The short hair, the youthful face, and an almost adolescent posture. It was in shorts and without any resistance that Jack Teixeira, 21, was arrested by the FBI on Thursday at his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts. The young man is suspected of being the source of a leak of hundreds of confidential Pentagon documents on the social network Discord.
His arrest made headlines all over the US, while the case embarrassed the White House and the intelligence services: the leak included classified documents on US strategy to help Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion, but also information suggesting that Washington collects intelligence on its closest allies, including Israel and South Korea.
Not a whistleblower
More than the leaks themselves, it is the security breaches they induce that cause a scandal across the Atlantic, given the profile of the suspect. Jack Teixeira is a junior employee of the United States Air Guard. He had worked since 2019, as a computer and communications specialist, in the joint base of Cape Cod (Massachusetts).
In 2020, to face the isolation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, he joined a closed group of around twenty people on the Discord social network. Very quickly, according to the investigation of the Washington Posthe starts posting confidential notes stamped “Noforn”, (abbreviation of « Not for Release to Foreign Nationals »used in classified US federal government documents).
Cautious and meticulous in copying the documents during the first months, he decided to speed up at the end of 2022, distributing photos of the documents several times a week. The information is sensitive. The other members of the Discord group are impressed. One of the latter, questioned by the Washington Post, rejected the name of whistleblower outright, as did the comparison with Edward Snowden. According to him, Jack Teixeira’s approach consisted above all in boasting of access to confidential documents, rather than revealing their content to the general public.
But, according to the elements collected by the Washington PostJack Teixeira had a very « sombre » of the federal government, which he would view as a sinister force seeking to ” DELETE “ its citizens and keeping them in the dark.
Whooping cough of the far right and conspiratorial circles
In a video that the American newspaper has obtained, the young man shouts racist and anti-Semitic insults in a shooting range, a large rifle in his hands, before firing a salvo at the target. A profile close to the extreme right which attracts the sympathy of certain conservatives. “Jack Teixeira is a white, Christian and anti-war man. This makes him an enemy of the Biden regime. He told the truth about the troops deployed on the ground in Ukraine, and many other things. Ask yourself who is the real enemy? », has for example tweeted Marjorie Taylor Greene, elected from Georgia to the House of Representatives. Suspected of being responsible for a risk ” very serious “ for the national security of the United States according to the Pentagon, the young man is almost unanimously qualified as “traitor”. Except by conspiratorial circles, who see him as a hero.
“The Deep State Media Will Turn The Pentagon Leak Into A Story About Who Leaked, Not The Lies He Revealed,” has for example writes Kim Dotcoma conspirator with 1.3 million Twitter followers.
Jack Teixeira is due in front of a Boston judge on Friday to face charges under the Espionage Act. He faces several years in prison.