FBI swoops on Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira

Jack Douglas Teixeira, a young US airman, oversaw an online group where young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns and racist online memes.

The FBI has arrested the man it believes is responsible for leaking hundreds of pages of classified US intelligence documents, which revealed awkward details about the war in Ukraine and possible American efforts to spy on other nations, including Israel and South Korea.

Jack Douglas Teixeira, a 21-year-old national guardsman, was arrested on Thursday (Friday AEST) at his home in Massachusetts as the suspect in the biggest breach of US intelligence material since Edward Snowden released millions of documents a decade ago.

A team of heavily armed FBI agents descended on the home of Mr Teixeira, described as a “young, charismatic gun enthusiast” who enjoyed gaming.

“Airman Teixeira oversaw an online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games,” the New York Times, the first to publish the suspect’s name on Thursday, reported.

“One of the users of the online group uploaded hundreds of pages of intelligence briefings into the small chat group, lecturing its members, who had bonded during the isolation of the pandemic, on the importance of staying abreast of world events”.

Attorney-General Merrick Garland in a brief statement to the media confirmed the arrest, foreshadowing the suspect’s appearance in a Massachusetts district court.

The airman was arrested in connection with the “unauthorised removal, retention and transmission of classified national defence information”, Mr Garland said.

The documents, which emerged sporadically in the mainstream media in recent weeks after being posted on gaming website Discord potentially over a series of months, revealed sensitive details about Russian and Ukrainian military positions and plans.

They also suggested Israeli intelligence had orchestrated protests against the Israeli government, and Egypt had planned to provide Russia with 40,000 missiles secretly.

Speaking earlier in the day in Ireland, President Joe Biden said the investigation was “getting close” to determining the cause of the breach, adding that he said he was “not concerned”. “There’s a full-blown investigation going on, as you know, with the intelligence community and the Justice Department,” he told reporters in Dublin.

The latest revelations from the dump, commonly referred to as the Pentagon leaks, which began being widely circulated on social media sites in the past week, show the US was told Mr Putin was being treated with chemotherapy, including details of a chemotherapy appointment scheduled for March 5.

But Mr Biden told reporters while visiting Ireland on Thursday “I’m concerned that it happened, but there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence”.

The intelligence leak relating to Putin’s health appears to add weight to rumours that have swirled around the Russian leader since the invasion of Ukraine in February last year. It also suggests that senior Kremlin officials were looking to take advantage of Putin’s ill-health.

The leaked documents say: “According to the [redacted name], who received the information from an unidentified Russian source with access to Kremlin officials, Russia planned to divert resources from the Taganrog, Russia to Mariupol, Ukraine and focus its attention on the southern front.

“According to the [redacted name] the plan for ‘the offensive’ … was suspected to be a strategy devised by Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev and Russian Chief of the General Staff Valeriy Gerasimov to sabotage presumably Putin.

“Gerasimov reportedly planned to continue his efforts to sabotage the offensive, noting that he promised to “throw” the so-called special military operation by 5 March, when Putin was allegedly scheduled to start a round of chemo therapy and would thus be unable to influence the war effort.”

The Defence department, which oversees the national guard, defended its security procedures at a press briefing on Thursday.

“This was a deliberate criminal act, a wilful violation of [existing] guidelines,” said Pentagon Spokesman Pat Ryder.

“We continue to review a variety of factors as it relates to safeguarding, including examining distribution lists, and accessing how and where intelligence products are shared”.

Douglas Wise, a former deputy director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, called for the US government to review who had access to such documents, arguing for a shift back towards pre 9/11 rules where information was shared across agencies less readily.

“While I have no knowledge of this individual’s need to know, I question why this individual had access to extremely detailed and sensitive collection activities,” he told The Australian

“It is 2023, this incident should be a wake up call to limit the use of printers in secure offices … without access to a printer, this intentional act would have been much more difficult.”

Mr Wise said the early idea Russia might have been behind the leak was unlikely because Moscow wouldn’t have revealed to the world it had clandestinely acquired these kinds of documents and would not have wanted to put their access at risk.

The Australian understands Australia or intelligence provided by Australia were not mentioned directly in any of the leaked documents, which US intelligence officials have requested to social and traditional media companies be removed from the internet.

“The leak raises the risk that information Australia shares with the US might be exposed,” said Dr Victor Abramowicz, a Charles Darwin University intelligence and defence expert ahead of the arrest.

“The documents also highlight that Washington does gather intelligence and conduct assessments even on its allies and Australia would certainly be subject to similar assessments, even though the likelihood of intelligence gathering against us directly is fairly unlikely.”

Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said the intelligence leaks were “troublesome, and expensive” and could trigger a review into who has access to what within the intelligence community.

“The damage assessment will be intensive, and there will probably be a lot of reassuring our allies that this won’t happen again,” she told The Australian in an interview.

“This kind of thing can be an irritant in a relationship, but the exchange of information between us and the Australians is so extensive, nobody‘s going to imperil that”.

The Pentagon documents indicate that the US believes China may support Russia in the Ukraine war and that the Ukrainian gains may only result in modest territorial gains in a Spring counteroffensive.

There were references to special forces operatives from Britain, as well as a handful of other countries, being inside Ukraine.

The documents also say Russia had also been seeking stronger relationships with the UAE, something denied by the UAE and that Egypt had held discussions to supply Russia with 40,000 rockets.

One document stated, “China would respond more strongly and most likely increase the scale and scope of material it is willing to provide Russia if Ukrainian strikes hit a location of high strategic value or appeared to target senior Russian leaders.” Some of the first documents released suggested that Ukraine was running out of air defence ammunition for BUK and S-300 systems.