News/Commentary

‘Only God can decide what happens from now on’: Arrest of leaker, 22 after he made final call to gamers

April 14, 2023 | | Print Article

National Guard Airman Jack Teixeira made a final panicked call to his group of gamer buddies before he was arrested by the military for leaking classified documents, telling them that he never meant for it to turn out this way and only God could help him now.

(Video Credit: WCVB Channel 5 Boston)

According to the Daily Mail, Teixeira hurriedly drove his red pickup truck home to call his friends because he knew the FBI was closing in on him.

“Guys, it’s been good. I love you all,” he told the group of teenagers and young men with whom he allegedly shared classified military documents.

“I never wanted it to get like this. I prayed to God that this would never happen. And I prayed and prayed and prayed. Only God can decide what happens from now on,” he told them, according to one of the group members who spoke with The New York Times.

It was only a matter of time before the National Guardsman was arrested. The pictures he took of the classified documents purportedly had date and time stamps as well as a location identifier that led authorities right to his base. Pictures of a countertop where the documents were spread out also reportedly gave him away.

(Video Credit: FOX 11 Los Angeles)

Teixeira was enlisted in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard at Otis Air National Guard Base. He had been working overnight shifts at the base and is said to have leaked pictures of between 50 and 100 classified US documents online, according to the Daily Mail.

He was taken into custody by the military at his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, on Thursday. He will be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 and if convicted could potentially spend the rest of his life behind bars. At the ripe old age of 21, his life is most likely over.

Reported details by the military portray the young guardsman as a God-fearing Christian with a strong sense of duty to serve in the country’s armed forces just as his stepfather did. He was serving in the same wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard that his stepfather Master Sgt. Thomas P. Dufault served before retiring four years ago.

He joined the service in September 2019 and was then promoted to airman first class in July. Despite serving in a junior position, he reportedly had the highest level of access to top-secret US government information.

According to CNN, who spoke with a number of Teixeira’s peers, he had a fascination with the military long before he joined the National Guard.

One individual that Teixeira attended middle and high school with named John Powell, got his 15 minutes of fame by recalling that the guardsman would tote “around a textbook on military vehicles — tanks, planes, and submarines,” according to CNN.

The leftist media outlet salivated over the allegation that Teixeira would sometimes wear camouflage to school and carried a “dictionary-sized book on guns.”

“A lot of people were wary of him,” Brooke Cleathero, who also attended middle school and high school with Teixeira, claimed. “He was more of a loner, and having a fascination with war and guns made him off-putting to a lot of people.”

The group that Teixeira led on Discord was called “Thug Shaker Central.” It was comprised of teenagers and young men. He went by “OG” in the forum.

https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1646629630332239874

“Everyone respected OG,” one member of the group named Vahki, who is 17, told the New York Times in an interview. “He was the man, the myth. And he was the legend. Everyone respected this guy.”

“This guy was a Christian,” he noted. “We have some people in our group who are in Ukraine. We like fighting games, we like war games.”

Two members of the group described Teixeira to The Washington Post on Wednesday night as some kind of hero, “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.”

Teixeira was a Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman. According to the Air Force, specialists like the young guardsman ensure that the service’s “vast, global communications network” works properly.

Intelligence leaked by Teixeira included information that alluded to Ukraine running out of artillery. He also leaked information that could put intelligence sources around the world at risk. Some of the information had to do with Israel, China, Russia, Ukraine, and South Korea.

(Video Credit: Forbes Breaking News)

He will make his first court appearance in Boston on Friday.

Following the leak, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is warning that rules for online access to classified documents could be tightened. Something that should have been done after the Edward Snowden leak.

Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder called the leak of classified information a “deliberate, criminal act.”

Shortly after Teixeira’s arrest, Mike Turner, the Republican congressman who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, vowed to “examine why this happened, why it went unnoticed for weeks, and how to prevent future leaks.”

“It is treason,” former Bush 43 chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen said on Thursday, according to Fox News. “The idea that a 21-year-old kid can expose sources and methods of how we spy, how we have penetrated the Chinese People’s Liberation Army because apparently, we’ve exposed the fact we know they have a new hypersonic missile that can reach the United States, that they exposed our penetration of the Russian Defense Ministry, that could affect the war in Ukraine. I mean, the incompetence is stunning.”

“And it wasn’t, unlike Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, it wasn’t ideological,” he added. “It was some kid trying to show off to his friends in a gaming chat room and has literally affected global national security by doing so. How this happens is just beyond me.”

Fox Business host and former congressman Sean Duffy declared that officials must be held accountable.

“What general is going to lose their job?” Duffy asked. “Which general is at fault for national security to make sure you can’t breach into the Pentagon and get this highly classified information?… The problem with this administration is no one is held accountable. Someone has to lose their job. I mean, again, this guy should go to prison, but we have real problems in the Pentagon. And I don’t think the administration wants to look inside to go, who is the problem? Who else do we have to bring in to make sure our secrets are safe?”

Get the latest BPR news delivered free to your inbox daily. SIGN UP HERE

Latest posts by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles