FBI arrests man for ‘criminal’ US intelligence leaks
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The FBI has arrested an employee of the US Air Force National Guard over the leaks online of classified US documents that embarrassed the country’s officials with allies around the world.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the FBI arrested the man, Jack Teixeira, “in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorised removal, retention and transmission of classified national defence information”.
“FBI agents took Teixeira into custody earlier this afternoon without incident,” Garland told reporters in a brief statement at the Justice Department.
“This investigation is ongoing,” Garland said. He did not take questions.
The FBI said its agents had made an arrest and were conducting “authorised law enforcement activity at a residence in North Dighton, Massachusetts”.
Video images played on news channels showed heavily armed officers in Massachusetts accompanying a young man wearing a grey t-shirt and bright red shorts into a waiting car.
His head was bowed and his hair was close-cropped.
US officials have been hunting for weeks for the person responsible and assessing damage from the release of the intelligence reports, which first appeared on social media sites in March and purportedly reveal details of Ukrainian military vulnerabilities and information about allies including Israel, South Korea and Turkey.
Reuters has reviewed more than 50 of the documents, labelled “Secret” and “Top Secret” but has not independently verified their authenticity.
The number of documents leaked is likely to be more than 100.
US President Joe Biden, who is on a three-day tour of Ireland, said he was not overly concerned about the leak.
“There’s a full-blown investigation going on, as you know, with the intelligence community and the Justice Department, and they’re getting close but I don’t have an answer,” Biden told reporters.
“I’m not concerned about the leak. I’m concerned that it happened, but there is nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of.”
A man named Jack Teixeira was promoted to Airman 1st Class in July, according to a post on the 102nd Intelligence Wing’s official Facebook page.
A number of countries have questioned the veracity of some of the leaked documents, including the United Kingdom which said there was “a serious level of inaccuracy” in the information.
The New York Times earlier reported that Teixeira was a national guardsman who led Thug Shaker Central, an online forum used by about 20 to 30 people.
It is possible the leak may have started on a site called Discord, a social media platform popular with people playing online games.
The Discord site hosts real-time voice, video and text chats for groups and describes itself as a place “where you can belong to a school club, a gaming group, or a worldwide art community”.
In one of those forums, originally created to talk about a range of topics, members would debate the war in Ukraine.
According to one member of the chat, an unidentified poster shared documents that the poster claimed were classified, first typing them out with the poster’s own thoughts, then, as of a few months ago, uploading images of folded papers.
Discord has said it was co-operating with law enforcement.
with AP
Reuters
