A 22 year-old former member of the US Air National Guard has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for stealing classified American military secrets and sharing them on a Discord server ostensibly focused on Minecraft (thanks, The Register). Jack Teixeira had been employed by the service since September 2019 and worked for the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts until his arrest last year.
Teixeira's first few years passed without notable incident before, in early 2022, he began to access top secret documents and photographs. Some of these he would later post on the private Discord server in February 2022, from where they found their way onto public social media channels.
The secret documents included details of America's involvement in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, information about negotiations between South Korea and the USA over ammunition, and China's development of a supersonic spy drone.
A US Air Force report made public last year concluded Teixeira was the only airman behind the leak, though determined that his chain of command bears some responsibility for letting the classified data dump happen on its watch. It said Teixeira "was observed viewing intelligence content on TS-SCI [Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information] websites" in August 2022, an incident that his supervisor did not document as they should have, and that shortly afterwards Teixeira was caught viewing secret documents while making notes on a Post-It.
Teixeira would later admit he had begun posting classified information as a way of boasting to his friends. He was a keen gamer and the Discord server concerned had around 25 members, all of whom seemed to share similar interests in cheery topics like assassination, conspiracy theories and mass murder, as well as poor old Minecraft. Teixeira would initially write down details from documents he was viewing at work, take the notes home, and transcribe them: Later, as he grew bolder, he began printing out secret files on a rarely used printer on the base.
Teixeira initially pleaded not guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information, before changing his plea in March this year to avoid additional charges under the Espionage Act (which could have risked the death penalty).
"The documents and information Teixeira posted to social media are highly classified and contain vital national defense information," said prosecutors in a sentencing memorandum to the court. "By posting intelligence products on the social media platform Discord to feed his own ego and impress his anonymous friends, Teixeira caused exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States. The scope of his betrayal is breathtaking. The amount of damage he caused is immeasurable."
Among the eyebrow-raising details are Teixeira clearly admitting on the server that he was aware of the illegality of his actions. In March 2022 one of the server members asked Teixeira to post information about military casualties in Ukraine: "If I want to go to jail for the rest of my life, yeah", replied Teixeira. He also dismissed his military oath, calling it "not an oath, an NDA… The oath is just the defense of America against all threats and the following of orders."
The documents subsequently spread from the private Discord server to other online haunts, and in one case had been doctored before being re-posted to overstate Ukrainian casualties and downplay those of Russian forces. At this point Teixeira realised he was in trouble, told members of the server to delete any material they had saved ("[i]f anyone comes looking, don’t tell them shit"), shut down the server, deleted his account, and went on to physically destroy his PC and iPad before, brilliantly, leaving the smashed-up remnants of the latter in a dumpster behind his house where they were found by the authorities. Teixeira was arrested in April 2023 after Discord gave up his address.
Teixeira was sentenced by a federal court in Boston to 15 years in prison, plus a further three on probation. "This sentencing is a stark warning to all those entrusted with protecting national defense information: betray that trust, and you will be held accountable," said FBI director Christopher Wray. "Jack Teixeira's criminal conduct placed our nation, our troops, and our allies at great risk."
