The 21-year-old Nationwide Guard airman was frantic as he joined a name with members of a small on-line gamer neighborhood that has improbably ended up on the middle of a federal investigation into a significant U.S. safety breach.
It sounded as if the airman, Jack Teixeira, was in a rushing automobile, mentioned a member of the group who makes use of the display screen identify Vahki.
“Guys, it’s been good — I like you all,” Airman Teixeira mentioned, Vahki recounted. “I by no means needed it to get like this. I prayed to God that this might by no means occur. And I prayed and prayed and prayed. Solely God can determine what occurs any more.”
On Thursday, the F.B.I. arrested Airman Teixeira, an hour and a half after The New York Instances recognized him because the administrator of the net group, Thug Shaker Central, the place a cache of leaked intelligence paperwork that riveted the world for every week first appeared.
It was Airman Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Nationwide Guard, his pals within the group mentioned, who one way or the other obtained the categorized paperwork and posted them to the group. From there, they ultimately spilled into the open, doubtlessly compromising U.S. intelligence gathering and damaging relations with allies.
In interviews, members of Thug Shaker Central mentioned their group had began out as a spot the place younger males and teenage boys may collect amid the isolation of the pandemic to bond over their love of weapons, share memes — generally racist ones — and play war-themed video video games.
However Airman Teixeira, who one member of the group known as O.G. and was additionally its unofficial chief, needed to show the younger acolytes who gravitated to him about precise conflict, members mentioned.
And so, starting in at the least October, Airman Teixeira, who was connected to the Guard’s intelligence unit, started sharing descriptions of categorized data, group members and legislation enforcement officers mentioned, ultimately importing tons of of pages of paperwork, together with detailed battlefield maps from Ukraine and confidential assessments of Russia’s conflict machine.
His objective, group members mentioned, was each to tell and impress.
Airman Teixeira’s entry to secret data and his capability to learn about main international occasions earlier than they appeared on entrance pages stoked the curiosity of the group, which numbered 20 to 30 folks.
“Everybody revered O.G.,” Vahki mentioned in an interview. “He was the person, the parable. And he was the legend. Everybody revered this man.”
What Airman Teixeira was not, Vahki mentioned, was a whistle-blower within the vein of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, whose outrage over perceived injustices led them to interrupt the legislation and reveal carefully held authorities secrets and techniques.
The key paperwork within the information now, Airman Teixeira’s pals mentioned, had been by no means meant to go away their small nook of the web.
“This man was a Christian, antiwar, simply needed to tell a few of his pals about what’s happening,” mentioned Vahki, a 17-year-old current highschool graduate who recognized himself by the display screen identify he used. “Now we have some folks in our group who’re in Ukraine. We like preventing video games; we like conflict video games.”
Now, their world is crumbling round them.
A New York Instances report final week concerning the discovery of categorized Ukraine conflict paperwork circulating on-line prompted the Pentagon to open an investigation, adopted by nationwide safety officers racing to shut down entry to delicate supplies and reassure distraught allies that the U.S. authorities was nonetheless in command of its secrets and techniques.
The extent of the injury attributable to the leak is just not but totally recognized.
The supplies Airman Teixeira is accused of sharing revealed how deeply the Russian authorities had been penetrated by U.S. and allied intelligence companies, which gained the flexibility to offer near-real-time data to the Ukrainians about deliberate Russian strikes.
In addition they confirmed that America’s spy providers had been eavesdropping on allies like Israel and South Korea, in addition to the Ukrainian management, embarrassing revelations that might erode belief at a time when Washington was making an attempt to current a unified entrance within the battle with Moscow.
On Thursday, F.B.I. brokers sporting helmets and flak jackets and carrying military-style assault rifles descended on the house the place Airman Teixeira lived together with his mom and took him into custody.
It began innocuously, his on-line circle of pals mentioned. Because the pandemic closed colleges and workplaces, plunging the world into isolation, the younger males in Thug Shaker Central gravitated to at least one one other on-line, discovering solace of their shared pursuits, principally video video games like Mission Zomboid, during which gamers attempt to survive in a post-apocalyptic Kentucky overrun by zombies.
