New Delhi: Americans people got their first glimpse at the alleged source of the leaked Pentagon documents that have dominated the news cycle this week as 21-year-old Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira was taken into custody Thursday by heavily-armed federal agents at his home in Dighton, Massachusetts.
Teixeira is likely to be charged with violating the Espionage Act as Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier indicated that the service member was arrested over the alleged “unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.”
An initial court appearance for Teixeira is scheduled for Friday at the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
With the arrest, the media focus has quickly shifted from the fallout surrounding the leaked materials – which indicated that US officials privately acknowledge the Kyiv regime has little hope of victory, and that NATO special forces are fighting on the frontlines against Russian troops – to the identity of the alleged leaker.
Teixeira, a nearly four-year member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was reportedly assigned to manage and troubleshoot computers and communications systems for the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air Base and comes from a military family.
A spokesman for the Pentagon reportedly defended the DoD’s major intelligence breach by saying “we entrust our members with a lot of responsibility at a very early age.”
But regardless of his relative youth, it remains unclear why an enlisted airman, who hadn’t yet even reached officer status, would have access to high-level documents containing intelligence apparently compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
According to widely-circulated accounts by the Washington Post and New York Times, who effectively honed in on the alleged leaker’s identity on those agencies’ behalf, Teixeira began leaking photos of highly-sensitive documents to a group of 20 to 30 of his mostly-younger friends online after they grew bored of reading mere transcriptions.
The Times quickly insisted that “Airman Teixeira was no whistle-blower,” seizing on an alleged video that apparently shows the young airman yelling racial and antisemitic slurs.
But there are apparently signs that Teixeira had serious problems with the government he served.
According to the Washington Post, he told members of his group online that the US government “knew in advance that a white supremacist intended to go on a shooting rampage” at a supermarket frequented by Black shoppers in Buffalo in May 2022, but “let the killings proceed so they could argue for increased funding.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson pushed back on Teixeira’s behalf in a Thursday night monologue.
“So this 21-year-old Air National Guardsman from Massachusetts is ‘not a whistleblower,’“ mocked the popular conservative commentator.
“He revealed the crimes, therefore he’s the criminal,” Carlson explained, sardonically, adding, “That’s how Washington works: telling the truth is the only real sin.”
