

By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Late on Friday evening in New York, early Saturday morning in Moscow, the New York Times published a report by well-known mouthpieces for US and British intelligence on the Pentagon Papers.
This reveals fresh evidence of what the TNT War of the Worlds broadcast last week reported was the way John Teixeira, the alleged leaker of ten secret briefing papers on the Ukraine war from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was profiled by the Pentagon and over nine months of 2022 targeted in an official operation to disclose military secrets, which became public knowledge on April 6.
In this operation, Teixeira was the patsy for a Pentagon attack on Washington, Kiev and other allied officials who are planning to launch a Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russian forces. This, the Pentagon Papers reveal, risks not only Russian defeat of the Ukrainians on the battlefield, but also the destruction of US military dominance in Europe and the international credibility of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) alliance.
The report by Aric Toler of Bellingcat, Julian Barnes, and Malachy Browne of the newspaper, is headlined “Airman Shares Sensitive Intelligence More Widely and for Longer than Previously Known.” With Toler’s and Barnes’ long record for fabricating and promoting Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU), British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) source lies, the article means the opposite of its conclusion: “The additional information raises questions about why authorities did not discover the leaks sooner”. This is the alibi of the official leakers – they didn’t fail to discover the leaks later, they launched them from the start.
The Bellingcat group and New York Times now reveal that Teixeira began leaking “sensitive” information in “February 2022, soon after the invasion of Ukraine”. Sensitive means not classified.
The reporters also call the leaks “secret intelligence on the Russian war effort” but they repeat this consisted of “posts containing the sensitive information” and “classified documents”. No direct evidence of what the reporters claim they “reviewed” has been published, neither their classification codes nor other document records. “While it appears that the user [Teixeira] likely posted pictures of some documents, those have since been deleted from the chat group.” In other words, the reporters are claiming they have seen “detailed written accounts” – written by Teixeira. How and from what source the Bellingcat group got this evidence is being kept secret still. How the group knows what Teixeira allegedly wrote and what is or was classified secret, they don’t say.
The reporters also reveal that Teixeira claimed to his chat group of adolescent gamers in September 2022 that he “usually worked with GCHQ [General Government Communications Headquarters] people when I’m looking at foreign countries.” This is now a hint that it was the British signals agency who detected what Teixeira was doing and, according to the standard intelligence-sharing practice, alerted the US counterpart National Security Agency, which then alerted the US Air Force commanding Teixeira’s unit and other agencies. This Pentagon the Pentagon– that’s now the hint that it was the British who first spotted what Teixeira was doing, alerted the CIA and Pentagon. If the latter didn’t know it already.
The reporters did not contact GCHQ directly to ask what they knew, when they knew it, and what they relayed to Washington. Instead, they say questioned the British Embassy in Washington where, they report, “a spokeswoman…declined to comment.”
If this was the sequence of events, it would represent significant mitigating evidence for Teixeira, as well as the legal defence of entrapment when he goes to court on charges of espionage. For the time being, the federal magistrate judge in the Boston proceeding has postponed the plea and bail hearing scheduled for Teixeira on April 19 to allow his defence attorneys time to review the evidence and prepare.
The attorneys are also likely to argue that the indictment of Teixeira under the Espionage Act, 3 requires proof of “intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”
The New York Times publication has identified Teixeira’s lawyer as a Boston public defender named Joshua Hanye. Hanye is a highly experienced, 19-year veteran of criminal prosecutions. For Hanye to be vetted and obtain the security clearances required for him to see the top-secret codeword documents alleged in evidence against Teixeira will requires weeks, if not months. For the time being, he has entered no plea in court, and he refuses to speak with the Bellingcat group.
If Teixeira and Hanye are suspicious that Bellingcat and the New York Times are working for the government against him, there is reason in the published report itself. Toler, Barnes and Browne claim that “the Times found an online receipt in Airman Teixeira’s name” for the purchase of an antique rifle. This indicates the reporters have had access to official evidence taken from Teixeira’s personal computer. This is not open-source journalism; this access means government authorization to Toler of Bellingcat for access to prosecution evidence.
Accordingly, in this case everything Bellingcat and the New York Times say should be taken down and used in evidence against them.
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