US Airman Identified as Leader of Discord Channel That Leaked Top Secret Intelligence

The leader of a racist Discord channel where top secret U.S. intelligence was leaked has been identified as 21-year old Massachussetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira.

Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed that Teixeira was arrested by FBI agents this afternoon, in a small town in Massachusetts, not far from Providence, Rhode Island. Publicly accessible air traffic radars reviewed by VICE News, shows police helicopters repeatedly circled a home in the area of Dighton and then have recently left.  

Teixeira is being charged for the “alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information,” according to Garland. 

The Air National Guardsman is very likely facing charges under the Espionage Act, since he allegedly leaked classified intelligence at the level of state secrets, which have unquestionably damaged the U.S. government. That could lead to decades in jail.

U.S. defense sources had said the Airman was to be arrested today, while the specific charges filed against him aren’t immediately available. The Department of Justice and the FBI, who were leading the investigation into the leak, have yet to release a statement.

“I’d refer you to [Department of Justice],” said Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh when asked about the status of Teixeira.

The DOJ has yet to release a statement on the alleged leaker, but is investigating the matter.

In a bombshell Washington Post report last night, a person called OG—Teixeira, according to a separate The New York Times report—was described as the ringleader of the Thug Shaker Central Discord server where he initially posted hand copied classified intelligence reports to impress his followers. In a video that OG posted to the server, he is apparently seen firing a weapon and yelling antisemitic and racist epithets.

But the alleged leaker went further when he began to photograph printed intelligence packets with what is believed to be Pentagon, NSA, and CIA level briefings for top level Department of Defense officials, including General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top soldier in the U.S. military apparatus.

OG shared hundreds of documents with around 24 people in the Thug Shaker Central Discord group. They had labeled one sub-channel in the group “bear-vs-pig,” an off-color reference to Russia's war in Ukraine where they dropped classified documents and memes about the war. Eventually, one of the group’s members downloaded the files, packaged them into a zip file, and shared them with other Discord groups, including one dedicated to the video game Minecraft.

From there, the Top Secret classified documents spread to 4chan where they were used to win an argument about casualties in the war. Posters on 4chan took the documents and brought them to Telegram and Twitter, which is when the Pentagon finally noticed.

The leaks have caused ripples across the world and cast a shadow on U.S. intelligence gathering. Some of the top secret briefings include revelations that U.S. intelligence kept tabs on key allies, including South Korea, Turkey and Ukraine, which has caused diplomatic headaches for the Biden Administration.

But how and why the intel was leaked, in of all places an online chat server open to strangers, will be top of mind for Pentagon and intelligence officials going forward.

The same U.S. intelligence source, who is not authorized to speak with the media, and knowledgeable on global spy campaigns, said where exactly the alleged leaker was posted and what position he held is key to how he came into contact with the briefings.

“The compartmentalization on [Pentagon] systems is good, but it’s not great,” they said. “If his unit was responsible for Europe, it wouldn’t be out of the norm. If not, he really had to do some digging, and that digging is tracked pretty closely.” 

According to the same source, though there were multiple nations mentioned in the cache of leaked intelligence, the amount of it that is based in Europe could indicate the region of station or his area of responsibility.