Air Force suspends leadership for unit of suspected Pentagon document leaker

By Haley Britzky, Oren Liebermann and Natasha Bertrand, CNN

The Air Force suspended two leaders of suspected classified document leaker Jack Teixeira‘s unit, it said in a statement Wednesday, one week after the unit stopped performing its intelligence mission amid an investigation into the leaks.

The commander of the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron, part of the Massachusetts Air National Guard in which the 21-year-old Teixeira served, was suspended from his leadership position, as was the detachment commander overseeing administrative support, the Air Force said. The two officers have also lost their access to classified systems and information.

Teixeira faces charges under the Espionage Act after allegedly posting classified intelligence — including sensitive information on the war in Ukraine — to the social media platform Discord in a series of leaks that revealed the scope of US intelligence gathering on both its allies and adversaries. He is expected to appear in court Thursday for a detention hearing.

The suspensions are temporary pending completion of the Air Force’s Inspector General investigation into the leaked documents, and commanders are taking appropriate actions as new information becomes available as part of the investigation, said Ann Stefanek, a spokesperson for the Air Force.

Investigators from the inspector general’s office arrived at the base on Tuesday, Stefanek said.

“The commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts, has suspended the commander of the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron pending further investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” Stefanek told CNN.

“Additionally, the detachment commander overseeing administrative support for Airmen at the unit mobilized for duty under Title 10 USC has also been suspended,” she added.

“This means that both the squadron’s state Air National Guard operational commander and current federal orders administrative commander have been suspended pending completion of the Department of the Air Force Inspector General Investigation,” she said. “Also, the Department of Air Force has temporarily removed these individuals’ access to classified systems and information.”

Last week, the Air Force announced that the unit had temporarily lost its intelligence mission as part of a series of steps initiated by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall following the disclosure of the leaks and the arrest of Teixeira. The intelligence mission was assigned to other organizations within the Air Force.

In addition, the Air Force inspector general began looking at the unit to better understand what went wrong that led to the leaks of classified information and how to prevent such a breach from happening again.

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CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.