The New York Times reported on Thursday that a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard at Fort Bragg was behind the website where hundreds of pictures of secret U.S. military papers were posted.
The article said that the boss was a man named Jack Teixeira from Bristol, Massachusetts. People say that he had a Discord group called “Thug Shaker Central” where about 20 young men and boys who agreed with him got together.
The US government allegedly wants to talk to Teixeira because he “may have information that is relevant to the investigation.”
When reporters from The New York Times came to their home, Teixeira’s mother told them that he was in the Air National Guard and that he had recently changed his phone number.
The Times says that a few hours later, someone who looked like Teixeira went to the house. As they came up to the entrance, a man told them to leave him alone.
A person who didn’t want to be named told The Times about the main character, “If things keep going the way they are, he should get a lawyer.” There will be no doubt that government agents will show up there at some point.
At the same time that the New York Times story came out, Reuters said, “An Air National guardsman suspected of leaking classified Pentagon documents will be arrested today in Massachusetts.”
A source who didn’t want to be named told the Washington Post that the accused leaker, who goes by the name “OG,” is against the government but isn’t trying to help a foreign group. But many people think that he was just trying to make himself look better.
The person said, “If you had classified documents, you’d want to flex at least a little bit, like, hey, I’m the big guy,” before adding, “I would definitely not call him a whistleblower.” I wouldn’t use OG as a reliable source.
The stolen papers showed how much knowledge the U.S. was gathering about the Russian military, how Egypt wanted to sell weapons to Russia, and what was really going on in Ukraine.
The story goes that if there were physical proof, it wouldn’t be hard for U.S. officials to find and catch the leaker.
Vice President Joe Biden said last week that the US is “getting close” to finding out who is behind the leak.
CNN said on Thursday that the FBI is “working to build a case for prosecution” and that a “small number” of suspects have been found.
By February 28, the attack had gone beyond the computer. Someone on the server had sent the pictures to a different Discord server that was connected to a YouTuber with about 250,000 followers. After a few days, on March 4, the pictures were sent to a new Minecraft Discord group.
After a month, secret papers started to show up on Russian Telegram groups and 4chan, then on Twitter. This is how the computer attack was found out by the American government.
One of the crew members said that OG freaked out when he saw that the pictures had been passed around and told everyone to “keep low and delete any information that could possibly relate to him.”