The New York Times has been accused of double standards by its own military correspondent, who noted his colleagues ‘worked feverishly’ to reveal who was behind the Pentagon leaks – yet would have worked equally intensely to protect his identity if he had leaked the documents to them.
David Philipps, military correspondent for the Gray Lady, tweeted: ‘The NYT worked feverishly to find the identity of the guy leaking TS docs on Discord. Ironically, if they same guy had leaked to the NYT, we’d be working feverishly to conceal it.’
Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old National Guard airman, was named by the paper on Thursday as being behind the leak of the classified files, which he is accused of sharing on the social media platform Discord.
Ninety minutes after Teixeira was identified by the paper, the FBI arrived at Teixeira’s home in North Dighton, Massachusetts and arrested him.
Teixeira appeared in a Boston federal court on Friday and is facing 15 years in prison if convicted of illegally taking and leaking classified information and military secrets.
Jack Teixeira, 21, was ‘outed’ by The New York Times as the source of the Pentagon classified documents leak on Thursday. He was arrested shortly after the paper named him
Teixeira is pictured being taken into custody on Thursday at his Massachusetts home
His arrest was the culmination of a week-long scramble by the media and the U.S. security services to find him. The charge was led by Bellingcat, the investigative journalism group, and saw The New York Times and Washington Post battle to find more detail about the leaks and the person behind them.
In July 2005, Judith Miller, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, was sent to jail after a federal judge declared that she was “defying the law” by refusing to divulge the name of a confidential source for her story.
She spent 85 days behind bars for refusing to name undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame.
David Phillips accused his employer, The New York Times, of double standards
Teixeira posted the treasure trove of top secret files under his online user name ‘Jack the Dripper’ for months before the leak was uncovered.
He worked as a junior cyber security specialist in the intelligence unit based at the Otis Air National Guard Base in western Cape Cod.
It is believed to have started on a site called Discord, a social media platform popular with people playing online games.
Teixeira is believed to have posted about guns, games and top secret U.S. government information.
The court filing lodged in Boston on Friday said that some of his fellow chatroom members reported his activities to investigators.
It alleged that the 21-year-old used his government computer to search classified intelligence reporting for the word “leak” on April 6.
That was the day when the first stories broke about the huge security breach.
Prosecutors claim he searched the term to establish whether US intelligence had information on the identity of the person behind the leaks.
Jack Teixeira faced two felony charges at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 14, 2023. A member of the US Air Force National Guard, the 21-year-old was arrested on suspicion of leaking a trove of sensitive US government secrets.
This document appears to show the state of Ukraine’s air defenses in February and in May, when it is anticipated they’ll be badly depleted
He was identified as the ringleader of a chatroom, known as Thug Shaker Central, on Discord, an invite-only platform.
He then allegedly posted images of folded-up papers because he felt his writings weren’t being taken seriously, the Associated Press reported.
Officials at the US Justice Department have opened a probe into the 21-year-old, whose actions embarrassed U.S. allies around the world.
Long-standing friends of Washington from Britain to South Korea and Israel slammed much of the information as bogus.
It outlined possible arms deliveries to Ukraine, as well as details of Western-led training for the Ukrainian armed forces.
But in an interview with ABC News, one of the country’s most senior military officials dismissed the leak’s impact on Kyiv’s battlefield plans.
‘This will not be able to affect the real results of the offensive operation,’ said Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s head of military intelligence.
The country’s top spy is credited for being one of the few Ukrainian officials to correctly predict the timing of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
The 21-year-old’s actions have been roundly criticized by lawmakers from all political parties.
But he received support from far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who mistakenly referred to him as ‘Jake Teixeira’ on Twitter.
In yet another unhinged social media rant, the Congresswoman representing Georgia’s 14th District claimed he was being prosecuted because of his skin color.
‘Jake Teixeira is white, male, Christian, and antiwar,’ Greene said. ‘That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.’
The 48-year-old repeatedly parrots Kremlin talking points on Ukraine, including the entirely fictional claim that that the country is overrun with Nazis.
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