The alleged leak to the secret Pentagon files is a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times.
His name is 'Jack Teixeira.
Teixeira was the leader of an online group on the Discord platform where the secret files were downloaded.
It was he who controlled the group's server, called 'Thug Shaker Central' and made up of 20-30 people, mostly men and teenagers, who shared their passion for guns, racist memes and video games.
Two US executives confirmed that investigators want to talk to him about the leak, believing he may have information relevant to the investigation.
Federal investigators have been searching for the person who leaked the top-secret documents online for days but have so far not identified Teixeira or anyone else as a suspect.
Before the revelations of the New York Times, the Washington Post had informed that the 'mole' who revealed secret US documents on the war in Ukraine would be a young man with access to a military base.
The capital newspaper described him as a very young member of the Discord chat on which the American leaks were disseminated.
The informant, barely older than his interlocutors, called himself 'Og' and, according to the source, would be a gun enthusiast.
WP, which publishes the news exclusively, says it held "several lengthy interviews" with the source, who is under 18 and spoke on condition of anonymity with his mother's consent.
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The president recalled that a full investigation is underway.
'We're getting close,' he added.
In its investigation, the newspaper also claims to have viewed a video in which Og is in a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear muffs and holding a large rifle.
He yells a series of racist and anti-Semitic slurs at the camera, then fires several shots at a target
.
The newspaper reports that it also examined around 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public.
These include some documents written by Og, an audio recording of the boy talking to his companions and copies of chats and photographs taken from Og's posts on the group formed on the Discord server.
"He's fit. He's strong. He's armed. He's trained. Pretty much everything you can expect from some sort of crazy movie,"
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The chat by invitation on the Discord platform, on which the top secret American cards were revealed - the source told the Washington Post - was formed during the pandemic and gathered about twenty people, mostly teenagers, looking for company in the in the middle of the lockdown, united by a mutual love of guns, military equipment in general and faith in God. Most of the talk was about video games and similar topics, and nobody paid much attention when, last year, "a person who calling himself 'Og' posted a message in military jargon full of strange acronyms."
"The words were unfamiliar to most, and few people read that long post," the source said.
But the group - writes Wp - "revered Og,
the oldest leader of their tiny tribe, who claimed to know secrets the government kept from ordinary people." The mysterious child witness says he read Og's message carefully and "the hundreds of others who followed regularly for months" and which "appeared to be near-verbal transcripts of classified intelligence documents that Og indicated he brought home from his job at a "military base," which the chat member declined to identify.
Og said he spent at least part of his day inside a structure subjected to strict security measures, where cell phones and other electronic devices that could be used to steal top secret information were prohibited.
The story of the first source of the Discord chat was corroborated by a second, which described the alleged mole as a young man apparently in his 20s.
Both members said they knew Og's real name and the state where he lives and works, but declined to share this information with the Washington Post, which interviewed them, while the FBI investigates and the Pentagon has set up its own investigation. headed by a senior official.
