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Alleged document leaker thought his bosses might catch him when he compiled transcripts of top-secret docs to show off to his racist bros, so he started taking copies home to photograph them, FBI says
By adamg on Fri, 04/14/2023 - 11:48am
A 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman's job gave him access to a steady stream of classified intelligence documents, which he allegedly copied and posted in a closed online discussion forum to show off to his fellow racists and antisemites - one of whom then began posting them on the wider Internet, according to an affidavit by an FBI agent on the case.
Jack Teixeira was arrested at his North Dighton home yesterday and brought into federal court in South Boston this morning to be formally charged with two initial counts: Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, which carries a maximum potential sentence of ten years, and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material , which carries a maximum potential sentence of five years.
Teixeira, who enlisted in the Air National Guard in September, 2019, was officially a Cyber Defense Operations Journeyman. According to the affidavit, by an agent in the FBI's counterintelligence division in Washington:
As required for this position, TEIXEIRA holds a Top Secret security clearance, which was granted in 2021. Based on my training and experience, I know that to acquire his security clearance, TEIXEIRA would have signed a lifetime binding non-disclosure agreement in which he would have had to acknowledge that the unauthorized disclosure of protected information could result in criminal charges.
In addition to TEIXEIRA’s Top Secret clearance, he maintained sensitive compartmented access (SCI) to other highly classified programs. He has also had this access since 2021.
The affidavit continues that the investigation against Teixeira moved quickly, once a fellow member of the Thug Shakers Central forum -identified as "User 1" in the affidavit - on the Discord network spoke to the FBI on April 10 - possibly because the FBI had figured out he was the guy who was re-posting the Discord documents to other social-media networks.
According to User 1, the individual using the Subject Username initially posted the Government Information as paragraphs of text. However, in or around January 2023, the Subject Username began posting photographs of documents on Server 1 that contained what appeared to be classification markings on official U.S. Government documents.
According to User 1, one of the documents that was posted on Server 1 by the individual using the Subject Username was a document that described the status of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, including troop movements, on a particular date (the "Government Document"). The Government Document is based on sensitive U.S. intelligence, gathered through classified sources and methods, and contains national defense information. An Original Classification Authority has confirmed that the Government Document is classified at the [Top Secret/Sensitive compartmented access] level. As described above, the unauthorized disclosure of TOP SECRET information "reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security" of the United States.
User 1 told the FBI that he spoke to the individual using the Subject Username at various times using a video chat application, voice calls, or the chat function on Server 1. According to User 1, during one of those conversations, the individual using the Subject Username explained that he had become concerned that he may be discovered making the transcriptions of text in the workplace, so he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them. ...
The Government Document posted on Social Media Platform 1 was accessible to TEIXEIRA by virtue of his employment with USANG. According to a U.S. Government Agency, which has access to logs of certain documents TEIXEIRA accessed, TEIXEIRA accessed the Government Document in February 2023, approximately one day before User 1 reposted the information on the Internet. User 1 told the FBI that the information he reposted was originally posted on Server 1 by the individual using the Subject Username.
As the documents began filtering out across the wider Internet, the affidavit says, Teixeira grew concerned that any federal investigation might lead to him:
In addition, according to a second U.S. Government Agency, which can monitor certain searches conducted on its classified networks, on April 6, 2023, TEIXEIRA used his government computer to search classified intelligence reporting for the word "leak." The first public reporting regarding the Government Information appeared on or around April 6, 2023. Accordingly, there is reason to believe that TEIXEIRA was searching for classified reporting regarding the U.S. Intelligence Community's assessment of the identity of the individual who transmitted classified national defense information, to include the Government Document.
The US Attorney's office in Boston reports that a judge ordered Teixeira detained until at least a bail hearing on April 19.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
There is no honor among
There is no honor among thieves as they say. He stole the info, posted it online to show how cool he was and shocker! Someone else took that info and reposted.
Quite scary that this info was in the hands of a complete moron. He posted it online to a place where he has discussed who he was before. He made it worse by searching for the info for leak. He has access to enough documents to know that what he did was incredibly stupid and even once it was done that they weould find him. You can do a lot of things in this country and get yourself out of it but not this. He should have turned himself in. They never would have stopped looking
More heads should roll
It should not be possible for anyone to take classified documents home. Not a NG airman, not Deniald Trump. Whoever is in charge of security at that base needs replacement, and should not be the only one.
