The U.S. Air Force announced that two commanders in charge of Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of leaking intelligence secrets on social media, have been temporarily suspended.
The Air Force has temporarily revoked two of his unit’s commanders’ access to remote systems and information, according to Air Force Spokesperson Ann Stefanek.
“Pending further investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” Stefanek said in a statement to Fox News, “the commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts, has suspended the commander of the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron.”
Following the Department of the Air Force Inspector General Investigation’s conclusion, the Air Force also suspended the detachment commander in charge of the unit’s administrative support for airmen. The Department of Air Force also temporarily disabled these people’s access to sensitive data and systems, according to an Air Force spokesperson.
“Commanders are taking appropriate action as information becomes available,” Stefanek continued. Every suspension is just temporary while an investigation is ongoing.
The suspensions coincide with an investigation into one of American history’s biggest classified intelligence leaks. Teixeira, 21, is accused of taking details from secret documents and disseminating them to hundreds of others via Discord, a social media platform popular among gamers.
Users of the app can create their servers or join others that are already running. These servers can have a small number of privately invited players, up to thousands of players.
Teixeira, an Air National Guard journeyman in cybersecurity, is charged with first disclosing typed-out sensitive information via conversations in a small, private server dubbed Thug Shaker Central, which had around 50 users, then telling photographs of confidential documents.
He had a federal government-issued top-secret information security clearance.
Since then, individuals from the private group have spoken to media organizations to admit they saw the intelligence papers.
