NYT Identifies Baby-Faced National Guardsman Behind Shocking US Intelligence Leak

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A 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard has been identified as the leaker of highly classified documents that revealed damaging information on the war in Ukraine and U.S. allies, according to a New York Times report.

Jack Teixeira is the “leader of a chat group on this Discord gaming platform who was sharing highly classified documents with other members of the group,” NBC said of the NYT report. “Those documents leaked to other groups and were published in the news media and have been seen by the world.”

The Discord group was called “Thug Shaker Central,” according to NYT, where “about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.”

The leak is reminiscent of Edward Snowden, a former computer intelligence consultant who worked for the U.S. National Security Agency. Snowden leaked classified information in 2013. Snowden was charged with espionage and flew to Russia, where he was granted asylum and is now a citizen.

“Supposedly the intelligence community learned a lesson that it had to be careful about who had access to all manner of highly classified documents,” according to NBC’s justice correspondent. “We have a situation where—no doubt it had to do with the fact he was in an intelligence wing his job is devoted to intelligence so by nature, he has a high-level security clearance and access to high-level intelligence. I think we are going to be asking the question—hopefully we will get answers—why an international guardsman needed to know details information about Ukraine. That boggles the mind.”

Teixeira’s arrest is “imminent,” according to NBC.

Watch the MSNBC clip above.