Journalists seemed to be at the forefront of investigating the recent leak of highly classified Pentagon documents, making the leak public and tracing the source before the DOJ announced charges in the case.
Air Force National Guardsman Jack Douglas Teixeira, 21, was arrested Thursday by the FBI in Massachusetts more than an hour after the New York Times and Bellingcat journalist Aric Toler identified him as the suspected leaker.
Court documents unsealed Friday morning indicate that the FBI identified Teixeira as a suspect at least Wednesday, using witness statements and accounts from the messaging service Discord.
Bellingcat, an open-source investigative website that relies on public information to investigate various topics, was the first to publicly identify the Discord chat room “Thug Shaker Central,” where Teixeira allegedly posted classified documents under the username “The OG.”
In a Bellingcat article last weekToler meticulously traced the documents back to their original source, after they spread on pro-Russian Telegram channels, the website 4Chan, and multiple Discord servers.
US officials are still assessing the damage done by the leaks, which include classified data on Ukrainian military vulnerabilities and classified information on allies including Israel, South Korea and Turkey.
Bellingcat journalist Aric Toler (left) was the first to publicly identify the source of the leaked documents, the “Thug Shaker Central” Discord chat room where Jack Teixeira (right) allegedly posted them as far back as December 2022
The documents appeared to have circulated online for months before being brought to public attention by a New York Times article on April 6, which first reported that the Pentagon was investigating a breach.
The Pentagon has said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was initially made aware of the leak on the morning of April 6 and launched a cross-departmental investigation.
On April 9, Bellingcat’s Director of Training and Research, Toler, posted his article tracing the provenance of the documents back to their original source.
He noted that photos of the documents first circulated widely on pro-Russian Telegram channels on April 5, where they appeared to have been crudely altered to portray the Russian invasion of Ukraine in a more positive light.
Hours before, other documents had been shared on the imageboard website 4Chan, with only one of the images in common with the Telegram posts, suggesting a separate original source.
Bellingcat identified the likely source as a March 4 post of 10 documents on a Discord server dedicated to the Minecraft game, which contained all seven documents from the 4chan and Telegram posts.
Those documents appeared to be from a batch of more than 30 documents shared on March 1 and 2 by a user of the ‘WowMao’ Discord server.
From there, Toler was able to tentatively identify another Discord chat room, “Thug Shaker Central,” as the original source of the leaks, dating back to January 13.
Photos of the documents first circulated on pro-Russian Telegram channels (above) on April 5, where they appeared to have been crudely altered
Hours prior to the Telegram post, other documents had been shared on the imageboard website 4Chan, with only one of the images in common with the Telegram posts
Bellingcat identified the likely source of the Telegram and 4Chan messages as a March 4 post containing 10 documents on a Discord server dedicated to the Minecraft game
A TV screen at South Korea’s Seoul train station shows a news program reporting on leaked Pentagon documents on Wednesday
Although Thug Shaker Central had since been removed, screenshots and interviews with chat room participants led to the identification of the chat room’s administrator, known by the screen name The OG, as the leaker.
On Thursday, the New York Times identified Teixeira as The OG about 90 minutes before the FBI raided his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts and arrested him without incident, according to an article featuring Toler’s byline.
Loading documents unsealed on Friday claimed that Teixeira began posting classified documents to Thug Shaker Central as early as December 2022, meaning they could have circulated for months before authorities became aware of them.
It is believed to be the most serious security breach since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2010.
In the WikiLeaks case, the leaker – US Army Private First Class Chelsea Manning – was sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Barack Obama later commuted her sentence.
But unlike Manning and Edward Snowden in his massive 2013 leak of classified NSA documents, Teixeira does not appear to be motivated by whistleblower outrage over alleged injustices.
Instead, the young Airman First Class just seems to have impressed the other young men and teens in the Discord chat room he ran.
Teixeira first appeared before a federal judge in Boston on Friday for allegations that he had unlawfully removed and preserved classified material.
FBI agents arrest Jack Teixeira, an employee of the US Air Force National Guard, outside his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, on Thursday
A person who went to school with Teixeira (pictured) remembered sometimes carrying a textbook on military vehicles with tanks, planes and submarines
Airman Teixeira is conscripted into the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard at Otis Air National Guard Base
Teixeira spoke only twice during the brief proceedings, answering “yes” when asked if he understood his right to remain silent, according to Reuters.
Teixeira is accused of unlawfully copying and possessing secret defense files. Each crime carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
He is also charged with another felony that makes it a crime for a United States employee to knowingly remove classified documents to an unauthorized location.
In an affidavit, an FBI agent said Teixeira had had top-secret security clearance since 2021 and that he also maintained sensitive compartmentalized access to other top-secret programs.
As of May 2022, Teixeira has served as an E-3/flier first class in the United States Air Force National Guard and is stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, according to the FBI.