Washington-FBI agents on Thursday 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 week-long investigation -- fuelled by frenzied 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.
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