WASHINGTON - FBI agents arrested a 21-year-old national guardsman suspected of being behind a major leak of sensitive US government secrets -- including about the Ukraine war.
Broadcast live on TV networks, the dramatic arrest was the culmination of a weeklong investigation -- fueled by intense media coverage -- into one of the most damaging leaks of classified information since the 2013 dump of National Security Agency documents by Edward Snowden.
Addressing a news briefing, US Attorney General Merrick Garland named the suspect as Jack Teixeira, an employee of the US Air Force National Guard and the reported leader of the online chat group where the document trove first emerged.
Arrested "in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information," Teixeira was taken into custody without incident by FBI agents, Garland said.
News footage of the operation, in the southern Massachusetts town of North Dighton, showed the suspect dressed in red shorts and a t-shirt with his hands behind his head, backing slowly toward rifle-armed, camouflage-clad law enforcement personnel who took him into custody.
Police in the small town in the northeastern state sought to reassure the community about the heavy law enforcement presence, saying in a statement that there was "no threat to public safety."
The US National Guard Bureau said Teixeira enlisted in September 2019 and is an IT and communications specialist who reached the rank of airman first class -- the third-lowest for enlisted air force personnel.
He was expected to make an initial appearance in a Massachusetts federal court as early as Friday.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a statement praising the Justice Department and FBI "for their swift arrest in connection with this investigation."
Austin added that he is ordering a "review of our intelligence access, accountability and control procedures within the (Defense) Department to inform our efforts to prevent this kind of incident from happening again."
Teixeira's arrest came a day after The Washington Post reported that hundreds of pages of documents had been posted on the social media platform Discord by a man who worked on a US military base.
According to The New York Times, a "trail of digital evidence" pointed to Teixeira as the leader of the private group on Discord, called Thug Shaker Central, where the documents surfaced.