Instead of finding the leaker in the offices of the Joint Staff, where senior generals and officials put together many of the documents that were posted to a small online gaming chat group called Thug Shaker Central, officials found themselves raiding the home of Airman Teixeira.
“Each of us signs a nondisclosure agreement — anybody that has a security clearance,” Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said at a news conference. “So all indications are, again, this is a criminal act.”
The arrest of Airman Teixeira, Ms. Farkas said, serves as a warning for what awaits those who mistreat classified information.
“They’re going to throw everything at him,” she said, “and that’s going to make it more important for the government to take action against others who think that they’re immune because of their senior positions.”
A person convicted in such a leak could face extended prison time, officials said. Airman Teixeira was arrested under the Espionage Act, violations of which carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison per count. Reality Winner, a former Air Force airman and an N.S.A. contractor convicted of leaking a classified document to the news media, received a five-year, three-month sentence. A Navy engineer, Jonathan Toebbe, who tried but failed to sell secrets to a foreign country that were classified at a lower “confidential” level, received a 19-year prison sentence last year. His wife, Diana Toebbe, received nearly 22 years in prison.
“This was a major security breach that cannot be allowed to happen again,” Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. “Anyone with a security clearance who betrays their country by purposefully mishandling classified documents or disclosing classified materials must be held accountable.”
Some military officials defended the practice of granting security clearances to service members regardless of their age; if someone is old enough to die for their country, they are old enough to be trusted with its secrets, they argued.
