News

Jul 13, 2023

Jack Teixeira: From gamer to charges of espionage

DIGHTON — The air was still, and the sky was clear when the men in tactical gear

DIGHTON — The air was still, and the sky was clear when the men in tactical gear arrived at the two-story brick colonial. An armored vehicle crept to a standstill in the driveway. One agent popped out of the turret and trained his rifle at the front door. Six more gathered behind the vehicle, cloaked in camouflage and carrying heavy weaponry. Several other cars flanked the target.

It was a scene that could have been pulled straight from Arma 3 or Squad, the military simulation games that 21-year-old Jack D. Teixeira has spent literally hundreds of hours playing. Teamwork and communication are the keys to completing these missions. And this time, the squad was minutes away from achieving its objective.

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Then, hazel-eyed and boyish, Teixeira himself emerged from the house in baggy red gym shorts and an olive green T-shirt, shattering any resemblance to a video game world. Though Teixeira has spent much of his life at a keyboard playing war, this moment — when two rifle-carrying men in ballistic helmets lunged at him — could be the closest he will ever get to actual combat.

"What he did, well, it was a monumental f--- up," said Preston LaBree, a high school friend of Teixeira, whose childhood was anchored in long PlayStation sessions of Call of Duty with the disgraced Massachusetts Air National Guardsman.

LaBree and Teixeira's 8,000-person hometown, just east of Providence, is a far cry from the war-torn battlefields of Call of Duty. The Teixeira home sits in a woodsy lot, where Teixeira's mother runs a home floral business, near a golf course and a field of solar panels. The town's latest 911 call log depicts a safe suburban world where worries are small: A boat fell off the back of a truck. A basketball hoop was too close to the road. A woman complained that a cat had entered her yard.

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So little happens in Dighton that, LaBree said, "I would play soccer matches three towns over, and still, I’d have to explain where Dighton was."

But Teixeira's alleged crimes have put this quiet, hard-to-place community on the map with a treason case as bizarre as it is troubling. Past leakers of classified documents — such as Chelsea Manning, Daniel Ellsberg, and Edward Snowden — were whistle-blowers motivated by ideology. Teixeira is accused of leaking dozens of classified military documents to impress a cadre of teenage gamers in a forum named after a pornographic meme.

As the administrator and revered elder statesman of the online chat group Thug Shaker Central, Teixeira allegedly posted documents he had obtained in his low-level National Guard job troubleshooting computers and communications systems. The group — made up of roughly 20 active users— was heavy on gun talk and war-themed video game banter.

By sharing many state secrets concerning the brutal Russian assault on Ukraine, Teixeira wanted to give his young friends a taste of actual war, members told The New York Times. Instead, he’d brought the FBI to his doorstep.

It was an ignominious turn for a family steeped in military service. His stepfather was a master sergeant in the 102nd Intelligence Wing, the same unit Teixeira later joined. His mother worked briefly for the Department of Veterans Services and served on the board of the Massachusetts Military Heroes Fund, a nonprofit for military families, according to her LinkedIn.

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"It was just a given" that Teixeira would follow suit into a similar career, said LaBree.

As a middle schooler, Teixeira lugged around hulking books about aircraft and warfare, which he would pore over in the school cafeteria.

"I had this massive respect for him for knowing who he wanted to be. He was so cool to me because he wasn't seeking other people's approval like everybody else. He was just interested in what interested him," said LaBree.

Teixeira enlisted in the Air National Guard in 2019, just as his stepfather was retiring from a 34-year military career, according to military records. He graduated from Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School the following year, just as the COVID-19 pandemic forced the school to close and go virtual. In the National Guard, Teixeira became a low-level computer tech at Otis Air National Guard Base in Sandwich. His mother told the Times that he worked nights, helping maintain secure networks. He appears to have still lived at home.

Teixeira's discussion group on the gaming website Discord served as an antidote for the loneliness and isolation that came with the pandemic; the young gamers found camaraderie and a sense of belonging there. Platforms like Discord have long acted as community hubs. Users might find each other on the battlefield or in a large thousand-person channel, but their relationship would deepen in smaller, tight-knit group chats.

But Teixeira's rich online life extended far beyond chats on Discord. On Steam, another popular gamer platform, Teixeira went by several screen names — TexKilledYou, TheExcaliburEffect, or, most recently, Silhouette — and racked up hundreds of hours of gameplay. His profile shows he has logged 319 hours playing the team-centric Squad and 367 hours playing the hyperrealistic Arma 3, whose slogan boasts that it "sends you to war."

