Leaker of classified US intelligence works on military base, posted the documents on Discord: report
Fox News
The person behind a major leak of secret U.S. intelligence documents is reportedly a man in his 20s who worked on a military base and shared the classified information on the chat app Discord.
The details were revealed in an explosive new report from the Washington Post on Wednesday. The outlet reportedly spoke to a fellow member of the chat group the leaker ran on Discord.
The teenage source told the Post that the leaker ran a Discord group called “Thug Shaker Central,” and identified himself only as “OG.”
The teen, who the Post said had parental permission to speak to the outlet, said “OG” shared troves of classified material with him and roughly two dozen other members of the chat group.
US DEFENSE SECRETARY LLOYD AUSTIN SAYS LEAKED CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS WERE ‘SOMEWHERE IN THE WEB’
Members of the group, described by the Post’s source as “tight-knit,” reportedly included foreign citizens from Russia and even Ukraine.
Many of the posts were written out by “OG” who then reportedly tired of writing out the intelligence and later resorted to taking and posting pictures of the documents and sharing them with members.
The Washington Post reports “OG” obtained the sensitive information from his job working at an unnamed “military base.”
The source told the Post he believed “OG” only shared the documents to keep members of the group “in the loop” and was not hostile to he U.S. government nor was he working to help another country.
“He is not a Russian operative. He is not a Ukrainian operative,” the source told the Post.
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The top-secret intel included movements of high-ranking political leaders, updates on military forces, detailed charts of battlefield conditions in Ukraine and satellite images of the aftermath of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian facilities. Other documents, according to the report, included potential trajectory of North Korean ballistic nuclear missiles that could reach the U.S. and pictures and information on the surveillance technology attacked to the Chinese spy balloon that the Biden administration allowed to float across the U.S. in February.
The source claimed “OG” did not intend to be a whistleblower. However, the secret documents were leaked on Feb. 28 by another teenage user from the group and spread throughout the internet.
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U.S. officials did not become aware of the leaked intelligence until April 5. The New York Times first broke the story of the leak on April 6.
The Biden administration insists it does not know who is behind the leaks. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin briefed reporters on the leaking of dozens of sensitive and highly classified documents Tuesday, saying they were “somewhere in the web.”
“Well, they were somewhere… in the web and where exactly and who had access at that point, we don’t know. We simply don’t know at this point,” Austin said.
The Pentagon and FBI are investigating the leaks. Fox News has reached out to the Pentagon and FBI for comment.
A new cache of classified information surfaced online Thursday morning, according to the New York Times. The leak includes 27 pages detailing how American spies have gained access to all aspects of the Russian intelligence apparatus and military command structure, the outlet reported.
The intel reportedly reveals the Russian government is unable to agree on the number of casualties suffered in the Ukraine war. It also suggests that the Russian military has been accused of downplaying the number of casualties.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. government attempts to track down the leaker of the documents, the Post’s teen source claims he knows the leaker’s real name and where he lives but said he would not help authorities locate him.