The liberal media could go off on their anticipated narrative about the Pentagon leaker, but The New York Times has already somewhat undercut the scheme, though the damning paragraph was buried deep in their piece about the suspect. Spencer wrote about the arrest and subsequent press conferences from Attorney General Merrick Garland and Air Force Brigadier Gen. Pat Ryder about the breach. The alleged leaker is a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, Jack Douglas Teixeira, a Massachusetts resident.
NEW: The FBI has arrested the suspected intel leaker.
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) April 13, 2023
"The FBI made an arrest and is continuing to conduct authorized law enforcement activity at a residence in North Dighton, Massachusetts. As this is an ongoing matter, we cannot provide further comment at this time.”
WATCH: AG Garland's full statement on the arrest of the classified intelligence leaker. pic.twitter.com/kgJ2sobPVQ
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 13, 2023
"This was a deliberate criminal act."
— Sky News (@SkyNews) April 13, 2023
Air Force Brigadier, Gen. Pat Ryder, insists strict "rules are in place" to ensure classified material is not leaked, and following the military leak by a national guardsman, distribution lists have been "reviewed".https://t.co/rozhrOpOQu pic.twitter.com/gKEcuY1KJG
The initial Times piece, which has been scrubbed, mentioned Mr. Teixeira’s involvement in an online gaming chat group called Thug Shaker Central, which allegedly posted content about their affinity for firearms, other video games, and racist memes. There’s the fuse: white guy, love of guns, and racist memes. The right-wing extremism seeds were planted and spread by other outlets that cited the initial reporting.
Here's CBS News piggybacking off the Times’ reporting on the purportedly racist chat group [emphasis mine]:
"The FBI is continuing to conduct authorized law enforcement activity at the residence," a spokesperson for the FBI said. "Since late last week the FBI has aggressively pursued investigative leads, and today's arrest exemplifies our continued commitment to identifying, pursuing, and holding accountable those who betray our country's trust and put our national security at risk."
Sources say Teixeira will remain in FBI custody Thursday night and will make an appearance in federal court in Boston Friday.
The Times reported that Teixeira "oversaw a private online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games."
In a statement to WBZ-TV, the Massachusetts Air National Guard said, "We would refer you to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for details."
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BBC mentioned the quote about Mr. Teixeira possibly being anti-war [emphasis mine]:
He previously wrote up versions of the sensitive information and shared it to the chatroom.
But he reportedly began sharing photos of the files after becoming frustrated when other members of the chatroom did not pay attention.
On one occasion, the Post reported, he sent an irate message to the group complaining that they were more interested in YouTube videos.
"He got upset, and he said on multiple occasions, if you guys aren't going to interact with them [the files], I'm going to stop sending them," the unidentified group member told the newspaper.
Members of the online group had theories on why Mr Teixeira shared these documents.
"This guy was a Christian, anti-war, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what's going on," one teenager told The New York Times.
There’s another lengthy piece based on interviews from the group that recycles what’s been mentioned above:
In interviews, members of Thug Shaker Central said their group had started out as a place where young men and teenage boys could gather amid the isolation of the pandemic to bond over their love of guns, share memes — sometimes racist ones — and play war-themed video games.
But Airman Teixeira, who one member of the group called O.G. and was also its unofficial leader, wanted to teach the young acolytes who gravitated to him about actual war, members said.
And so, beginning in at least October, Airman Teixeira, who was attached to the Guard’s intelligence unit, began sharing descriptions of classified information, group members and law enforcement officials said, eventually uploading hundreds of pages of documents, including detailed battlefield maps from Ukraine and confidential assessments of Russia’s war machine.
[…]
“This guy was a Christian, antiwar, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on,” said Vahki, a 17-year-old recent high school graduate who identified himself by the screen name he used. “We have some people in our group who are in Ukraine. We like fighting games; we like war games.”
One of the initial stories about Mr. Teixeira and his online pals has been scrubbed. The latest article looks very different from what was originally reported via the WayBack machine. It's a definite reshuffle, but was this an aborted salvo aimed at starting a bushfire when some things didn't line up regarding the phantom right-wing extremist threat within the military? It's a line that the media harped about post-Janaury 6. Who knows. But you can see how the antiwar element might cause the extremist white guy narrative to hit the curb, which is probably why the excerpts in the blockquote above were relegated to the international section of the site.
The documents Teixeira uploaded were summaries of our intelligence operations into the Russian war machine, which evidently were successful, siphoning that information and relaying it to Ukrainian forces. Russia has no secure communications system in Ukraine, and this breach could possibly explain how snipers have been able to pick off numerous Russian generals. Yet, it also went deep into spy operations against our allies, specifically South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Israel.
Even more disturbing is that it took Pentagon officials weeks to detect the leak. At least 1.25 million government workers have access to sensitive materials. In the digital age, leaks are inevitable, but you’d think combing through chat groups and social media would be a routine operation at the Pentagon. Apparently, it’s not.
Also, we're going to have to discuss, at some point, how The New York Times caught up with federal authorities in this case (via CNN) [emphasis mine]:
The arrest: The suspect was under surveillance for at least a couple of days prior to his arrest, according to a US government source familiar with the case. He was expected to go to work Thursday where the FBI intended to take him into custody under more controlled circumstances, according to the source.
When the suspect did not go to work, agents who were already positioned outside his mother’s house, waited for the suspect to come out, the source said. This search and arrest effort accelerated when reporters for The New York Times knocked on the house door and spoke to people inside.
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