Jack Teixeira, 21 years old, clean-shaven, with buzz-cut hair and proudly uniformed, is the face of America’s newest security threat, one it is struggling to resolve.
The formidable US counter-intelligence infrastructure is adept at finding spies and rooting out whistleblowers. Teixeira, charged on Friday on two counts of the Espionage Act, is neither spy nor whistleblower.
His family history is the epitome of conservative patriotism. His stepfather served in the same unit, the 102nd intelligence wing of the Massachusetts air national guard, and his mother, who worked for years for veterans’ charities, celebrated the fact that her son was following the same path. The young recruit was an observant Catholic, who would pray with other members of his online chat group.
But Teixeira’s outlook had taken the same dramatic turn as much of American conservatism, becoming conspiratorial and distrustful of the very institutions earlier generations revered. Friends quoted in the Washington Post said he had come to regret joining up, as his view of the military dimmed.
His motive for allegedly sharing hundreds of top secret documents among the 20 or so young men and teenage boys on the Discord gaming server he moderated, at least as he explained it to them, was to alert them to shadowy forces driving world events. He reportedly posted the documents, photographed unfolded and laid on his family’s kitchen counter alongside glue and nail clippers, without commentary or any apparent...
CLAIM: Video claiming President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had resigned. RATING: FALSE A YouTube video falsely claimed that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had stepped down from office amid continue...