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This Friday, Jack Douglas Teixeira, the main suspect in the leak of highly classified documents belonging to the United States government, testified in a Boston court for the first time. The defendant faces sentences of up to ten years for each of the two crimes charged: retention and theft of classified documents that may compromise national security. The 21-year-old aviator is scheduled for another hearing next Wednesday.
His name is Jack Douglas Teixeira and he is accused of illegally stealing and preserving classified material from the United States government. This Friday, the suspect in the leak of top-secret documents over the Internet appeared for the first time before a federal judge in Boston.
Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the United States Air Force National Guard, was arrested Thursday at his home by a team of FBI agents after discovering that he had stolen and photocopied classified defense documents. Each crime charged against him can carry up to 10 years in prison.
In an 11-page complaintan FBI agent from the bureau’s counterintelligence division in Washington detailed much of what has already been publicly reported: that Teixeira released sensitive national security documents marked “top secret” in a chat group on the platform. Discord, identified in court documents as “Social Media Platform 1.”
One of the witnesses to what happened, identified as “User 1”, assured that the defendant began to leak documents in December 2022 and that, in January 2023, he began to share photographs.
The shared material is diverse, but focuses specifically on the war in Ukraine. The junior military shared everything from documents on the state of the conflict, terrain maps or specific troop movements to discussions about the ability of US surveillance to penetrate the Russian and Ukrainian communication system. In other words, the leaked documents reveal that Washington practices espionage with his enemies, but also with his supposed allies.
According to his friends from the Thug Shaker Central group, on the ‘Discord’ platform, the aviator shared the documents to “show them what a real war was.” Witnesses claim the group was created during the pandemic to “feel together” while playing warmongering video games. There were between 20 and 30 people in the group, some of them located in Ukraine.
“Everyone respected OG -alias de Teixeira-. He was the man, the myth. And he was the legend. Everyone respected him,” said one of the witnesses to the newspaper ‘The New York Times’.
“When he found out the story had gone public, he said: ‘Sorry guys, I prayed every day that this didn’t happen. I prayed and prayed and now it’s only up to God what happens next,'” another said. unidentified member of the group.
This is believed to be the largest security breach since the WikiLeaks case in 2010, which shared more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables. The leak seriously compromised the US over its actions in Afghanistan, as the documents included videos showing how soldiers knowingly bombed civilians.
The author of this leak, Chelsea Manning, a private first class in the US Army, was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Later, former Democratic President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.
In the current case, the US authorities are still assessing the damage caused by the leaks and the consequences at a strategic and geopolitical level.
The Pentagon has maintained that the leak was a “deliberate and criminal act” and assured that the military has taken steps to review distribution lists and ascertain who were the people who received the information.
Many wonder why such a young soldier had access to such confidential data, something to which the Pentagon has responded by assuring that the nature of the armed forces “is to entrust very young members with high and sometimes serious levels of responsibility, including high levels security clearance”.
“We entrust our members with a lot of responsibility at a very young age. Think of a young combat platoon sergeant, and the responsibility and trust we place in those individuals to lead troops in combat,” said Patrick Ryder, spokesman of the Pentagon.
In the session, Teixeira only spoke twice: once he answered “yes” to his right to remain silent and, in the other, to answer that “yes” he had completed an affidavit necessary to obtain a public defender.
After the hearing, prosecutor Nadine Pellegrini requested that Teixeira be detained pending trial, and a new arrest appearance has been set for Wednesday.
With AP and local media
