The US airman who admitted to leaking a trove of classified Pentagon documents that revealed Washington apparently spied on allies and doubted Ukraine’s military strength was jailed for 15 years on Tuesday.
Jack Teixeira, 22, orchestrated the most damaging leak of classified information in a decade while serving as an IT specialist with the Massachusetts Air National Guard.
He posted highly sensitive documents on the social media platform Discord, from which they spread across the internet.
“I wanted to say that I’m sorry for all of the harm that I’ve brought and that I’ve caused, and that I don’t think I can really sum up how contrite I am,” Teixeira told the court ahead of sentencing, The Boston Globe reported.
Teixeira, whose family members were in court for the sentencing, was arrested in April 2023 and pleaded guilty in March this year to six federal counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information.
The United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Joshua Levy told a media briefing that the platform used by Teixeira reached 150 million people worldwide.
“Jack Teixeira made the deliberate choice day after day, week after week for over a year to share the nation’s secrets that were entrusted to him,” he said, confirming the sentence of 15 years imprisonment.
Teixeira, who was also ordered to spend three years on supervised release following his prison term and to have no contact with foreign agents, was detained in a dramatic arrest broadcast live on TV networks.
Because he was on active duty at the time of the offenses, he was subject to both federal law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice and consequently he will now face a military trial. AFP
