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Teixeira was accused of utilizing his prime secret safety clearance to entry labeled authorities pc networks on an Air Power base in Cape Cod, the place he labored as a pc community technician. A Washington Post investigation revealed that while Teixeira was serving in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, he shared hundreds of classified documents in addition to his personal summaries of labeled stories on Discord, a web based chat platform in style with video avid gamers.
Teixeira’s leaks revealed details about the Russia-Ukraine war, China’s development of hypersonic spy drones, North Korea’s nuclear weapons development, conflicts within the Center East and the Ukrainian sabotage of the Nord Stream pure gasoline pipeline.
Teixeira was arrested final April and charged with six counts of unlawful retention and transmission of nationwide protection info. He confronted as much as 25 years in jail.
Teixeira’s case revealed profound weaknesses in how the army protects highly-classified info. A number of the intelligence Teixeira shared was so delicate that U.S. and different authorities officers stated it risked human lives if it had been extensively uncovered. Teixeira was capable of get hold of a safety clearance regardless of a history of making violent threats. He had been suspended from his highschool for threatening to deliver weapons to highschool. A police investigation confirmed that he used racist language and advised fellow college students that he needed to kill Black folks.
The Publish investigation discovered that the web group the place Teixeira routinely shared labeled info was a hotbed of racist and antisemitic rhetoric, the place the members, most of them teenage boys united by a typical curiosity in army gear and warfare, peddled gory movies and traded conspiracy theories about authorities brokers.
Teixeira advised buddies he had seen proof, in authorities intelligence, that federal authorities knew prematurely about mass shootings and allow them to occur to create a pretext for harder gun management legal guidelines. A few of them believed his baseless claims, they stated, as a result of Teixeira clearly had entry to a variety of presidency secrets and techniques. At work, prosecutors alleged, Teixeira hunted for info to show his misguided conspiracy theories, looking intelligence databases for key phrases about mass shootings in Las Vegas, Buffalo, and Uvalde, Tex.
Teixeira’s shared labeled info together with his buddies to impress them, they stated, and to reveal that he had entry to info and information about essential world occasions that others didn’t. Highschool buddies described Teixeira as fascinated with trivia about army {hardware} and weaponry, and stated his pursuits usually turned pedantic.
Most of the members of the Discord regarded as much as Teixeira as their chief. His army credentials and job with an intelligence unit gave him an aura of credibility and authority, buddies stated. The group got here collectively throughout the isolation of the covid-19 pandemic. Unable to spend time in particular person with buddies the place they lived, they spent a lot of their days collectively on-line.
Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report. This can be a growing story and might be up to date.
