The person responsible for leaking hundreds of secret US documents
is a young man who works at a military base
and has expressed devotion to weapons and made racist comments,
The Washington Post
(WP) reported.
The man, who at first was indicated to respond to the initials of "OG",
is called Jack Teixeira
and is a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, the US newspaper said.
His work as a computer technician
within the military organization gave him access to sensitive information, the Post added on its website.
The same newspaper advanced on Wednesday that he accessed the secret documents at the military base where he works, took them home and posted them on the Discord platform, popular among video game fans, with the aim of impressing other young people.
The New York Times added that
the suspect is 21 years old.
The Discord network, where the Pentagon documents were posted.
AFP photo
a video
To find out who is behind the leaks that have shaken the US in recent days,
The Washington Post
interviewed a teenager who is part of the Discord group where he posted the documents.
The newspaper also had access to a video in which the young man is at
a shooting range with a
.
In that video, he is seen yelling a series of racial and anti-Semitic slurs before shooting multiple times at a target, according to the Post's description.
The documents that he allegedly posted on Discord were later disseminated on other social networks such as Telegram and, in recent days,
they ended up on the front pages of major newspapers around the world.
Most of the documents are related to the war in Ukraine and
give details about US and NATO plans
to reinforce the Ukrainian offensive.
In addition, the information suggests that the US could have been spying on some of its closest allies, such as Ukraine itself, South Korea and Israel.
US President Joe Biden in Dublin, Ireland.
Photo Reuters
tensions
The leak may have started on a website called Discord, a popular social media platform among online gamers.
Discord offers text, voice, and video chats and describes itself as a place
“where you can belong to a school club, a gaming group, or a global arts community.”
In one of those forums, originally created to discuss a wide range of topics, members began to discuss the war in Ukraine.
According to a member of the chat, an unidentified member placed documents there that he said were secret, first transcribing them along with his own thoughts and, a few months ago, uploading images of folded pages.
Given the possibility that the documents
could create tensions
with its allies, the United States has been in contact with them in recent days, according to the White House.
The public barrage of leaks began last Friday, continued over the weekend, and has continued this week.
The impact it will have is still unknown, but some analysts
have compared it to what the country experienced in 2013
, when former analyst Edward Snowden exposed the scope of the massive espionage programs that the United States launched after the September 11 attacks. from 2001.
The US government has been assessing the national security and diplomatic consequences of the leak since it was first reported last week.
A Pentagon spokesman told reporters days ago that the disclosures pose "a very serious risk to national security" and the Justice Department has launched an investigation to find those responsible.
“We are getting close
,” President Joe Biden told reporters in Ireland on Thursday.
He said that while he is dismayed that the documents have been leaked, "to my knowledge, there is nothing contemporary in them that is of great importance."
Source: EFE and AP
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