It's not security at that base; it's a much wider problem
We seem to have alarmingly bad procedures for deciding who should have access to what, and for monitoring that we're controlling access appropriately.
I swear, CVS has better
I swear, CVS has better inventory control than these Top Secret installations. Just put an RFID on every piece of paper for Pete’s sake.
He Knew Better
He had to have signed documents that told him this was not okay.
That said, I seems to me like a bunch of older guys just saw him as a WhizKid, and let him do what he was doing with little or no supervision.
This isn't a simple case of electronic access failure, either. How was he able to take documents home like this without notice? He also managed to repeatedly violate security policies that predate computers? This is high level sleeping at the switch.
Any comments from the
Any comments from the governor, since she’s the commander-in-chief of MA air guard?
I'd imagine she's probably
I'd imagine she's probably against this type of thing, why?
You're right, using your
You're right, using your imagination is always better than a factual statement.
While we're at it, let's
While we're at it, let's check if she's ever made statements on the record about baseball and apple pie. Until then, we don't know, she might be against those.
Does he live in his parents’
Does he live in his parents’ basement ?
Maybe he used to?
But he'll be going away for a long, long time.
He’s going to be living
in his country’s basement.
links for your other sources?
The affidavit doesn’t say anything about the ideological bearing of the users of the (discord) server where the docs were located. Where did you see evidence that they were, as a group, anti-semeric and racist?
Not saying they aren’t, just wondering where you’re getting evidence to support that claim.
Sorry, I should have sourced that
The New York Times, which broke the story, along with the Washington Post, had that info. Here's a CBS News report for folks who don't have a Times account.
All it’s says
Is racist online memes. It doesn’t even say he posted them, just they were posted.
Also, that statement is rather subjective without seeing said memes. I mean it’s the Times.
If you're a member
Of a group that posts racist memes and videos where the "leader" shouts out racist and anti-semitic slurs...you're a member of a racist group
one cant assume A to prove A
I like wapo more than many other newspapers, but its is not free of bias.The article asserts racism and anti-semetism, and implies it reflects an ideology shared by accused and socmedia group, but offers no actual quoted instances , nor offers opportunity to assess video (singular).
i very much appreciate how regularly adam includes links to primary documents when available. i was just looking for same in this case.
Not sure why people are
Focusing on stupid memes and not the fact this bozo leaked classified information about an armed conflict the US is directly involved in.
Treason > stupid memes!
Internet racism doesn't kill people, leaked military information does.
Really?
Hmmmm. It certainly gets people killed.
Children vs. grownups
Little children have trouble "focusing on more than one simple thing at a time. Grownups can multitask.
You don’t know children.
And from your many posts referencing children and their attributes, you don’t much like them either.
We get it.
Sigh... "Treason"
Treason is a very specific crime with a very narrow definition. The alleged crimes are serious, but they aren't treason.
Treason
is also a word that has been in the English language for nearly a thousand years.
No doubt if you had been there to rebuke Marc Antony for his careless language much unpleasantness could have been avoided.
Okay
Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg - treason or not?
Not treason
Espionage.
They were tried and convicted of violations of the Espionage Act of 1917, the same law being applied to Teixeira (with some amendments to that law in the years between these cases).
Treason by any other name
As everybody is now fond of pointing out, the US law against treason is very narrowly defined, and has hardly ever been applied. This is really a historical curiosity, like a lot of things in the Constitution. The framers of the Constitution were necessarily sensitive on the issue, because nearly all of them were guilty of treason under the laws of Great Britain, of which they had recently been subjects. The old English law against treason had been an instrument of tyranny. Henry VIII beheaded two of his wives for treason, considering adultery (or, in the case of Anne Boleyn, imaginary adultery) against himself to be treasonous. Charles I was beheaded for treason; the members of Parliament who voted for his death were hunted down by order of his son, Charles II, and themselves sentenced to death for treason. They were hanged, drawn, and quartered - eviscerated while still alive. Four years after the US Constitution was ratified, Louis XVI of France was executed for treason (for attempting to desert to an enemy with which France was at war). It was a sensitive subject at the time.
