The National Guard airman arrested over the Pentagon documents leaks sent a final message to his online friends saying that his fate was now in the hands of god.
Jack Teixeira, 21, sounded as if he was in a moving car when he joined a call with other members of his small gaming community with whom he had shared classified information on the platform Discord.
One member of that group, going by the screen name Vahki, told The New York Times that the airman told the group, “Guys, it’s been good, I love you all”.
“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,” he added.
Airman Teixeira was arrested on Thursday, shortly after he had been identified as being the administrator of the online group known as Thug Shaker Central, where the secret files were initially shared.
The Massachusetts National Guard member got hold of the documents and posted them in the group, according to friends speaking to The Times.
It was from that group that the documents were later shared more widely, affecting the war in Ukraine, US intelligence operations, and its relations with some allies.
Members of the group told The Times that Thug Shaker Central had begun as a space for boys and young men to hang out during the pandemic and discuss guns, share memes, some of which were racist, and play video games focused on war.
The airman, a member of the National Guard’s intelligence department, was the de facto leader of the group, with members telling the paper that he wanted to teach the younger men and boys about what real war was like.
The files were shared as far back as at least October when Airman Teixeria started posting descriptions of classified documents, according to members of the group and law enforcement officials. Hundreds of pages were later uploaded to the group, including maps of the Ukrainian battlefield and evaluations of the Russian war effort.
Members of the group said the airman, who used the name “OG” in the group, was aiming to impress and inform by sharing the information.
“Everyone respected OG,” Vahki told The Times. “He was the man, the myth. And he was the legend. Everyone respected this guy.”
He added that the airman wasn’t a whistleblower with an agenda and that the documents were never intended to be shared more widely than their group.
“This guy was a Christian, antiwar, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on,” the 17-year-old Vahki told the paper. “We have some people in our group who are in Ukraine. We like fighting games, we like war games.”
The teenager admitted that he had retweeted racist memes.
“There’s no point hiding it,” he told the paper. “I’m not a good person.”
The investigative group Bellingcat was the first to report on the group being the source of the leak, and The Washington Post also reported on the group.
Between October and March, about 350 documents were shared in the group, Vahki said.
A member known as Lucca, 17, later published some of the files in a public Discord group on 2 March.
When the news started to spread of the leak, the airman started to close down his accounts.
“He was very freaked out,” Vahki told The Times. “This isn’t something like an ‘oopsie-daisy, I’m going to be reprimanded.’ This is life-in-prison type stuff.”