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Teixeira has some 180 screen friends on the platform. Some are close acquaintances, such as a 17-year-old user — screen-named Vahki — who was one of the 20 active users in Thug Shaker Central and a key source in The New York Times investigation into Teixeira. Others, such as a 46-year-old e-mail developer in Florida, couldn't recall why or when they’d become online friends with Teixeira.

"That's so crazy, I looked up his name, didn't even realize the connection/who he was until now," wrote the developer to the Globe.

The gaming world can be a chaotic and jarring place for an outsider. On Steam, forums crawl with cutting sarcasm and obscure inside jokes. Some corners of the site are uglier than others. Profanities and slurs — which are abundant — are censored into heart symbols instead of asterisks. One heart-filled rant posted to Teixeira's profile by a close friend suggests a deep hatred for French Canadians.

The motley mix of screen names in Teixeira's friend list encapsulates the childish yet twisted character of his gaming circle. On the list? Alex Jones, ILikeCheese, Boston Market Meatloaf, Penis Man, fatandproud, and ADOLF DRIPLER. One opted for the avatar of the notorious Nazi concentration camp commander Amon Goth, while another settled on the Mr. Peanut mascot.

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Teixeira had an affinity for military simulation games with a staggering level of animated verisimilitude. Helicopters buzz with sounds recorded from real Apaches. The guns in Arma 3 recoil when fired, both via animation and physically through the controller. There's a key for holding your breath while shooting to improve accuracy, just as in real life.

Members of the original Discord group have spent hundreds of dollars on gear and guns in both the virtual world and in real life. In a search warrant, federal investigators described a video of Teixeira firing off a Tokarev, an out-of-production Soviet semi-automatic pistol. Some members of the Discord group reportedly showed The Washington Post video of Teixeira shouting racist and antisemitic slurs before firing a rifle.

The line between reality and fantasy blurred further when Teixeira allegedly began sharing confidential documents to Thug Shaker Central that outlined troop movements in Ukraine and gave insight into American spy campaigns in important allied countries like Israel and South Korea. Over time, he became more and more casual about his posting, seemingly unaware or unconcerned with the gravity of his actions.

He also seems to have made little effort to conceal clues to his identity and whereabouts. In some photos, a pamphlet for a Creative XP hunting scope pokes out of the top of the frame. In another, there is a tube of Gorilla Glue. In another, there is a Boston Red Sox cap. Red capital letters stamped in the corners of each document spell out a warning: SECRET, TOP SECRET, and CONFIDENTIAL.

Teixeira seemingly did not intend for the documents to spread beyond his pandemic haven. But they quickly did. Within weeks, they could be found sprinkled into chats about the Minecraft computer game and fan tributes to a Filipino YouTube celebrity. It wasn't until they landed on more mainstream media channels, like Twitter, that the federal government took notice.

Only then did this 21-year-old's seemingly misguided quest for validation and clout send national security circles into a tailspin, revealing the fallibility and fragility of the American intelligence apparatus. The ordeal has become deadly serious for everyone involved: Teixeira faces charges of espionage and treason and may have jeopardized sensitive intelligence activities. In addition, the Pentagon has stripped the entire 102nd Intelligence Wing of its intelligence-gathering mission as officials investigate how American secrets fell into such unreliable hands.

But the unfolding drama can also seem ludicrous. An FBI search warrant for Teixeira's property says he listed a phone number belonging to a KFC in Taunton on the paperwork needed to obtain his high-level security clearance. It is unclear if that was an error in the search warrant or if Teixeira put the number on his paperwork. If Teixeira was granted access to top secret intelligence despite listing a fast food restaurant number as his cellphone, it would say something unflattering about the federal screening process. (The Taunton KFC declined to comment for this story.)

Teixeira appeared briefly in court Wednesday, where a judge granted his lawyer's request to postpone the planned detention hearing. Black rosary beads were tucked into his orange prison-issued shirt. Back in Dighton, "no trespassing" signs blocked the entrance to his mother's home. Online, Thug Shaker Central had evaporated from Discord, but dozens of leaked documents were still easily findable on the web. Teixeira's social media accounts have largely vanished.

But this quote remained on Teixeira's Steam profile: "Beware the quiet man. For while others speak, he watched. And while others act, he plans. And when they finally rest … he strikes."

Evan Allen and Shelley Murphy of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Hanna Krueger can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @hannaskrueger.