NYTimes | The F.B.I. on Thursday was preparing to enter the home of a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who is linked to an online group at the center of a trove of leaked classified U.S. intelligence documents that have upended relations with American allies and exposed weaknesses in the Ukrainian military.
The national guardsman, who was first identified by The New York Times as Jack Teixeira, oversaw an online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.
On Thursday, an armored vehicle and about a dozen uniformed officers, most wearing tactical gear and holding weapons, were outside the cordoned-off home.
Two U.S. officials confirmed that investigators want to talk to Airman Teixeira about the leak the government documents to the private online group. One official said he might have information relevant to the investigation.
Starting months ago, the authorities say, one of the users of the online group uploaded hundreds of pages of intelligence briefings into the small chat group, lecturing its members, who had bonded during the isolation of the pandemic, on the importance of staying abreast of world events.
The New York Times spoke with four members of the Thug Shaker Central chat group, where Airman Teixeira served as group administrator.
While the gaming friends would not identify the group’s leader by name, a trail of digital evidence compiled by The Times leads to Airman Teixeira.
Here’s what else to know:
The Times has been able to link Airman Teixeira to other members of the Thug Shaker Central group through his online gaming profile and other records. Details of the interior of Airman Teixeira’s childhood home — posted on social media in family photographs — also match details on the margins of some of the photographs of the leaked secret documents.
Members of Thug Shaker Central who spoke to The Times said that the documents they discussed online were meant to be purely informative, and started to get wider attention only after one of the teenage members took a few dozen of them and posted them to a public online forum. The person who leaked, they said, was no whistle-blower, and the secret documents were never meant to leave their small corner of the internet.
On Thursday, President Biden told reporters that the United States was “getting close” to finding answers about the leak. Senior law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, expect an arrest in the case over the next day or two.
The leaked documents reveal sensitive material — maps of Ukrainian air defenses and a review of South Korea’s secret plans to deliver ammunition to Ukraine — but it is the immediate relevance of the intelligence that most worries White House and Pentagon officials: Some of the documents appear to be barely 40 days old.
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