Eventually the USA decided that the narrow definition of treason had become frustrating and inconvenient, and so passed a law that redefined many things traditionally defined as treason as espionage, in the Espionage Act, which was made so broad that it could be made to encompass a wide variety of political crimes. Eugene Debs was convicted under the Espionage Act for giving anti-war speeches during World War I.
The USA's idiosyncratic legal definition of treason does not supercede the general understanding of the word. Governments tend to be touchy about the definition, because it defines the limit of their power; there have been, and probably still are, countries where insulting the monarch, or Leader, is treason. To the world at large, treason means betraying your country. So, okay, legally, in the USA, not treason, but treason nonetheless.
you sure
this is the hill you want to die on?
"I mean, just because people in the group made a habit of posting and enjoying racist imagery and statements, it doesn't mean the group is racist itself"
where did the innerweb racisms come from, friend? they dont just appear in nature you know.
I swear, sometimes I think
I swear, sometimes I think all anons except maybe Anon are Russian bot accounts just looking to stir up trouble. If not Russian bots then at the most trolls and as people of a certain age know. "Do Not Feed the Trolls" are words to live by on the internet.
WaPost article the other day
The Washington Post interviewed a young (high school) kid who was part of the small, private Discord server group.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/discord-leak...
WP article has assertions but no solid instances
no quoted reportage of racism/anti-sematism statements or ideology. Conversely, a couple times it quotes source saying accused guardsman felt the govt was pursuing racist agenda.
I’m not trying to paint the accused as a good guy, but i’m concerned that reportage that tries too hard to frame this as an ideologically motivated crime may keep us from understanding and addressing the actual weaknesses in our country’s intelligence community.
You have to understand
Any damage to the nation's intelligence gathering ability and the ability of Ukraine to fight Russian aggression isn't as important as this guy's views on race issues.
And to be clear, I'm not going to defend this guy's views on such matters, but it seems like the 100 sensitive documents haphazardly sent to friends is a much bigger issue.
King of the Strawman
Constructing yet another one here.
Why the fervent defense?
Ok, Jeff - what would qualify as racism of "anti-sematism"[sic] to you? You say it isn't there, so how about if you define it?
As usual
Someone who is likely not ever impacted by racism in their daily life thinks they get to decide what is and isn't racism.
I'm sure the schoolyard bully would like to define bullying for you, too - in fact, they reserve the right to be the final arbiter of what is bullying!
The affidavit may not, but the kid's own videos
do, to quote from the WP interview with one of his Discord group's members: "[I]n a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG [our local idiot] stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target."
A little less open to interpretation than memes, no?
link for video?
n/t
No link, just
the reporting. Not hard to imagine that actual video surfacing sometime soon.
Good reasons not to link to video
WaPo may have decided not to link to the video for a variety of reasons, including not wanting to send web to a vile racist, antisemitic video and not wanting to help spread it among those who venerate such things. Yes, it would have been good for them to say they'd chosen not to link to it, but they made clear that the reporter watched it and has first-hand knowledge of its contents.
future belongs to da yoots
I found it amusing that the agent swearing out the affidavit looks like he’s about the same (pretty young) age as the fellow who was arrested.
Guess what it takes to catch a bad guy with a social media account is a good guy with a social media account…
Goes to show
there are more smart not-neo-Nazis than smart neo-Nazis.
He drinks Bud Light!
He drinks Bud Light!
Several outlets have reported it.
Kind of a superfluous thing to worry about all things considered. But sure, whatever, here ya go per WaPo;
According to Rawstory
He submitted his resume to a paradoy HitmanforHire site ...
Unbelievable
Nope
That was actually a different National Guard moron, from Tennessee.
This is all about Ego nothing to do with ideology
He just wanted to be the Big Dog in the park
I don't think that he thought anything about what he was doing
He deserves a significant jail term in a Federal Maximum Security facility
The real problems are:
Such material should be very restricted to a very select few with a "Need to Know" and that the material is essential to the conduct of the work that they are performing -- as often less classified summaries and digests might suffice
The following needs to be read with a Heavy Hungarian Accent
Edward Teller [father of the H Bomb] responding to question about classification of nuclear program related documents:
Agree with everything except the secrets.
I could be wrong (usually am) but I always thought Teller was refering to Nuclear Secrets as they pertained to the world's physical health and not American's overall safety. Specifically what was happening to the ionosphere as nuclear testing become more and more prevalent.
