Washington, D.C. – The allegedly leaking Pentagon classified documents do not appear to be connected to a foreign adversary of the United States, nor was he a whistleblower trying to expose alleged government misconduct.
Rather, 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, who served in the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard, has been accused of sharing the information with members of a social media server to “discuss geopolitical matters and current and historic wars,” the FBI said. in a court document on Friday.
As Teixeira was charged in a US federal court, his arrest continued to raise widespread questions about why such a young official had access to so many sensitive files intended for top military officials.
“How on earth does a 21-year-old gamer junior aviator have so much access to classified information?” US lawmaker Adriano Espaillat wrote in a tweet.
How on earth does a 21 year old gamer junior pilot have so much access to classified information?
In the meantime…
MAGA extremists celebrate leak of official government secrets.
— Adriano Espaillat (@RepEspaillat) April 14, 2023
US authorities said they arrested Teixeira, who worked as an IT officer with the National Guard, on Thursday after linking a social media account that posted the classified documents to his Massachusetts address.
The FBI’s affidavit said the social media user posted paragraphs of text around December 2022 that showed what “appeared to be classified information.” The user then began publishing photos of the alleged documents around January.
The poster, believed to be Teixeira, told a witness that he had “become concerned that he would be discovered doing the transcriptions of text in the workplace, so he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them,” reads the FBI document.
The leaked files contained details of Western military support for Ukraine, information on Russia’s war effort, and intelligence gathered from allied states.
Experts have said the “damaging” leaks risk exposing US intelligence sources and causing a diplomatic rift with countries named in the documents.
Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner said in a statement this week that the panel would “investigate why this happened, why it went undetected for weeks, and how to prevent future leaks.”
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden — whose administration has been trying to stem the fallout from the leaked documents — praised what he called the “quick action” of US law enforcement agencies to investigate what had happened.
“While we are still determining the validity of those documents, I have directed our military and intelligence community to take steps to further secure and limit the dissemination of sensitive information,” Biden said in a statement Friday.
“And our national security team works closely with our partners and allies.”
Questions continue
Still, the arrest of Teixeira does not seem to be the end of the discussion. Many lawmakers are demanding answers about how the leaks happened.
French Hill, a Republican on the House intelligence panel, said the leaks will be “top of mind” for the committee next week.
He told Bloomberg that he expects a detailed briefing to aid in the “oversight investigation into why this 21-year-old Air National Guardsman had access to this level of data and why he felt compelled to break the law and become a spy.”
Republican congressman Darrell Issa also questioned why Teixeira was able to obtain classified documents.
“One of the challenges is that there’s a concept in classified information called ‘need to know,’ and they haven’t shown why this person had access to something they didn’t need to know,” Issa told Fox News on Friday.
According to the FBI statement, Teixeira had “Top Secret” security clearance and “maintained sensitive compartmentalized (SCI) access,” which were necessary for his role as a companion of cyber defense operations. SCI refers to classified information obtained from intelligence sources.
On Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said the department “entrusted its 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 into battle. That’s just one example across the board,” he told reporters.
“So you get training and you get an understanding of the rules and requirements that come with those responsibilities.”
He added that when it comes to classified documents, respecting such responsibilities is also “about the law”.
But Democratic congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer who also sits on the House intelligence committee, said she looks forward to asking “aggressive questions” about how the leaks happened.
“The idea that he could access such a wide range of information and leave a building with it is absolutely outrageous to me,” Spanberger told MSNBC.