We’re seeing the emergence of a new type of leaker, Charlie Stevenson, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies, noted Thursday in a newsletter to friends and students.
In the past, most leaks on U.S. foreign policy have come from three sources: administration officials launching trial balloons, losers of interagency fights who want to rally fellow critics, and whistleblowers seeking to expose terrible activities.
Now, with the recent flood of highly classified leaked documents, mainly on the Ukraine war, Stevenson is seeing the rise of a fourth type: “the showoff who wants to demonstrate his inside knowledge.”
That seems to describe the man who allegedly shared at least 300 pages worth of classified Pentagon documents with friends online, identified by the New York Times as Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Airman 1st-Class (the equivalent of a Private 1st-class) in the Massachusetts Air National Guard.
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The Washington Post had gone some ways toward tracking down the leaker Wednesday night, reporting that the documents posted to Discord, an online chat platform popular with gamers, originated with a “young, charismatic gun enthusiast.” Known to his online comrades as “O.G.,” the source worked at a “military base” and had been sharing classified documents with a small Discord group—roughly 25 young men—for the last few years. On Feb. 28, one of the teenage members posted several of the documents on another, much larger...
By Andrew Goudsward WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday ruled that the Justice Department can keep 2020 election ballots seized during an FBI search in January, a win for Presi...