Yet another example…
Yet another example of pathetic incels and the empty lives they lead. No question this racist freak of a traitor also lives on Twitter under a sock puppet account. The MAGA crowd already defending him. Gross.
hating
To begin with, I abhor the collective psychosis and social contagion that makes these Nazis possible. Back before our society went super mental, one would read the statement I just made and, if they had a basically balanced faith in reality and had no glaring evidence as to my level of mendacity, said person would probably take me at my word.
Things are different now. Now, we must defeat White Supremacy, and anything that could even look remotely like it on a foggy day. One of the reform tropes available to do this is: evidence is a white supremacist scheme. You're with me right? I mean, if you have not heard this trope, you don't know a lot of people in the reform movement. You just don't, even if you think you do; because they all think evidence is only a white supremacy trap. Unless of course they are of the few who can actually think properly, in which case they know better.
Everything about racism means that when someone does something in a zone that is obviously racist because putative leader of said zone is demonstrably so, then anyone in that zone is racist. I can't think of better evidence (despite how apparently innately bad evidence is) for the court of public opinion to do it's thing, i.e. hang the defective primate.
In actual court though, I have to assume a search for evidence requires higher standards than that? One of you responding here is trying to say this, and you are encountering resistance.
Which Court is which, eh? Does it matter anymore? The people who self-identify with having the biggest hearts won't think there is a difference. But all you "mean" thoughtful (re: privileged) bastards will think there is a difference.
As long as the fascist menace is stopped. But then can we ALL GO BACK TO FUCKING BEING SANE ?
Uh...
In "actual court", racism isn't a crime. Did you see it in the charging document? No? Well, then.
As long as the fascist menace is stopped. But then can we ALL GO BACK TO FUCKING BEING SANE ?
Uh, yeah, just as soon as that actually happens.
More antisemitism and racism from an antisemite and racist
From the Jewish Journal, with a recap of an anecdote reported by the Post:
Why did he have access to this information?
In what way could intelligence about the war in Ukraine possibly be relevant to any duties of a Massachusetts National Guardsman?
He might not have needed the info personally
But he was basically an IT guy, responsible for ensuring secure lines remained that way, and I'm sure there were people higher up at an Air National Guard base who might have reason to be informed about events in a country ours is supplying heavily with weapons and other military equipment, and, well, IT guys sometimes need to look at communications passing through their networks in order to diagnose problems, and once you have that ...
I don't think he's that bright
I really don't think he was that bright to do that. Everything I've read so far tells me he isn't some nerdy computer whiz person (like us, Adam), he was just some shmoo who got assigned that job. He might even have been in school part time for IT and the National Guard was paying for it. So they put him to good use, which often happens. I've worked with several IT Professionals who got their start during their military service.
Just so folks are aware, the military uses the same OS's and applications you do. So like Microsoft Windows, Word, Excel, Outlook. Same file servers too, like Microsoft Windows Server. And same setup (i.e file and print shares). Pretty standard stuff. Of course, there's security in place when confidential data is concern, like VPNs, Limited access control, change management, and what not. And I am sure there are some proprietary systems on top of all of this.
With that said, it looks like he may have been a support person (think desktop support), and someone who has worked in IT for 30 years providing support for end users...you do *see* things you do not want to see. Particularly in email. As we've seen in recent years, email communication is heavily used by our gov't. Yep its probably Microsoft Exchange, but a closed-door, heavily secured system, but with main functionalities remained (gotta have that good user experience!).
And remember having clearance isn't just 'access to documents', it is clearance to even see or hear things related to top secrets. Or in his case, to even touch systems that may contain top secret data on them to help the end user just by an off chance you see/read something while doing your job. Not that he had direct access, but he may have had peripheral access (via someone who DID have direct access) via them & their computer.
best example I can give is.. general who has the right clearance and access to do so, downloads a Microsoft Word document to his laptop to make edits. (Yes this is possible) OR general had secrets in Outlook where he communicated things.
