Jack Teixeira had fascination with military, guns in school

Accused US intelligence leaker and Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira was fascinated with the military and war in high school and entered the same intelligence unit his step-father served in for more than three decades — before he was then accused of the biggest national security breach in a decade.

Teixera, 21, would sometimes show up to class at Dighton-Rehoboth High School in Massachusetts wearing camouflage and carrying a “dictionary-sized” book on guns and tanks, former classmates told CNN.

“He was dead set on joining some branch of the military, even as a kid,” John Powell, who attended middle school and high school with Teixeira, said.

However, the intense fascination was off-putting to his classmates.

“A lot of people were wary of him,” Brooke Cleathero, who also attended middle school and high school with the Air National Guardsman told the outlet.

“He was more of a loner, and having a fascination with war and guns made him off-putting to a lot of people.”

Powell described him as pleasant and quiet but also said he did not have many friends growing up and was sometimes picked on at school.

Others recalled that Teixeira displayed some alarming behavior in school, including making purportedly racist remarks, and once showing up to class in a T-shirt emblazoned with an image of an AR-15 a day after the deadly Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017.  

Another ex-classmate told CNN that while Teixeira’s conduct did not rise to the level of having to be reported to the authorities, she said that he made her feel “nervous.”

Teixeira grew up in North Dighton, Mass. in a military family and joined up after graduating high school.

The New York Times reported that he even missed his high school graduation in the summer of 2020 to attend basic training in Texas.

On October, 1, 2021, Teixeira entered active duty with the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing — the same unit where his stepfather, Master Sgt. Thomas Dufault, had served for 34 years, before retiring in 2019.

His stepbrother Alex Dufault also worked at Joint Base Cape Cod, reported Cape Cod Times.

Teixiera held the rank of airman 1st class, working as a Cyber Transport Systems Specialist responsible for military communications networks.

The low-level guardsman was arrested at his mother’s home by heavily armed FBI agents Thursday, accused of leaking hundreds of sensitive documents about the war in Ukraine on a gaming platform.

Teixeira is expected to be charged with the unauthorized removal of classified national defense information under the 1917 Espionage Act.