Chris Lange, FISM News
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The person behind the leak of troves of highly-classified Pentagon documents was a young, male gun enthusiast who worked at a U.S. military base, The Washington Post reported, citing a member of Discord gaming platform where the documents first appeared.
The New York Times is reporting that the person responsible for the leak is Jack Teixeira, and was the leader of the online Discord group Thug Shaker Central where the secret documents were posted. He is a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.
Teixiera is reportedly known as the “OG” referred to in the Post article which broke the story.
The Post’s informant said that OG shared lengthy documents within the group that gave “near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents” on the Discord group. Thug Shaker Central was invite-only and its members were said to have shared interests in “guns, military gear, and God.” The group was comprised of about 25 members including mainly boys and men.
The Post reported that OG had told the group that he worked on a military base in a role that gave him access to confidential documents. The source would reportedly “toil for hours” to annotate the sensitive files and then share them within the group.
The Post’s source recalled how OG seemed to have an uncanny ability to forecast major events with stunning accuracy, due to his access to top-secret information.
“He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie,” the source told the news outlet.
The article did not provide the names of the source, but said it was a male member of the private Discord group under the age of 18. Journalists for the paper also corroborated the information with another member of the group and reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents that have not been made public, as well as hand written documents and audio files that are said to be from OG.
The Justice Department, which launched an investigation this week to determine the source of the leaks, had not commented on the Post story at the time of this reporting. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowed Tuesday to “turn over every rock until we find the source of this and the extent of it.”
Some of the documents reportedly began circulating on Discord more than a month ago. It wasn’t until they showed up on Twitter and other social media platforms Friday that the story broke. Both the leak and the delay in catching it have raised serious questions about how the U.S. handles intelligence.
Discord has said that it is working with law enforcement regarding the security breach.