A 22-year-old guard has pleaded guilty to leaking military secrets, including regarding Russia's war in Ukraine, in one of the most serious violations of US national security in years.
Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, signed a plea agreement Monday calling for prosecutors to recommend a prison sentence of 11 to 16 years and eight months.
He was charged with six counts of intentionally retaining and transmitting national defense information under the Espionage Act. The agreement bars Teixeira from a prison sentence of up to 60 years.
He smiled at his father before leaving the courtroom with his hands and feet shackled.
Teixeira, from North Dayton, Massachusetts, was arrested last April and charged with leaking a trove of classified military documents to a group of gamers on the messaging app Discord.
The hack raised concerns about the US's ability to protect its closely guarded secrets and forced the Biden administration to scramble to try to contain the diplomatic and military fallout.
The leaked documents included top-secret information about allies and adversaries, with details ranging from troop movements in Ukraine to the Israeli spy agency Mossad.
Before his arrest, Teixeira was an Airman 1st Class at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, V.I MassachusettsHe worked as a cyber transport systems specialist – essentially an IT specialist responsible for military communications networks.
Despite being a low-level pilot, Teixeira held a top-secret security clearance, and as of January 2022 began accessing hundreds of classified documents relating to topics including RussiaInvade Ukraineaccording to plaintiffs.
Jack Teixeira. Photo: Reuters
He first printed out the confidential documents he had access to and then began sharing images of files marked confidential and top secret.
He did so despite his superiors warning him twice in September and October 2022 about his handling of classified information, according to internal Air National Guard records filed in court.
Teixeira at the time was leading a private server — a type of chat room — on Discord called Thug Shaker Central, and prosecutors said he began sharing confidential information on three servers while bragging that he had access to “things for Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran And China“.
He has been behind bars since his arrest in April. A judge denied his request to release Teixeira from prison last year after prosecutors revealed he had a history of violent rhetoric and warned that U.S. adversaries who might be interested in mining Teixeira for information could help him escape.
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Prosecutors did not say much about the motive, but members of the Discord group described Teixeira as someone seeking to show off, rather than out of a desire to inform the public about U.S. military operations or influence U.S. policy.
The Air Force disciplined 15 individuals, with the inspector general finding last year that several officials intentionally failed to take required action on Teixeira's suspicious behavior.
