The US charged an Air National Guardsman over a massive disclosure of intelligence secrets, an embarrassment that prompted President Joe Biden to clamp down on the spread of classified material and led investigators to probe whether foreign adversaries played any role in the leak.
Jack Teixeira, 21, made his first appearance Friday in Boston federal court after agents arrested him for allegedly accessing and disseminating classified national defense information. He faces at least 15 years in prison if convicted. Teixeira, who was refused bail, didn’t enter a plea and was given a public defender.
The leak of dozens of pages of documents has been described as one of the most damaging and embarrassing intelligence disclosures in a decade, and raised the question of how a young, relatively junior airman was able to access up-to-the-minute assessments of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, amid other information. Allies have been muted in their response though some have privately expressed consternation about the US’s apparent inability to keep its secrets safe.Play Video
The documents were shared among a small group on the Discord text and video chat app before being picked up and circulated more broadly on the Russia-owned Telegram messaging service. Attorney General Merrick Garland made clear Friday the US wanted the charges to make others think twice before sharing secrets.
“People who sign agreements to be able to receive classified documents acknowledge the importance to national security of not disclosing those documents,” Garland said. “We intend to send that message, how important it is for our national security.”
Biden sought to downplay the severity of the leak earlier this week, saying it didn’t pose a threat to national security. On Friday, he said the US was still determining the validity of the documents. He also directed the military and intelligence agencies “to take steps to further secure and limit distribution of sensitive information,” according to a White House statement.
While officials and experts have said the documents appeared genuine, there was at least one instance where an image was doctored to inflate US estimates of the number of Ukrainians who have died in the conflict.
An FBI affidavit released Friday accused Teixeira of unlawfully retaining and disseminating material classified at the TS/SCI level, which is the highest classification level. He allegedly began posting text of classified information in a Discord chat room in December. Later, he posted photos of classified information including “a document that described the status of the Russia Ukraine conflict, including troop movements, on a particular date,” according to the affidavit.
The picture that’s emerged is that the leaker posted the documents to impress his friends and not at the behest of a foreign adversary such as Russia. But one obvious question for investigators is whether the leaker was enticed by another nation’s intelligence agents, who are believed to have infiltrated some online gaming communities.
One person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing the investigation, said officials haven’t ruled out a Russia connection to the leaks.
“That’s going to be the $64,000 question, is, was a group of Americans played as unwitting tools by the FSB trying to sting us, get our classified information, turn it around for their own purposes?” Said Dan Meyer, partner at law firm Tully Rinckey, referring to Russia’s Federal Security Service.
Just as important, Meyer said, is the broader challenge of how to keep classified information safe when so many people — at least 3 million, according to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center — have clearances to view it.
“There’s a technology issue with all of this,” Meyer said. “It is just too easy for this stuff to walk from a briefing room to Dunkin Donuts in the Pentagon to somebody’s bag, to the Metro and then scanned and out to the world,” he said.
Experts predicted a wholesale revamp of how classified information is shared.
“One challenge is that since 9/11 the bias has been toward greater sharing of information because of the problems that compartmentalization caused – people who needed to know often didn’t,” said Rodney Faraon, a former CIA senior intelligence officer and partner at Crumpton Global. “I expect a full reevaluation on how much, and who, will be able to see classified information, especially in the military.”
The case is US v. Teixeira, 23-mj-04293, US District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).
(Updates with details of Pentagon probe into leaks.)
–With assistance from Patricia Hurtado, Peter Martin and Jack Gillum.