Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, Jack Teixeira, the suspect accused of leaking classified US intelligence, made a frantic final call to his gamer friends as the FBI closed in on him, professing he “never wanted it to get like this.”
“Guys, it’s been good — I love you all,” Teixeira, 21, was quoted as saying on the call, according to a member of an online group who goes by the screen name Vahki.
“I never wanted it to get like this. I prayed to God that this would never happen. And I prayed and prayed and prayed. Only God can decide what happens from now on.”
Speaking to the New York Times, Vahki said it sounded like Teixeira was in a speeding vehicle when he joined the call.
Teixeira was arrested Thursday April 13, by heavily armed federal agents at his mother’s home in North Dighton, Massachusetts.
According to US Attorney General Merrick Garland, he will be charged with removing or transmitting classified national defense information, a crime punishable by years in prison under the 1917 Espionage Act.
The Times revealed Teixeira as the administrator of the 20- to 30-member channel “Thug Shaker Center,” hosted on the Discord gaming platform, where a slew of intelligence reports — some labeled “Secret” and “Top Secret” — first surfaced.
The documents contained sensitive information about Ukraine’s allies and US intelligence gathering, as well as information about the country’s fighting capabilities and potential weaknesses.
Members of the “Thug Shaker Center” group told the Times that the online community is a place for teenage boys and young men to bond over their love of guns, play war-themed video games, and swap racist memes.
Teixeira was known as O.G. in the group and was described as the de facto leader. Members stated that the guardsman wished to educate others in the online community about actual warfare.
“Everyone respected O.G.,” Vahki, a 17-year-old recent high school graduate, said in an interview. “He was the man, the myth. And he was the legend. Everyone respected this guy.”
According to a member of Teixeira’s gaming channel on Discord, the military IT specialist released 350 documents, including detailed Ukraine battle maps, between October and March.
Teixeira was an airman first class working as a cyber transport systems journeyman with the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Air National Guard, the same unit where his stepfather, Master Sgt. Thomas Dufault, had served for 34 years before retiring four years ago.
Teixeria was responsible for military communications networks as a cyber transport systems specialist — the military equivalent of an IT specialist — and would have had a higher level of security clearance because he would have also been tasked with ensuring network security, according to a defense official.
Teixeira allegedly began sharing descriptions of classified documents in October before uploading hundreds of pages, some of which displayed detailed battlefield maps from Ukraine labeled “Top Secret.”
Vahki insisted that Teixiera was not a whistleblower in the mold of Edward Snowden, and that the documents he shared in the gaming channel were never meant to be splashed all over the internet.
“This guy was a Christian, antiwar, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on,” Vahki said, adding that between October and March, Teixeira uploaded about 350 pages to their channel.