Son of a long line of military and described as a patriot by his friends, Jack Teixeira is the unlikely protagonist of the biggest scandal in espionage that shakes USA in decades.
If found guilty of leaking dozens of secret documents, this low-ranking national guard, who gained confidential access to sensitive information from a young age, could face a long sentence.
The portrait made in the US media by his acquaintances is more that of a naive young man who wanted to impress his friends than that of a warning-sounder determined to reveal America’s secrets.
The 21-year-old, originally from the small southern Massachusetts town of Dighton, enlisted in the Air Force National Guard in September 2019.
According to court documents citing government records, Teixeira achieved the rank of airman first class – the third lowest for air force enlisted personnel – in May 2022.
He is a communication and technology expert stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, about 110 kilometers south of Boston.
As of February this year, Texeira was a cyber defense operations officer, an FBI agent said in an affidavit released Friday.
According to Special Agent Patrick Lueckenhoff, “As required for his position, Teixeira had a top-secret security clearance that was granted in 2021.”
In addition to this authorization, Teixeira also kept “atsensitive compartmentalized access (SCI) to other highly classified programs”.
SCI is information with high restrictions. To access it, Teixeira must have accepted “protect correctly” the information and not reveal it to people without privileged access.
He must also have promised not to take her out of “unauthorized storage facilities” or save it in “unauthorized places”, Point to the affidavit.
The indictment claims that Teixeira began posting classified information in a group chat on the online platform Discord around December of last year.
The goal of the group was to “discuss geopolitical issues and current and historical wars.”
Teixeira is accused of first posting paragraphs of text from the classified documents before starting to post photos of them.
Lonely
The government says computer records show that Teixeira accessed a document on troop movement in the Russia-Ukraine war a day before the content was posted online.
A friend told The Washington Post that Teixeira did not want to undermine US national security, but rather to educate the younger members of the online group.
“I loved America, but I just didn’t have confidence in its future”declared the person quoted in the newspaper.
Other members of the group added that Teixeira shared racist and anti-Semitic jokes.
Teixeira comes from a family with decades of military service. His stepfather spent 34 years in the same unit as his son, while Teixeira’s mother worked for NGOs that support military veterans, according to the same outlet.
Friends told The Washington Post that Teixeira is patriotic, a devout Catholic and a libertarian, with an interest in guns.
Former classmates told CNN that he sometimes dressed in camouflage to school.
“He was rather a loner, and his fascination with war and guns turned a lot of people away from him”said one of them.
Source: AFP
Source: Gestion
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