On Thursday, FBI investigators apprehended a 21-year-old national guardsman suspected of being behind a huge leak of important US government secrets, including information regarding the Ukraine war.
The dramatic arrest, which was broadcast live on television networks, was the end of a weeklong probe fuelled by intensive media coverage into one of the most devastating disclosures of secret information since Edward Snowden’s 2013 dump of National Security Agency documents.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland identified the suspect as Jack Teixeira, a member of the US Air Force National Guard and the purported head of the online chat group where the document trove initially surfaced.
Teixeira was arrested “in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information,” according to Garland, and was taken into custody without incident by FBI investigators.
News footage from the operation in the southern Massachusetts hamlet of North Dighton showed the man, clothed in red shorts and a t-shirt, backing slowly toward rifle-armed, camouflage-clad law enforcement agents who apprehended him.
In a statement, police in the small town in the northeastern state sought to reassure residents about the large law enforcement presence, stating there was “no threat to public safety.”
The US National Guard Bureau said Teixeira enlisted in September 2019 and is an IT and communications specialist who reached the rank of airman first class — the third-lowest for enlisted air force personnel.
He was expected to make an initial appearance in a Massachusetts federal court as early as Friday.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a statement praising the Justice Department and FBI “for their swift arrest in connection with this investigation.”
Austin added that he is ordering a “review of our intelligence access, accountability and control procedures within the (Defense) Department to inform our efforts to prevent this kind of incident from happening again.”
Teixeira’s arrest came a day 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.
