U.S. Guardsman Jack Teixeira has apparently been posting secret documents on the Internet for longer and to a greater extent than previously thought. It is written by The New York Times. According to Reuters, the US Department of Defense declined to comment on the newspaper’s findings.
According to the paper, Teixeira’s profile started posting secret documents in a group on the Discord network since the end of February last year. It was a different group than the one in which the documents that have been covered by the media in recent weeks and that have started to circulate on the Internet later appeared. The group, where the profile had been publishing documents since February of last year, had around 600 members. It was thus significantly larger than the one where other classified information appeared, which she drew the media’s attention to in April.
According to the newspaper, it is unclear whether authorities are aware of the release of classified information in another Discord group. These were documents about Ukrainian and Russian losses in the war, about the activities of Russian intelligence and about the aid provided to Ukraine. The profile said it drew on the files of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other secret services. He published the documents in the group for more than a year. “I have decided to stop updates,” he wrote on March 19 this year.
According to the newspaper, the question arises as to why the US authorities did not notice the leak of classified information before the documents were brought to the media’s attention in April. The group, which the New York newspaper writes about, was also easy to find on YouTube.
Twenty-one-year-old Teixeira was arrested last week by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and on Friday, April 14, he appeared in court for the first time, where he was charged with unauthorized possession and transmission of classified information. Intentional transmission of information about national defense is punishable by up to ten years in prison.
