US authorities on Thursday arrested a suspect within the case of leaked categorized paperwork.

New York:

FBI brokers on Thursday arrested a 21-year-old nationwide guardsman suspected of being behind a significant leak of delicate US authorities secrets and techniques — together with concerning the Ukraine conflict.

Broadcast reside on TV networks, the dramatic arrest was the end result of a week-long investigation — fuelled by frenzied media protection — into one of the vital damaging leaks of categorized data because the 2013 dump of National Security Agency paperwork by Edward Snowden.

Addressing a information briefing, US Attorney General Merrick Garland named the suspect as Jack Teixeira, an worker of the US Air Force National Guard and the reported chief of the net chat group the place the doc trove first emerged.

Arrested “in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information,” Teixeira was taken into custody with out incident by FBI brokers, Garland mentioned.

News footage of the operation, within the North Dighton space of Massachusetts, confirmed the suspect — wearing crimson shorts and a t-shirt together with his palms behind his head — backing slowing towards rifle-armed, camouflage-clad regulation enforcement personnel who took him into custody.

Police within the small city within the northeastern state sought to reassure the group concerning the heavy regulation enforcement presence, saying in a press release that there was “no threat to public safety.”

Two posts on the Facebook web page of the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing talked about Teixeira, together with one from July 2022 that mentioned he had been promoted to airman top quality — the third-lowest enlisted rank for air power personnel.

Teixeira was anticipated to make an preliminary look as early as Friday on the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

The Pentagon has mentioned the leak presents a “very serious” threat to US nationwide safety, and spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder on Thursday condemned it as a “deliberate criminal act.”

In response, the Defense Department is “examining and updating distribution lists, assessing how and where intelligence products are shared, and a variety of other steps,” Ryder informed journalists.

Teixeira’s arrest got here a day after The Washington Post reported that a whole bunch of pages of paperwork had been posted on the social media platform Discord by a person who labored on a US army base.

– Top secret materials –

According to The New York Times, a “trail of digital evidence” pointed to Teixeira because the chief of the non-public group on Discord, known as Thug Shaker Central, the place the paperwork surfaced.

The embarrassing safety breach — which included prime secret paperwork — has revealed US unease over the viability of a coming counteroffensive by Kyiv’s forces in opposition to Russian troops in addition to issues about Ukrainian air defenses, and pointed to US spying on allies together with Israel and South Korea.

President Joe Biden addressed the leak throughout a go to to Ireland, saying he was “concerned” however that the intelligence group and Justice Department have been “getting close” to figuring out the supply of the leak.

The alleged leaker reportedly glided by the nickname “OG” and usually posted paperwork within the chat group in query for months.

The group of round 24 folks, together with some from Russia and Ukraine, bonded over their “mutual love of guns, military gear and God,” and fashioned an “invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord,” reported the Post — which just like the Times cited unidentified members of Thug Shaker Central.

OG informed the group members that he spent “some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices,” the Post report mentioned.

He first wrote down the contents of categorized paperwork to share with the group, however later started taking photographs, telling different members to not share them, the newspaper reported.

OG had a “dark view of the government,” and “spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark,” the Post mentioned, citing one of many group’s members.

A Discord spokesperson informed AFP that consumer security is a precedence, and that content material violating its insurance policies may end up in folks being banned, servers being shut down, and police alerted.

“In regards to the apparent breach of classified material, we are cooperating with law enforcement,” the spokesperson mentioned.

“As this remains an active investigation, we cannot provide further comment at this time.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)