How did someone so young have access to such sensitive files?
A remarkable leak, a breathtaking breach of security, a strain on America’s alliances globally, and on Thursday afternoon it all came to a dramatic end in a rural corner of Massachusetts.
The day’s events were very fast moving and began not, as might have been expected, with breakthroughs by the authorities investigating the leak, but instead from a series of investigations by the media.
First, a scoop from the Washington Post newspaper which revealed that an individual had leaked the information to a small circle of online friends on a social media platform called Discord, popular with gamers.
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What do the highly classified documents say?
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The Post obtained an interview with a member of the group who claimed the documents had then been disseminated out beyond the closed group.
By late morning, The New York Times, working with the open-source investigators Bellingcat, published a trail of digital evidence which they claimed identified Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman as the leader of the Discord group where the documents first appeared.
Journalists were on the doorstep of the Teixeira family home in rural Massachusetts while the Pentagon spokesman struggled to tread the water from a flood of questions about the morning’s revelations.
But as Brigadier-General Pat Ryder spoke, an arrest came.
The cable news networks already had their helicopters over the Massachusetts countryside and beamed live images of the heavily armed FBI agents arriving and then arresting Teixeira.
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The US Attorney General, Merrick Garland, then made a statement confirming the news that viewers had just watched.
It appears that the American authorities have been on the backfoot at every turn with this case.
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They now claim to have their leaker. He will go through the judicial process.
They will be relieved, at least, that he appears not to be a foreign agent.
But they have many questions to answer: how did a 21-year old Air National Guardsman have access to these documents?
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Was he entitled to the access? Are there more classified documents out there? Why did it take so long, with media help, to find him?
More broadly, the consequence of a leak like this is that everyone shares less. America’s allies may be reluctant to share their own secrets with Washington. But those allies will know too that American agencies will now share less of their own intel with them.
Trust needs to be rebuilt beyond the damage they know has already been done.
