2022–2023 Pentagon document leaks
In April 2023, two sets of leaked classified foreign intelligence documents of the United States began circulating on Twitter, Telegram, and 4chan. Jack Teixeira, an airman first class of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, had allegedly photographed printouts of the documents at his parents' home in Dighton, Massachusetts, and posted them to the instant messaging platform Discord on a server named "Thug Shaker Central". The earliest posts dated to October 2022.
The documents are primarily related to the Russo-Ukrainian War, but also include foreign intelligence assessments concerning nations including North Korea, China, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. A subset of documents was shared to Discord servers for a YouTuber and the sandbox video game Minecraft in late February and early March 2023. In April, a 4chan user posted several documents on the website's political imageboard /pol/. The documents were then spread throughout pro-Russian Telegram channels; at least one image was altered to show more Ukrainian casualties than Russian casualties.
The leaked documents contain operational briefs from the Joint Staff. Regarding the Russo-Ukrainian War, the documents suggest difficulties for both Russians and Ukrainians, in equal part; while one slide suggests that more Russians have died in the war than Ukrainians, several documents covering the battle of Bakhmut suggest difficulties for Ukrainians in countering Russian flanking maneuvers and supply shortages in the area. Additionally, relations between Russia and other nations are covered, with multiple documents detailing efforts by Russian military intelligence agency GRU and paramilitary organization Wagner Group in promoting Russian ideals while downplaying American values. Other documents reveal attempts by Wagner Group to acquire weapons in Turkey, a NATO member. One set of documents alleges that Mossad encouraged staff and citizens to participate in judicial reform protests.
The leak spurred a diplomatic crisis between the United States and the Five Eyes. An interagency effort—composed of the Department of Defense, the White House, the Department of State, and the United States Intelligence Community—are assessing the leak. Concurrently, the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation have opened a criminal inquiry into the leaker. U.S. officials have accused Russia of being behind the leak. Ukraine and Russia have downplayed the leak, with both countries saying that the documents contain distorted figures. Specific claims in the leaks have been denied by some countries, such as by South Korea and Egypt. On April 13, 2023, the FBI arrested Teixeira in connection with the leak.
Background
In October 2021, the United States became aware of efforts by Russian president Vladimir Putin to quickly increase military spending in Russia by diverting funds from the country's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using satellite imagery, intercepted communications, and sources within Russia, the U.S. believed that Putin intended to invade Ukraine. Speaking to President Joe Biden, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley stated Russia would attempt a multidirectional shock and awe attack. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the U.S. has provided the Ukrainian government with intelligence on Russia. Representative Adam Smith, the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said that the U.S. provides "some intelligence" to Ukraine on MSNBC's Morning Joe, but reserved that the U.S. was not providing the "kind of real-time targeting" that the U.S. has provided in other conflicts. White House press secretary Jen Psaki commented that the U.S. provided more significant intelligence than what Smith described. Responding to Politico, a spokesperson for Smith called the United States' intelligence "rapid".Document dissemination
The documents are believed to have been first posted in early March 2023 to a large audience in a Discord server for British-Filipino YouTuber wow_mao. They gained wider attention after they were posted two days later on a Minecraft server, in a discussion in which one user cited them in an argument with another.A Bellingcat investigation found that the documents had been posted in a Discord server for the YouTuber Oxide. Several sources interviewed by Bellingcat stated that the documents were posted as far back as October 2022, and were posted by a server administrator known as "OG" in a channel about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Speaking to The Washington Post, Oxide—who currently serves in the United States Army in the Pacific Northwest—told the publication that he had banned various users in his own Discord server a year prior, including some for posting a meme video of a black man in a gay porn film, dubbed the "thug shaker". The banned users then moved to the Thug Shaker Central server.
According to The Washington Post, OG regularly brought home documents from an unnamed military base. Users of the server formed a bond with OG as he posted the documents, believing him to be a trusted source, with some knowing his full name and state. An investigation by The New York Times, following a digital evidence trail, found that OG is likely Jack Teixeira, an airman in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. According to The New York Times, details on the margins of the document photographs match those in Teixeira's childhood home. Teixeira was promoted to airman first class in July 2022, and became a cyber transport systems journeyman stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod. On other social media platforms, Teixeira was also known as jackthedripper. According to the court documents, a social media user suspected of being Teixeira began releasing classified information on an unspecified social media platform in the form of "paragraphs of text" as early as December 2022.
On April 5, an anonymous user on the /pol/ imageboard on 4chan posted several images of the documents, with that user's documents circulating via pro-Russian Telegram channels. One such channel, "Donbass Devushka", republished these images. The images posted to Donbass Devushka and to /pol/ are identical, except for one image, where the number of Ukrainian casualties outweighs Russian ones, suggesting that the image was altered, possibly by Donbass Devushka. The Wall Street Journal reported that Sarah Bils, a former aviation electronics technician 2nd Class, last stationed at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, is allegedly behind the Donbass Devushka social media accounts that posted at least four of the classified documents.*
The New York Times initially reported on the documents two days after they were posted on Telegram. The documents continued to be spread on Twitter. In response to a tweet about the leak, Twitter CEO Elon Musk alluded to the Streisand effect, and suggested that Twitter would not take down the documents. Discord is "cooperating with law enforcement" in regard to the leak. On April 21, The New York Times reported that a user whose profile matched Teixeira had shared the documents to another Discord server beginning on February 25, 2022, days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. 64 photographs of the leaked documents were published by Distributed Denial of Secrets.
Contents
The documents—primarily in the form of pictures of charts and graphs—concern intelligence that the United States holds on other nations, including North Korea, China, and Iran, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The number of documents is estimated to be over 100 pages. The documents appeared online as photographs of documents atop an apparent hunting magazine, with other objects such as zip lock bags and Gorilla Glue scattered throughout the photographs. Senior U.S. officials have attested to their legitimacy, believing that the documents are intelligence and operational briefs from the Joint Staff within the Pentagon. The documents appear to be compiled from multiple sources, including the National Security Agency, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency ; in the lattermost case, one section of the documents originates from a daily intelligence update.In releasing the documents, the documents were first photographed and then uploaded online. According to Javed Ali, a former U.S. counter-terrorism official, the uploader of the documents may have taken steps to conceal their IP address and timestamps from the photographs in an effort to feign anonymity. The classified material would have been limited to a sensitive compartmented information facility, where electronic devices connected to the Internet are prohibited. A senior U.S. official stated that hundreds—potentially thousands—of government officials may have obtained the documents.