The guardsman was identified as 21-year-old Jack Teixeira.
WASHINGTON — A Massachusetts Air National Guard member who has emerged as a main person of interest in the disclosure of highly classified military documents on the Ukraine war was taken into custody Thursday by federal agents, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced.
He will be charged with unauthorized removal of classified national defense information, Garland said, and will have an initial court appearance in federal court in Massachusetts. The emergence of Teixeira as the apparent primary suspect is bound to raise questions about how the highest-profile intelligence leak in years, one that continues to unfold with almost daily revelations of highly classified documents, could have been caused by such a young, low-ranking service member.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, referred all questions about the case to the Justice Department. But he said: “We have rules in place. Each of us signs a nondisclosure agreement. This is a criminal act, a willful violation of those.” In one of those forums, originally created to talk about a range of topics, members would debate the war in Ukraine. According to one member of the chat, an unidentified poster shared documents that the poster claimed were classified, first typing them out with the poster’s own thoughts, then, as of a few months ago, uploading images of folded papers.
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