A classic case of FAFO

Last Friday, Airman Jack Teixeira was arrested, picked up by a squad of heavily armed FBI agents at his childhood home in the sleepy rural town of Dighton, Massachusetts. 

Teixeira was arrested for leaking classified documents he'd had access to through his work as an IT guy at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod.

Even with all the puerile nonsense, the gun-nuttery; even with the racist memes, the antisemitic slurs, the Nazi imagery, I still have a wisp of sympathy for Teixeira. He's only 21, a man-child with a pathetic need to be "the man," or at least the Peter Pan to an online tribe of lost boys in desperate need of the calming influence and common sense of a Wendy. He and his online band of hapless brothers - mostly teenagers - gathered in a group named Thug Shaker Central, weren't conspiring to create mayhem IRL, to blow up power stations or slaughter innocents with their AR15s. Mostly, they were just being assholes, playing video war games and trading nasty memes and gun worship, with Teixeira happily assuming the role of lead asshole, a slightly older show-off getting off on the hero worship.

Just pathetic.

Just how pathetic? 

One of the ways they were able to identify Teixeira was because pictures he'd snapped of the documents showed a background that was matched to pictures of the granite countertops in his mother's kitchen that were found on social media. 

So far, the reasons for Teixeira's leak - which may prove harmful, maybe even disastrous, to the Ukrainians; and which may compromise the US's ability to continue to capture Russian military planning info, an ability that has been so helpful to the Ukrainians in their conduct of the war - do not appear to be ideologically or monetarily motivated.

Teixeira's beliefs seem to be some amalgam of Christian fervor, libertarianism, Waco-Ruby Ridge level paranoia, and gaming. And he wasn't looking to make a buck.

No, Teixeira wanted to impress this gang, showing them that he had access to information way beyond the dreams (yeah, I almost went there with wet dreams) of the gun and gaming nerds who looked up to him.

It started as long daily memos with complicated and, at times, confusing summaries of international events that members of the group found difficult to follow. Sometimes he would admonish his younger friends for not taking the information seriously, [group member with the screen name of] Vahki said.

Around October last year, his frustration led him to start posting original documents, including detailed battle maps from the war in Ukraine marked “TOP SECRET.” From October to March, Vahki said, the airman posted about 350 documents to the group. (Source: NY Times)

Teixeira apparently didn't think that the info he was sharing would go beyond the cyber confines of Thug Shaker Central. 

Then a 17 year old Thug Shaker who went by Lucca started doing his own posting in another online group holding convos about the Ukraine war. From there, it eventually found its way into the hands of supporters of the Russian war efforts, and to the intelligence community.

Teixeira realized the jig was up.

In a call with his group, he was pretty frantic:

“Guys, it’s been good — I love you all,” Airman Teixeira said, Vahki recounted. “I never wanted it to get like this. I prayed to God that this would never happen. And I prayed and prayed and prayed. Only God can decide what happens from now on.”

I don't think it's God that's going to be deciding what happens, son. I think it's the U.S. Government. And I can't imagine none of it's going to be good.  

“He was very freaked out,” Vahki said. “This isn’t something like an ‘oopsie-daisy — I’m going to be reprimanded.’ This is life-in-prison type stuff.”

I have no idea whether this crime - stemming largely from immaturity, braggadocio, and stupidly - merits life in prison. But I don't imagine that it's going to be any sort of home confinement, where he can have his afternoon snack on the granite countertop of the island in his mom's kitchen. He's probably looking at serious time in Leavenworth. Time that will mean missing out on his most formative years in terms of personal relationships and career. 

His only hope may be that some of the crazier right-wing nut jobs have taken up Teixeira's "cause" for no other reason than to crap on Joe Biden and the Democrats. Not surprisingly, Marjorie Taylor Greene is leading this ridiculous charge, claiming that the only reason Teixeira was arrested is because he's "white, male, Christian, and anti-war" and an "enemy of the Biden regime."

While it's unlikely that Trump will be back in power, with MTG as his VP, it's at least vaguely possible. And under that grim scenario I can see Jack Teixeira being added to the right-wing pantheon of wronged you, alongside Kyle Rittenhouse, and freed from whatever prison he's doing time in. (Note: my wisp of sympathy for Jack Teixeira is more than I have for Rittenhouse.) And I can see Jack Teixeira being pardoned.

But that's a remote possibility.  (Gulp: at least I hope so.)

So I'll end with this: if ever there was  classic case of FAFO, this may well prove to be it.