They first met on a server known as Oxide Hub, a big military-focused neighborhood on Discord, a social media platform common amongst players — however deserted it in favor of a closed, tighter-knit group.
How The Instances makes use of visuals to analyze the information. Our Visible Investigations workforce is made up of greater than a dozen journalists who mix digital sleuthing and forensic evaluation with conventional reporting to deconstruct information occasions. They’ve uncovered vital particulars about drone strikes, police shootings and the Capitol riot.
They didn’t conceal a few of their excessive ideological views. On Steam, one other common gamer platform, members of the group traded racist and antisemitic epithets and appeared in different teams that includes Nazi iconography.
Vahki admitted to retweeting racist memes. “There’s no level hiding it,” Vahki mentioned. “I’m not a very good individual.”
Airman Teixeira named the group Thug Shaker Central, which members acknowledged was an inside joke primarily based on an web meme. The investigative collective Bellingcat first reported that the group was the unique supply of the leaks. The Washington Submit additionally reported particulars concerning the group.
Airman Teixeira, the chums mentioned, was common on-line and often known as an energetic creator of memes. On-line, he glided by a lot of totally different display screen names, amongst them TheExcaliburEffect, jackdjdtex and TexKilledYou.
He grew up in North Dighton, Mass. Pictures from relations’ social media accounts present him curled up together with his household’s two canines, driving ATVs and sporting Boston Celtics gear. His mom posted photos of his relations within the navy each Veterans Day.
Following their footsteps, the younger man joined the navy after he graduated from Dighton-Rehoboth Regional Excessive College in the summertime of 2020, lacking his commencement ceremony to attend his primary coaching obligations at Lackland Air Drive Base in Texas. He completed his technical coaching the next yr and formally entered energetic responsibility with the Massachusetts Air Nationwide Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing on Oct. 1, 2021.
Among the many dozens of birthday needs and child photos of Airman Teixeira on his sister’s social media feeds was a clue that he is likely to be the leaker. One {photograph} captured a kitchen countertop that appeared equivalent to the floor on which the categorized paperwork had been photographed.
Along with video games, Airman Teixeira’s on-line group additionally shared an curiosity in weapons. Vahki mentioned he was a very good marksman, and data unearthed by The Instances present that he exchanged gun gear together with his fellow players.
“We’re gunners, we’re gear nerds,” Vahki mentioned, including that group members have spent tons of of {dollars} on gear each within the digital world and in actual life.
However Airman Teixeira additionally started posting a distinct form of content material.
It began as lengthy each day memos with difficult and, at instances, complicated summaries of worldwide occasions that members of the group discovered tough to comply with. Generally he would admonish his youthful pals for not taking the data severely, Vahki mentioned.
Round October final yr, his frustration led him to start out posting authentic paperwork, together with detailed battle maps from the conflict in Ukraine marked “TOP SECRET.” From October to March, Vahki mentioned, the airman posted about 350 paperwork to the group.
The paperwork might need remained confined to Thug Shaker Central had been it not for a member of the group named Lucca, a 17-year-old from California, who won’t have totally grasped the gravity of the paperwork he had been given entry to.
On March 2, Lucca was concerned in a dialog concerning the Ukraine conflict in a public Discord group known as #Struggle-Posting when he revealed a number of dozen paperwork from the cache that had been uploaded to Thug Shaker Central.
For a month, the paperwork bounced round esoteric discussion groups, together with one common with gamers of the net recreation Minecraft and one other for followers of a reasonably common British YouTuber. They went seemingly unnoticed by anybody who understood their significance till early April, when a few of the paperwork started showing on the Telegram messaging app channels of supporters of Russia’s conflict towards Ukraine.
Because the information started to unfold, Airman Teixeira began closing down his on-line accounts and bidding farewell to on-line pals.
“He was very freaked out,” Vahki mentioned. “This isn’t one thing like an ‘oopsie-daisy — I’m going to be reprimanded.’ That is life-in-prison kind stuff.”
Kitty Bennett and Sheelagh McNeill contributed analysis.
