Jack T. is said to come from a patriotic family

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It has been known since Thursday: secret agent and gamer Jack T.* (21) is responsible for the Pentagon leaks, which have been giving the American authorities headaches for over a week. T. was arrested Thursday at his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts.

But who is Jack T., who has put American national security at risk with his leaks? As the “Washington Post” writes, T. should come from a patriotic family. As a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, he had followed in the footsteps of countless family members who had also served in the military.

Devout Catholic interested in guns

According to the newspaper, Jack T., who appears boyish in photos, also has a more disturbing, ruthless side, according to researchers. This suspicion is confirmed by videos from some Discord members of the Washington Post. T. can be seen making racist and anti-Semitic remarks and then firing a gun.

A friend of T., who met him on a Discord server where T. had shared the controversial content, describes him as patriotic. He is said to have been a devout Catholic and interested in guns. Outside of the server, the Secret Service employee would have been a “pretty normal guy.” He is said to have had “a light temper” and was “more of a mentor than a leader”.

T. is said to have started sharing secret documents on Discord’s server as early as February 2022, at the start of the war in Ukraine. T. apparently wanted to free “people he thought were his friends and could trust” from the propaganda that was circulating, the friend continued. It has been agreed on the server never to pass the documents outside the group, as this could harm the interests of the United States.

Was T. a narcissist?

The group describes Jack T. as a “charismatic gun geek with dark views on the U.S. government, intelligence community, and law enforcement agencies.” Others in the group would have admired him. “He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Pretty much everything you’d want from a crazy movie,” said one of the members.

Half of the group would have been “kids in their basements” playing video games and the other half would have been gun enthusiasts. According to the friend, another member of the server ended up sharing the documents on another server, which led to them spreading over the Internet.

According to the Washington Post, the young man had become frustrated because the other members of the group were not paying enough attention to his revelations. Ex-Intelligence Coordinator James Clapper, 82, told CNN it sounded to him as if this T. had a certain “level of narcissism” in common with other whistleblowers facing him. “There’s an ego element to feeling important about yourself by accessing and revealing such material.”

“These were not accidental leaks”

As the friend reports, it was not T’s intention to harm the United States. “He loved America, but he just had no faith in his future.” T. had only hoped to give the mostly younger members of his server “a better perspective on things the only way he knew how.” His friend is convinced: “He is a good person who, in my opinion, trusted the wrong people.”

As one chat group member emphasized in an interview with the New York Times, the informant should not have been a whistleblower. T. did not intend for the sensitive information to end up anywhere other than in their group chat.

However, not everyone agrees. “He’s a smart guy. Of course he knew what he was doing when he published these documents. These weren’t random leaks,” another member told The Washington Post. (dzc)

* Name known

Source: Blick