Washington, DC – The suspected leaker of secret Pentagon documents does not appear to be connected to a foreign adversary of the United States, nor was he a whistleblower trying to expose perceived government misconduct.

Rather, 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, who served in the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard, has been accused of sharing the information with members of a social media server to “discuss geopolitical affairs and current and historical wars”, the FBI said in a court document on Friday.

“How on earth does a 21 year old gamer junior airman have this much access to classified intelligence?” US legislator Adriano Espaillat wrote in a tweet.

How on earth does a 21 year old gamer junior airman have this much access to classified intelligence?

Meanwhile…

MAGA extremists are celebrating leaks of official government secrets.

— Adriano Espaillat (@RepEspaillat) April 14, 2023

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US authorities said they arrested Teixeira, who worked as an IT official with the National Guard, on Thursday after linking a social media account that was posting the classified documents to his address in Massachusetts.

The FBI affidavit said the social media user was posting paragraphs of text showing what “appeared to be classified information” around December 2022. The user then started publishing photos of the purported documents around January.

The leaked files included details of Western military support to Ukraine, information about Russia’s war effort and intelligence collected from allied states.

Experts have said the “damaging” leaks risk exposing US intelligence sources and causing a diplomatic rift with countries mentioned in the documents.

The Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner, said in a statement this week that the panel would “examine why this happened, why it went unnoticed for weeks, and how to prevent future leaks”.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden – whose administration has sought to stem the fallout of the leaked documents – praised what he called the “rapid action” of US law enforcement agencies to investigate what took place.

“And our national security team is closely coordinating with our partners and allies.”

Questions continue

Still, Teixeira’s arrest does not appear to be the end of the discussion. Many lawmakers are demanding answers about how the leaks happened.

French Hill, a Republican on the House intelligence panel, said the leaks will be “top of mind” for the committee next week.

He told Bloomberg that he expects a detailed briefing to help with the “oversight investigation of just why this 21-year-old Air National Guardsman had access to this level of data, and why he felt compelled to break the law and become a spy”.

Republican Congressman Darrell Issa also questioned why Teixeira was able to obtain secret documents.

“One of the challenges is that there’s a concept in classified information called ‘need to know’, and they haven’t demonstrated why this individual had access to something that he didn’t have a need to know,” Issa told Fox News on Friday.

According to the FBI affidavit, Teixeira had a “Top Secret” security clearance and “maintained sensitive compartmented (SCI) access”, which were required for his position as a cyber defense operations journeyman. SCI refers to classified information obtained from intelligence sources.

On Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Pat Ryder said the department entrusted its members “with a lot of responsibility at a very early age”.

“Think about a young combat platoon sergeant and the responsibility and trust that we put into those individuals to lead troops into combat. That’s just one example across the board,” he told reporters.

He added that when it comes to secret documents, respecting such responsibilities is also “about the law”.

But Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer who also sits on the House intelligence committee, said she looked forward to asking “aggressive questions” about how the leaks happened.

“The idea that he would have access to such a broad array of information and be able to exit a building with it is absolutely outrageous to me,” Spanberger told MSNBC. ALJAZEERA

Ukraine’s EU backers skeptical of counteroffensive – Bloomberg

Some EU nations supporting Ukraine have started to doubt whether Kiev will be able to recapture large swathes of territory this year, Bloomberg has reported. Even a modest advance would likely result in heavy casualties among Ukrainian personnel and require considerable amounts of ammunition and hardware, the outlet claimed, citing anonymous EU officials.

In an article on Friday, Bloomberg alleged that the high hopes prevalent among Ukraine’s backers late last year, after Kiev’s troops managed to regain a large area, have now mostly dissipated. Fewer people in Western capitals are counting on a decisive push in 2023, with the fighting expected to continue well into next year.

The news agency quoted unnamed European officials “involved in efforts to support Ukraine’s military” as predicting that a realistic goal for Kiev would be a 30 km (20 mile) advance. This, if successful, should set the stage for a deeper counteroffensive in 2024, the sources predicted.

To support such a push, Ukraine’s Western backers would need to step up their military production capacity, Bloomberg said. According to the outlet, further large-scale deliveries could, however, run into political opposition in some countries.

An unnamed European official cited in the report also warned that any such operation would be a costly endeavor, both in terms of manpower and weapons, as Russian forces have had time to dig in, with minefields, ditches, and concrete anti-tank pyramids in place.

Nevertheless, several European defense officials have told reporters that the counteroffensive, which the Ukrainian leadership has been hyping up for several months now, is likely to get underway by mid-May. Strikes may be expected from multiple directions, potentially including diversionary ones, the sources alleged.

Speaking to The Hill on Tuesday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal suggested that the counteroffensive may actually begin in the summer. He insisted that Western backers were not putting any pressure on Kiev to force it into action without due preparation.

The official also called on the West to provide Ukraine with more artillery, ammunition, middle- and long-range missiles, tanks, and fighter jets.

On the same day, the Washington Post, citing a trove of recently leaked classified documents, reported that US intelligence did not hold out much hope back in February as to Ukraine’s ability to make significant territorial gains during the anticipated counteroffensive.

Among the problems supposedly faced by Kiev at the time were “force generation and sustainment shortfalls.”  RT

AL JAZEERA / RT

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