The culprit of the leak of secret US intelligence documents, US Air Force pilot Jack Teixeira, did not set out to make them widely publicized, writes the New York Times.
Teixeira was detained by FBI agents on April 13, 2023 at his home in North Dayton, Massachusetts. As the Washington Post previously found out , he "leaked" secret documents to the Thug Shaker Central group, which consisted of about 20 people, on the online Discord platform.
In the group, which initially discussed weapons and video games, he introduced himself under the pseudonym OG Teixeira told its participants about the "need to be aware of what is happening in the world."
As the members of the group themselves told the New York Times, the pilot published documents "for informational purposes only." Many of them related to the Russian attack on Ukraine, but at the same time, Thug Shaker Central members say that they "do not take any side in this conflict."
According to one of them, quoted by the Washington Post, Teixeira believed that Russia and Ukraine "should have more in common than separate them." He shared secret materials so that his “friends and people whom he trusted”, who initially doubted what he was saying, could get acquainted with information “free from propaganda”.
However, the video available to the Washington Post and received from a member of the group casts doubt on the neutral position of OG. The publication describes what is happening as follows: the video shows allegedly Teixeira standing at the training ground. He has a big gun in his hand. He shouts a series of racist and anti-Semitic slogans, and then shoots at the target several times.
Teixeira might have continued to leak documents to the group if one teenager who was in Thug Shaker Central hadn't started posting them on public forums. There, the documents discovered Russian Telegram channels, which finally made them public.
Members of the group characterize Teixeira as a libertarian, a lover of weapons and an adherent of the Catholic faith.
Each document "leaked" by Jack Teixeira can be considered as a separate charge, and for each the punishment can be up to 10 years in prison. Potentially, he faces a life sentence, as only Reuters became aware of the leak of more than 50 classified documents. It is assumed that there may be more.