From what we know so far, Jack Douglas Teixeira is no Chelsea Manning.
But the classified U.S. military intelligence he allegedly leaked could have even more impact on the Ukrainian battlefield and in diplomatic circles than the files for which Manning, a junior intelligence analyst in Iraq, was convicted of releasing to the world through WikiLeaks.
He’s no Edward Snowden either.
The criminal case against Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the U.S. Air Force National Guard in Massachusetts, appears to have none of the ethical underpinnings or digital sophistication that were the hallmarks of the Snowden affair, in which files stolen from the National Security Agency were released to expose the activities of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Nor are there any indications that whoever was behind the leaked Pentagon documents took the sort of evasive measures that Snowden — now a Russian citizen and Moscow resident — took to avoid detection, arrest and capture.
The charges against Teixeira have not been tested in a courtroom, but what we have here, at least on first read, looks more like a case of boasting and bravado by a youngish American serviceman to younger, impressionable members of an online community united by their shared love of videogames.
It appears the documents were posted online in an attempt to impress, rather than to hinder an unjust cause or shame the world’s most powerful army into changing its ways.
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