged leaker, referred to as “OG,” expressed anti-government sentiment but they did not believe he was trying to help any foreign power, and they think he was trying to show off.
“If you had classified documents, you’d want to flex at least a little bit, like hey, I’m the big guy,” one member said, later adding, “I would definitely not call him a whistleblower. I would not call OG a whistleblower in the slightest.”
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The documents that were leaked contained information about battlefield conditions in Ukraine, information on foreign adversary’s weapons systems, assessments on how deeply U.S. intelligence had penetrated into the Russian military, information on Egypt planning to sell weapons to Russia, and much more.
The report said there were numerous forensic clues left behind by the leaker that would likely prove to be highly useful for U.S. law enforcement in identifying the suspect.
President Joe Biden said this week that the U.S. authorities were “getting close” to catching the person responsible for the leak.
CNN reported Thursday that the FBI has narrowed down the number of people who could be responsible to a “small number” of suspects and are “working on building a case for prosecution.”
OG’s continued leaking of classified material eventually leaked out of the discord server after one of the members started sharing the images on February 28 with another Discord server affiliated with a YouTuber that has nearly a quarter of a million subscribers. Several days later, on March 4, more of the images started to appear on a different Discord server dedicated to the Minecraft video game.
However, the leak would still not be detected by U.S. authorities for another month when classified documents started appearing on Russian Telegram channels and 4chan, before making their way onto Twitter.
OG reportedly panicked after learning that the images had been leaked and asked members to “keep low and delete any information that could possibly relate to him,” according to a member of the group.