Two officers who were in command of Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman who is accused of leaking intelligence documents over a social platform, have been temporarily suspended, the U.S. Air Force said.
According to Air Force Spokesperson Ann Stefanek, the Air Force suspended two commanders of his unit and temporarily removed their access to classified systems and information.
“The commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts, has suspended the commander of the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron pending further investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” Stefanek said in a statement to Fox News.
The Air Force also suspended the detachment commander overseeing administrative support for airmen at the unit.
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“This means that both the squadron’s state Air National Guard operational commander and current federal orders administrative commander have been suspended pending completion of the Department of the Air Force Inspector General Investigation. Also, the Department of Air Force has temporarily removed these individuals’ access to classified systems and information,” the Air Force spokesperson said.
Stefanek added: “Commanders are taking appropriate action as information becomes available. All suspensions are temporary pending further investigation.”
The suspensions come amid an investigation into one of the largest classified intelligence leaks in U.S. history as Teixeira, 21, allegedly took information from classified documents and shared them over Discord, a social app primarily used by the gaming community, to potentially hundreds of people.
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The app allows users to set up individual servers or join other existing servers that can range in size from just a few privately invited members to larger servers with hundreds of thousands of members.
Teixeira, who worked as a cybersecurity journeyman for the Air National Guard, is accused of initially sharing typed-out classified information over messages in a small, private server — called Thug Shaker Central, which had about 50 members — before he provided photos of classified documents.
He held a top-secret information security clearance, granted to him by the federal government.
Members of the private group have since come forward to media outlets to say they viewed the intelligence documents.
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Teixeira was later accused of sharing the information, which included details about troop movement in Russia’s war with Ukraine, with a larger, public server with hundreds of members.
He was arrested at his home in North Dighton, Mass., on April 13 following an FBI investigation into the “alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.”
Teixeira has been charged with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and willful retention of classified documents.
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