The Pentagon announced on Thursday that they have a suspect under arrest in connection with the highly controversial leak that rocked the spy world last week. They may have an arrest but the investigation is only getting started as many important questions remain unanswered.
Pentagon leak suspect in custody
Attorney General Merrick Garland got to make the announcement to the press that the Pentagon leaker is in custody. He came out on Thursday to declare that “a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was arrested by the FBI,” only moments before.
They had been hot on his trail for days after the world learned that several embarrassing classified documents ended up online and public. Joe Biden is downplaying the impact due to “dated” information but it was still current when first leaked.
CNN reports that the “arrest of Jack Teixeira, 21, comes following a fast-moving search by the U.S. government for the identity of the leaker who posted classified documents to a social media platform popular with video gamers.”
BREAKING: Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira who has been identified as the leaker of Pentagon documents, has just been arrested at his home. It is said to be the biggest national security breach in at least 10 years. pic.twitter.com/RHE2SM2mii
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) April 13, 2023
The Pentagon is scrambling to control major damage. Teixeira was arrested in his home state of Massachusetts “without incident.” They expect to haul him in front of a federal judge there any time now.
“This investigation is ongoing. We will share more information at the appropriate time,” Garland flatly declared then refused to answer a single question. Even before the suspect in the Pentagon papers leak was arrested, someone leaked to the press that he was about to be.
Reporters had practically all the details except his name. “Teixeira was first identified by The New York Times ahead of his arrest Thursday as the leader of the group where a trove of classified documents had been posted.”
Embarrassing revelations
There were dozens of Top Secret classified Pentagon documents floating around the internet in half a dozen chat rooms, most devoted to the world of combat simulation gaming. They carelessly expose Uncle Sam’s secrets like “detailed intelligence assessments of allies and adversaries alike, including on the state of the war in Ukraine and the challenges Kyiv and Moscow face as the war appears stuck in a stalemate.”
Worse, they prove we have been spying on our own friends behind their backs. That has half the world ticked off at Joe Biden.
It didn’t take long for the FBI, once they knew a leak had happened and where it appeared, to narrow down the list of suspects. They’ve been knocking on a lot of doors and conducting relentless interviews for a week.
— Kilgore Trout (@Kilgore73862013) April 13, 2023
The FBI has two leakers of their own who filled the press in on those details. The Pentagon shared the secret files with “a large number of people” but agents narrowed that down “thanks to the forensic trail left by the person who posted the documents.”
The Pentagon is happy to have someone they can blame and demonize in public but the damage was a whole lot worse than they want to admit. Along with the FBI, the Army Criminal Investigation Division is also “assisting the DoD in their investigation.” Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the suspect “worked on a military base and posted sensitive national security secrets in an online group of acquaintances.”
Teixeira was “described in the Post story as a lonely young man and gun enthusiast who was part of a chatroom of about two dozen people on Discord – a social media platform popular with video gamers – that shared a love of guns and military gear.“