And like all PC's, it needed repair. Either Outlook had issues or something. The general phones the help desk and sends this guy over. Texiera saw things, made mental notes, then told his friends on discord. Friends said "prove it" so Texiera was like "oh general buddy, your computer needs more service, can I take a look", then he goes and does the transcribing. Then once that wasn't proof enough for his friends on discord, he started hitting the print button in Word or outlook from the general's computer to a printer at the base. Again, this is all within boundaries of being OK, as the general (and their computer) had the right access to do that.
This is all hypothetical, of course, but I can just see it.. Computer is taking a bit longer to fix, so the general decides to go get a cup of coffee or use the restroom while he waits. Poof, leaving Texiera alone long enough to hit print to that personal printer in the general's office, fold up the printouts and on to discord it went.
And while in my example it would be easy to finger the General, but he had the right access. And for the fact of the matter, Teixeira had right clearance, he knew better than to do this (I assume he had extensive training on this), and the simple point of......
You want to trust your IT staff that what they see won't go further than them. It's like some unwritten IT Professional rule. The guy was just rouge, wanted to impress his friends, and thought he would not get caught. The guy was a fool and shtstain on the rest of us IT people who have merit and would never do this. (I certainly would not).
And of course I end with that this is all IMHO, not based on any inside knowledge, just my own in working in very secure environments. I also have been doing this for close to 30 years, and have worked alongside ex-DOD folks in the cyber security field. I've learned a few things over the years.
But I am sure only time will tell us what really happened.
PS - I'll nip the "omg they use windows debate" right now. The DoD has very long and deep contracts with Microsoft. But the DoD also uses Linux and Mac too, and the example above would play out in the same way. Support is support, no matter what you're supporting.
Usually spying is motivated by political belief or personal gain
or a combination thereof, but in this case, neither one seems to be present. I'm puzzled.
It's a human trait
Hey, lookit this!
Once, a long time ago, the newspaper I worked at bought what we'd now call a content-management system from a southern newspaper chain that had built their own and had started to sell it to other newspapers. One of its features was the ability to communicate with other instances of the system (so, for example, newspapers in a chain could share content).
One day, one of the more inquisitive newsroom types who'd been involved in getting the thing up and running for us noticed that he could get into that chain's flagship paper because they'd never turned on passwords (no, not me).
Of course he didn't keep it to himself and soon a small group of us more technically advanced folks (this was the early 90s, so "advanced" is a relative term) were having great fun reading their notes and messages and stuff - until somebody down south looked at their logs, noticed a lot of traffic from a place they shouldn't be getting any, or maybe noticed initials (as an audit trail, the system put users' initials on stuff they touched) they didn't recognize and locked the system down.
Fast forward 30 years and you have this guy leading a forum of military-curious JG shitposters and edgelords and he has access to all this way cool stuff. Is he going to just sit on all that stuff about the biggest, baddest military theater in years, if not decades? No sir, he is not, allegedly.
For Some Weird Gaming Clout
There's at least two examples of this happening in the forums of one video game, War Thunder, in which classified specs about modern tanks have been leaked by gamers to settle debates about the accuracy of the digital representation of their real life counterparts.
It looks pretty likely that Texeira wanted to prove he was the big dog on his gaming Discord channel. He was concerned enough about being discovered that he tried some very stupid OPSEC and INFOSEC workarounds to duplicate the material, but wasn't smart enough to know it would almost certainly break containment. Even if he took/duped these materials for political discussions on his Discord, it's still a mind-bogglingly stupid move.
Maybe, maybe not
There is a desire to spin this as "stupid kid did a stupid thing".
Because white male brains in particular don't mature until age 25 or some such protective rot?
Very convenient take for the defense, but let's wait and see how much of that is just ... convenient ... and how much of that is actually true.
He got personal gain out of this.
He gained gamer cred. He flushed his career and any future prospects of one at least in the Technical Support field though. Maybe after Leavenworth he can become a professional gamer if that's still a thing when he gets out.
There is a lot going on here.
There is a lot going on here. But the phenomenon of people taking pictures of their desktop PC is a growing issue. And not easy to solve unless we start forbidding people from keeping their phone in the office.
High security places do forbid phones in offices
A relative of mine works for a company that does contract work that requires high level security clearances. They are not allowed to bring their phone or tablets to work or to work from home (not even jotting down an idea they had), and their work computers are not connected to the internet.
And that was the case here
The miscreant talks about not being able to use his phone at work. It's why he was bringing hard copies home.