Who is Jack Teixeira, the American soldier sentenced to 15 years in prison for disclosing Pentagon secrets

A federal judge USA sentenced to 15 years in prison Jack Teixeira the member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who became known in 2023 for leaking highly sensitive Pentagon documents.

The young man, currently aged 22 and without a criminal record, He pleaded guilty in March to six counts of intentionally withholding and transmitting national defense information.

The events happened while serving at an Air National Guard base, where he had access to intelligence documents on American allies.

Teixeira documents published on Discord, an online platform which is popular among video game fans.

Some of the files he shared contained confidential information about the war in Ukraine which broke out on February 24, 2022 with the military invasion of the territory by Russia.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry for all the damage I caused and caused.” Teixeira said in court before receiving his sentence, according to the international news agency: P.A. .

Then he added: “I understand all the responsibility and The consequences rest solely on my shoulders and I accept what that entails. “.

After the sentence was announced, Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy told a news media outlet that Teixeira ‘paid a very high price for breaking the law and for the damage he caused’ .

However, he emphasized that “He was insensitive to the fact that he was putting our national security at risk. » .

Levy emphasized that Teixeira violated the trust that came with his position as a soldier and on several occasions he made a “deliberate decision” to disclose secret information.

At the trial, the young man admitted to illegally collecting classified documents which he shared via Discord.

During the legal proceedings, his lawyers argued that Although he committed criminal acts, it was not intended to “harm the United States.” .

“His intention was to educate his friends about world events. to ensure that they are not misled by misinformation,” they said, according to the aforementioned agency.

And they added: “To Jack, The war in Ukraine was its generation’s World War II or Iraq and I needed someone to share this experience with.

Yet prosecutors concluded that Teixeira did not face any conditions preventing him from assessing the consequences of his actions .

During his stay at the military base, He was a specialist in cyber-transport systems.

This is related to the field of information technology they use military communications networks .

According to the authorities, Teixeira transcribed the confidential files then began sharing photographs of these documents .

Prosecutors said He tried to cover his tracks before being arrested in 2023 and that a tablet, a computer and a video game console were found in a destroyed state, inside a trash can that was in his house.

In mid-April 2023, a group of FBI agents carried out an operation in a house located in Dighton, a town in the state of Massachusetts. which is home to nearly 8,000 people.

There, police officers equipped with bulletproof vests and assault rifles They arrested the suspect at the time, accused of leaking the documents. from the Pentagon.

Jack Teixeira was then 21 years old and He served as an aviator in the Armed Forces of the United States.

Although the young man in uniform does not have extensive experience in the army, had been tasked with managing and troubleshooting the computer systems of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base.

Military sources consulted by Washington Post At that time, they detailed that these functions allowed him to have access to highly classified material through a Department of Defense network known as the Joint Global Intelligence Communications System.

And even if some close friends assured on condition of anonymity that Teixeira considered himself a patriot found himself at the center of a case which, a year later, would lead to a court decision.

Teixeira comes from a family unit which maintained close ties with the army of the North American country.

His father-in-law, Thomas Dufault, was a sergeant major for 34 years before his retirement.

Furthermore, His mother, Dawn Dufault, worked for years for nonprofit organizations dedicated to supporting veterans. of war.

According to information collected by the aforementioned media from close sources, He identified himself as a patriot, a libertarian (in political terms), and a practicing Catholic. .

I also had a particular interest in weapons and used to participate in conversations on these topics on Discord an instant messaging service that stands out for its popularity among video game fans and in which he used the names “jackthedripper” and “excalibureffect”.

A friend of Teixeira claimed to have met him on said social network in 2020, while other users of the platform shared job a video in which we see him shouting racist and anti-Semitic insults, before firing a gun .

The man in uniform began to share the documents after the outbreak of the invasion of Russia on Ukrainian territory.

Through Discord, he spoke to a small group of 20 to 30 people called Thug Shaker Central, in which, according to a close source, He sought to “educate people he thought were his friends and whom he could trust…he wanted to show a better view of the problem in the only way he knew how.” .

Below this line, He said the participants had agreed not to share the files and that half of them were children or teenagers who were fans of video games. while the other part consisted of fans of weapons and related topics.

“I loved America, but I just he did not have confidence in his future (…) in my opinion, he is a good person who trusted the wrong people », Added a close friend of Teixeira to jobin a report published in April 2023.

Although Thug Shaker Central is where he had started sharing the files in 2022, some of his members told the New York Times in 2023 that The group was born during the pandemic.

The original goal was for them to get together to play shooting video games ( shooter ), talk about his gun bigotry and share memes with racist allusions.

In this community, Teixeira was nicknamed “OG”, made several offensive images and acted as a leader of sorts who showed interest in ensuring that the rest of the participants understood the impact and repercussions of the war.

“Everyone respected him” said a member of the Times“he was the man, the myth, the legend”.

He explained that unlike leakers such as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning — who sought to release documents with the intention of exposing —, Tiexeira did this for a purpose more closely related to secret and proprietary information of Thug Shaker Central participants .

What he didn’t consider was that one of them might break the reservation commitment. .

On March 2, 2023, one of the users who participated in Thug Shaker Central shared part of the files in another Discord group, public dedicated to talking about the war in Ukraine.

From this moment on, highly classified data began circulating on the Internet which led the Pentagon to become aware of the situation and – thanks to clues collected on the networks and photographs in the documents – to focus its investigation on Teixeira.