Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira pleaded guilty on March 4 to leaking a trove of U.S. military planning documents, including documents about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
Mr. Teixeira, 22, initially pleaded not guilty after being arrested and charged with the leak last year.
Before a federal court in Boston, his lawyers motioned for a change in plea, announcing that he would plead guilty to six counts regarding the willful retention and transmission of national defense information.
In exchange for his guilty plea, the Department of Justice has agreed to not charge Mr. Teixeira with Espionage Act violations.
His defense team and federal prosecutors also agreed that he should face prison time of 11 years to 16 years and eight months.
The deal calls for Mr. Teixeira to pay an additional $50,000 fine and undergo 36 months of supervised release following his prison term.
In court on March 4, he admitted to illegally collecting military secrets and sharing them with other users on Discord, a social messaging platform popular in the online gaming community.
The sensitive military documents were originally posted on a Discord server called “Thug Shaker Central,” and the earliest posts on the server may go as far back as October 2022.
Investigators have said that they believe that Mr. Teixeira gained access to the sensitive military documents while assigned as a cyber transport systems specialist with the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts.
The investigators said Mr. Teixeira first typed out classified documents he accessed and then began sharing photographs of files that bore “SECRET” and “TOP SECRET” markings.
Some documents posted online appeared to describe military equipment donated to Ukraine’s military by the United States and other nations. Other documents appeared to reference training timelines for Ukrainian forces and casualty assessments and equipment losses from the fighting.
Among the leaked documents was one mentioning a 2023 “spring offensive” with a reference to “30 April.”
Those references may have alluded to a counteroffensive operation that Ukrainian forces began in the late spring of 2023. That effort has been widely regarded as a failure, with Ukrainian forces struggling to break through layers of Russian defensive lines in the country’s east.
Teixeira’s Unit Punished for Security Lapses
The U.S. Air Force’s Office of Inspector General began investigating Mr. Teixeira’s unit shortly after his arrest in April. The Air Force assigned the 102nd Intelligence Wing’s responsibilities to other units and suspended unit leaders as this investigation played out.The Air Force Inspector General’s team uncovered accounts of Mr. Teixeira’s engaging in questionable behavior regarding classified information, including information marked “Top Secret” and “Sensitive Compartmented Information” (TS/SCI).
Throughout the summer and fall of 2022, Mr. Teixeira and other IT specialists within his unit were reportedly permitted to sit in on weekly intelligence briefings to impress upon them the importance of their role in keeping classified IT systems running.
The IG report states that this effort was improper because it provided a higher level of access to classified information than was necessary for Mr. Teixeira and the other IT specialists to understand their mission. It also created ambiguity about whether their access to this information was proper.
During this time, Mr. Teixeira was observed viewing TS/SCI materials on multiple occasions, the inspector general’s report alleges.
On Sept. 15, 2022, a member of Mr. Teixeira’s unit allegedly saw him writing on a sticky note while looking at sensitive military documents. A member of the unit confronted him about his note-taking and told him to shred the note.
However, what he had allegedly written was never verified, nor was whether it was shredded as ordered.
Mr. Teixeira is alleged to have asked detailed questions in an intelligence briefing on Oct. 25, 2022, that suggested a knowledge of existing TS/SCI materials.
When confronted about his line of inquiry, he acknowledged that his questions overlapped with classified materials but insisted that the same information was available through “open sources.”
Despite his claims, the inspector general asserted that it was unlikely that the matters Mr. Teixeira referenced were based on public information.
At It Again in January
Mr. Teixeira was reportedly caught viewing intelligence documents again in January, and senior unit leaders were notified of that and other incidents involving the airman.This incident did prompt unit leaders to notify security officials. But those unit leaders still provided “a substantially minimized version” of Mr. Teixeira’s concerning behavior, the inspector general’s report states.
Disciplinary actions ranged from relief of command and other duty positions to nonjudicial punishments.
Col. Sean Riley, commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing, received an adverse administrative action and was relieved of command for cause, according to the Air Force press statement.
Col. Enrique Dovalo, commander of the 102nd Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Group, received an adverse administrative action over concerns with unit culture and compliance with policies and standards.
