Massachusetts Air National guardsman Jack Teixeira who has been accused of revealing US diplomatic and military secrets is no whistleblower.  The 21-year-old airman first class is instead a young man trying to impress two dozen members of an online grouping with his ability to collect and share hundreds of current documents which which reveal covert US intelligence gathering — spying — at the expense of foreign allies and antagonists. While working in technology support at a military base on Cape Cod, he accessed documents, hand-copied some, pilfered others, photographed and, starting in February 2022, sent them to online chat room Discord.  He seems to have been inspired by the Ukraine war.

His friend told The Washington Post that Teixeira saw this as a “depressing” battle between “two countries that should have more in common than keeping them apart.” By circulating the classified documents he tried “to educate people who he thought were his friends and could be trusted.” He wanted to counteract the massive propaganda campaign launched to serve Ukraine and smear Russia. Although he asked the youth and boy recipients of the documents never to share them since it could harm US interests, someone did.  It took more than a year for the US to take notice of the leaks and more than a week to track him down.

As the oldest member of the group, Teixeira saw himself as its mentor. A practising Catholic, a right-wing “libertarian,” he considers himself a patriot with a mission is to inform his juniors. Their juvenile slogan is, “God, guns and (military) gear.”  Internet gaming is their passion.  The documents reveal Ukrainian and Russian military weaknesses, and that the US is spying on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Hungarian President Victor Orban, and UN  Secretary General Antonios Guterres. One document shows that Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, has supported protests against the hard right government of Binyamin Netanyahu.  Other documents reveal that Iran’s nuclear programme has been penetrated by US informants.

US spying on Guterres tells a great deal about US intentions and policies. The US was clearly bugging his conversations with UN officials. This enabled Washington to accuse him of being “soft” on Russia because he has called for full implementation of last summer’s US and Turkish-brokered agreement. Under the deal, Moscow agreed to allow Ukraine to ship grain exports from its Black Sea ports to Turkey and other destinations in exchange for lifting US and Western sanctions which impede Russian exports of grain and fertilizer although they are meant to be exempt from sanctions. While Russian warships did not interdict Ukrainian grain exports, Russian grain and fertilizer exports were curtailed by sanctions which prevented insurance firms from covering Russian shipments and banks from making payments to Moscow. The West argues that cheap Ukrainian grain feeds millions of families in developing Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries but says nothing about Russia’s more abundant supplies.

Russian grain output is 20 per cent of global supplies; Ukrainian exports amount to about 10 per cent.  Therefore, US sanctions have punished customers of Russian grain and fertiliser across the world with the poor suffering most. Russia has agreed to extend the agreement for 60 days to provide time to lift specific sanctions but the deadline is May 18th.  Little wonder that Guterres urges that the deal should be respected by all parties.

Guterres stepped up efforts to enable Russia to export, one document said, “even if that involves sanctioned Russian entities or individuals”. The document claimed his actions were “undermining broader efforts to hold Moscow accountable for its actions in Ukraine.” This difference of approach between Guterres and the US demonstrates that Washington gives primacy to punishing Russia over lifesaving food for millions of people in Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea and other countries consuming Russian grain and relying on Russian fertilisers to nourish crops.

Teixeira is not the first to appropriate and publish Pentagon Papers. Like three recent notable whistle blowers he faces prosecution under the 2017 US espionage act which can award many years imprisonment for each charge. The release of top-secret Pentagon Papers on deepening US involvement in the Vietnam War caused a major row between the Johnson administration and the US public and Congress. They were photocopied by Daniel Ellsberg and given to The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers in 1971. Ellsberg, now 92, was a wistleblower driven by the desire to change US policy unlike Teixeira.  Ellsberg was and remains an honourable activist who did not seek to show off but wanted to put an end to that war. Although threatened with 115-years in jail under the espionage act, Ellsberg was set free by the trial judge because of government misconduct and illegal evidence-gathering.  Asked in recent television interviews if he would do this again or leak secrets on other deadly, destructive, and covert US military adventures, Ellsberg said he would — with a wicked grin.

WikiLeaks Australian founder Julian Assange, who published 750,000 documents on the 2003 US war on Iraq, has been incarcerated in London’s Belmarsh prison since 2019 awaiting a decision on his extradition to the US where he would face trial under the espionage act.  The whistleblower, former US soldier Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years but served seven, dating from her arrest in 2010.

In 2013, Edward Snowden, now 39, an intelligence operative, leaked documents on global surveillance conducted by the US National Security Agency and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance comprising the Five Eyes — the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada intelligence alliance — with the collaboration of European governments and telecommunication companies.  Faced with imprisonment under the 1917 act, Snowden escaped arrest and took refuge in the Soviet Union where he became a naturalised citizen. None of the above were spies who transmitted US state secrets to US enemies. Teixeira seems to have been boosting his image while Ellsberg and Assange were doing a service by warning against US military overreach and Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency spied on politicians and hapless citizens around the globe.