US Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Thursday that Jack Teixeira was arrested in connection with a probe into “alleged unauthorised removal, retention and transmission of classified national defence information”.“Teixeira is an employee of the United States Air Force National Guard,” Garland told reporters during a brief news conference.
“FBI agents took Teixeira into custody earlier this afternoon without incident.”
The files purported to show American military assessments of the war in Ukraine, as well as issues related to some of the US’s top allies, such as Israel and South Korea.
One of the latest revelations indicated the US was monitoring United Nations chief Antonio Guterres because it believed he was too soft on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
On Thursday, The New York Times reported that about half a dozen FBI agents armed with rifles pushed onto a Massachusetts property to make the arrest of Teixeira.
In a statement, the FBI said it “has aggressively pursued investigative leads” since late last week. “Today’s arrest exemplifies our continued commitment to identifying, pursuing, and holding accountable those who betray our country’s trust and put our national security at risk,” it said.
Video footage of the arrest, played on US news channels, showed officers accompanying a young man wearing a T-shirt and bright red shorts into a waiting car in North Dighton, a small town about 30km (18 miles) east of Providence, Rhode Island.
The Times said the 21-year-old is believed to be the leader of a small, gaming chat group on the social media app Discord where the documents were leaked over the past few months.
Teixeira’s arrest is expected to raise questions about how one of the most high-profile US intelligence leaks in years could have been caused by such a young, low-ranking service member.
“One of the strange things about the leaks from the very beginning was that this was a really odd place for them to show up,” David Silbey, an associate professor at Cornell University who specialises in defence policy and military history, told media before news of the arrest.
“If it had been a sort of espionage act, why put them on a random Discord server? You wouldn’t reveal it publicly anyway; you’d just pass it back to Russia. If it was a leak to share with the public, it’s about the worst possible way to leak it,” Silbey said.
But regardless of the intent, he added that the leak remains “significant”.
During a separate news conference on Thursday, a spokesperson for the US Department of Defense said the leak was “a deliberate, criminal act”.
“We continue to work around the clock along with the interagency and the intelligence community to better understand the scope, scale and impact of these leaks,” Pat Ryder told reporters.
He stressed that the department could not comment on the Department of Justice’s ongoing investigation, nor could it reveal much about the documents themselves.
“We continue to review a variety of factors as it relates to safeguarding classified materials,” Ryder said. “This includes examining and updating distribution lists, assessing how and where intelligence products are shared, and a variety of other steps.”
The Justice Department did not say what charges Teixeira would face, although they will likely involve criminal charges of wilfully retaining and transmitting national defence information.
Brandon Van Grack, a former Justice Department national security prosecutor now with the law firm Morrison Foerster, told the Reuters news agency that the likely charges could carry up to 10 years imprisonment, even if Teixeira did not intend to cause harm.
“I think this is someone who is facing on the higher end of exposure for years in prison… because the leaks were so damaging,” Van Grack said.
A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office in Boston said Teixeira is expected to make his initial appearance on Friday.
The New York Times reported that Teixeira was a member of the intelligence wing of the state national guard. A post on the unit’s official Facebook page noted he was among a group of members promoted to Airman First Class in July 2022.
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The Air Force later said Teixeira joined the Air National Guard in September 2019. His official job title was “cyber transport systems journeyman”.
The role is tasked with maintaining the underlying infrastructure of the Air Force’s “vast, global communications network”.
“Whether it’s repairing a network hub at a stateside base or installing fiber-optic cable at a forward installation overseas, these experts keep our communications systems up and running and play an integral role in our continuing success,” a description of the role on the Air Force’s website said.
The Times and other US media have also identified Teixeira as the leader of a small gaming chat group on the Discord platform, where the leaked documents first emerged.
The Washington Post previously reported that the online group formed in 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The chat group, composed of about two dozen young men and boys, bonded over their love of guns, military gear and religion. Membership was by invitation only, according to the newspaper.
One member said: “We all grew very close to each other, like a tight-knit family … We depended on each other.”At the centre of that family was Teixeira, who members knew as OG.
Teixeira was widely admired for his bravado, with members saying he would post videos of himself at a gun range, including one where he uttered racial and anti-Semitic slurs before opening fire, the Post reported. Offensive jokes and memes were common on the site.
At some point last year, members told the newspaper, Teixeira began posting what appeared to be re-written transcripts of classified information, which he touted as available through his work. The transcriptions included definitions of military jargon and other annotations.
He regularly lectured the group on the importance of staying abreast of current affairs and appeared to post the transcribed intelligence to inform other members, according to the Post.
Teixeira later switched to posting photos of the documents, although a timeline of when that began was not immediately clear.
Bellingcat, an open-source investigative news site, previously reported that the documents first emerged on Discord by March at the latest, but they may have been posted as far back as January.
The classified materials gradually made their way to other sites, including the imageboard 4Chan, as well as to more mainstream social media platforms. Discord has said it is cooperating with investigators.
Reached at her Massachusetts home on Thursday, Teixeira’s mother Dawn told the New York Times that her son had been working the overnight shift at a base on Cape Cod.
She also explained that he had, in recent days, changed his phone number. He arrived at the house in a red pickup truck shortly before he was taken into custody.
In Thursday’s statement, Attorney General Garland said Teixeira would have an initial appearance at the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts but did not give a date.
US media began widely reporting on the leak last week, sending the administration of President Joe Biden scrambling to contain the fallout from the documents, which showed vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s air defence capabilities and exposed private assessments by allies on an array of intelligence matters.
The documents have also roiled close US allies. Some appeared to show that Egypt planned to sell weapons to Russia in a deal it planned to keep secret from Washington.
Another seemingly showed that Russian operatives were building a closer relationship with the United Arab Emirates, while a third document indicated that South Korean leaders were hesitant to ship artillery shells to Ukraine.
The governments involved in those claims have all denied the information in the documents.
Earlier on Thursday, Biden told reporters: “I’m not concerned about the leak. I’m concerned that it happened but there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”
On Thursday, Department of Defense spokesperson Pat Ryder said his agency would not address specifics of the leaked documents as they had not been officially declassified.
“I will highlight that, as a matter of longstanding policy, just because classified information may be posted online or elsewhere does not mean it has been declassified by a classification authority,” he said.
“We’re just not going to discuss or confirm classified information due to the potential impact on national security, as well as the safety and security of our personnel and those of our allies and our partners.”