Person who leaked classified US intelligence documents works on a military base: report

The culprit behind the leak of a trove of classified US intelligence documents is reportedly a man who works on a “military base” that shared the sensitive material with a close-knit group of online pals on the chat platform Discord.

The bombshell development was revealed in a Wednesday Washington Post report that partially relied on interviews with a teenager in the Discord group who claims to be friends with the leaker, who goes only by “OG.” 

“He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” the unnamed teen told the newspaper, which obtained permission from his mother to conduct an interview. 

“He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie,” the alleged friend of the leaker said, adding that he is in his early to mid-20s.

The teenager claims that “OG” steadily shared purportedly classified material with him and about two dozen other members of the private Discord group called “Thug Shaker Central,” in which “OG” was an administrator. 

“We all grew very close to each other, like a tightknit family,” the teenage member said of the chat group that was formed at the height of the pandemic in 2020. “We depended on each other … There was no lack of love for each other.”

“OG” reportedly obtained the documents from his job on an unnamed “military base,” where he told the group he had access to a secure facility on site, according to the teen.

The alleged leaker seemed to gain credibility among the group when he shared information that “only someone with the high kind of clearance” would know that later showed up in the news.

According to the report, the roughly 25 group members, including several foreign citizens from the likes of Russia and Ukraine, prayed together and discussed video games, jokes, memes and watched “OG” post purportedly transcribed material from secret government documents.

“OG” annotated the documents with explanations for intelligence terms such as “NOFORN,” which means the material must not be shared with foreign nationals – that he would bring home from his job at the unnamed base, the report said.

When typing out the government secrets proved too time consuming, “OG” began posting photos of the documents themselves. 

Among the US secrets “OG” purportedly shared with the community are documents showing that Egypt had planned to sell Russia 40,000 rockets, intelligence suggesting NATO-ally Turkey had been asked for weapons by Russian mercenaries, maps of Ukrainian and Russian troop positions and casualty counts and information on US and allied special forces in Ukraine. 

“If you could think it, it was in those documents,” the teenager said of the hundreds of pages of material posted by “OG.”

Beginning in late 2022, “OG” shared photos of several documents a week, some of which revealed clues that could perhaps be used by investigators to identify the leaker, such as his bed, his glowing red keyboard and household Items such as Gorilla Glue and nail clippers. 

Both the Pentagon and the Justice Department have launched investigations into the leaks. 

On Feb. 28, material posted by “OG” on the Thug Shaker Central server was leaked to another Discord server linked to YouTuber “wow_mao” by a different teenage member of Thug Shaker Central, according to the report.

From there, the material spread like wildfire. 

On March 4, documents appeared on the “Minecraft Earth Map” Discord server. 

On April 5, classified documents related to the war in Ukraine were posted on Russian Telegram channels, message board platform 4chan and Twitter – it was at this point that US officials became aware of the leak. 

Before the New York Times broke the story of the leak on April 6, “OG” reportedly came into the server “frantic” and said that “something had happened, and he prayed to God that this event would not happen. … But now it’s in God’s hands,” a member of the server told the Washington Post. 

According to the report, “OG” has been in contact with some members of the server as recently as “in the past few days” and is described as being “distraught” and unsure on  “how to go about solving this situation.”

The young friend of “OG” told the Washington Post that to date he hasn’t been contacted by law enforcement and that he won’t divulge the leakers identity, the military base he supposedly works at, or his whereabouts to authorities – which he claims to know.