A Massachusetts Air National Guard soldier accused of posting classified intelligence reports and sensitive documents online agreed Monday to plead guilty in exchange for a 16-year prison sentence and an obligation to provide full disclosure to officials to inform the extent of his revelations.
Airman Jack Teixeira withdrew his not guilty plea during an appearance in federal court in Boston and pleaded guilty to six counts of “willfully withholding and disclosing national defense information,” according to court documents filed by the government.
The judge in the case, Indira Talwani, has scheduled a hearing for September to determine whether she would approve the deal. It would be highly unusual for a judge to make major changes to a deal that requires approval from top American intelligence and law enforcement officials.
The Justice Department agreed not to charge him with violations of the Espionage Act, which, combined with the other charges, could have resulted in a sentence of up to 60 years in prison if convicted.
Airman Teixeira, 22, has been in custody since his arrest at his mother’s home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, last spring. He was responsible for one of the most widespread leaks of sensitive information in years – a major embarrassment that demonstrated how even a low-level soldier could access and disclose defense secrets for months without being stopped.
Prosecutors said they found no evidence of espionage and concluded that airman Teixeira posted secrets in a chat group on the social media platform Discord to provide people he met online with inside information, particularly details about the war in Ukraine, to impress.
The indictment says Airman Teixeira, who worked in an intelligence unit at an air force base on Cape Cod, removed the material from computers after conducting unauthorized database searches, even after a superior warned him to stop.
The secrets revealed included information about the provision and delivery of military equipment to Ukraine, as well as a highly sensitive report on Russian and Ukrainian troop movements. Officials said the revelations about troop movements may have affected how and from whom American intelligence collected the information.
He also shared a report on the hacking of an unnamed American company’s accounts by “a foreign adversary” and details of an unspecified foreign plot to attack U.S. troops abroad, describing “where and how.” The indictment states that an attack could take place.
A New York Times examination of more than 9,500 of his messages painted a picture of a young man fixated on guns, mass shootings and dark conspiracy theories.
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2024-03-04 17:14:02
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