The alleged author of the Pentagon leaks worked at a military base, according to 'The Washington Post'

The newspaper speaks to a member of the group where the documents were first leaked

MADRID, 13 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) -

An investigation by the newspaper 'The Washington Post' has revealed that the alleged perpetrator of the leak of classified US Intelligence documents is, according to statements by a member of the group in which the documents were shared, a worker at a military base.

According to the newspaper's source, a minor member of a private group on the Discord messaging service, the alleged author of the leaks is a man between the ages of 20 and 25 who for months sent the documents to his fellow chat group, first reproduced by hand, and later by photographs.

The group in which these messages were shared was created during the pandemic on the most popular messaging network for young people and adolescents who love video games. According to the member of the group, there were more than 20 people in his chat, the vast majority of them young men and adolescents who shared a right-wing, religious, and gun-friendly ideology.

The alleged perpetrator, the oldest in the group, would have been explaining to the other members the meaning of the military jargon in the documents, and would have boasted of revealing things that "the Government does not want them to know", always according to the investigation of the cited newspaper.

The member of the group has also affirmed that he did not send anything by mistake, that he knew for sure what he was doing, and that he knows the real name, as well as the location of the alleged author of the leaks, although he has expressed that he will wait for the investigation that they are currently being carried out by the US Intelligence Services.

The newspaper has had access to videos sent to the group by the alleged author of the leaks - who some members describe as an uncle or almost a father figure - in which he is in a shooting range, uttering racist and anti-Semitic insults. before shooting the target.

On one occasion, the source has revealed, the alleged author became angry with the other members of the group, since he had spent "an hour each day writing these very long messages in which he often made notes and explanations of things that we normal citizens wouldn't understand", getting angry at the apparent lack of interest from the younger ones, threatening to stop sending out the leaks.

The main rule that the alleged perpetrator of the leaks imposed on his colleagues was not to publish the documents anywhere, according to the source consulted by the newspaper, who added that the group included people from outside the United States, among other countries Russia and Ukraine.

According to the aforementioned media, on February 28 the first batch of documents left the group, shared by one of the users -their source does not know who it was- in another chat of the messaging network they used, and from there to each more and more groups, although the Intelligence Services did not report proof of these leaks until a month later.

In mid-March, the alleged author of the leaks stopped publishing documents, and a day before the first US outlet reported the alleged leak, he wrote to the group in a "frantic" state, assuring that "something had happened, and I prayed to God that this did not happen.

After the case went public, the members of the group jumped to another server to continue their conversations, in which the alleged author of the leaks confessed to feeling "confused and lost about what to do next."

Finally, he asked the rest of the group members to delete all the documents and all the messages and disappeared, something that according to the source consulted by 'The Washington Post', "felt like losing a family member, we all cried".

In addition, he has stated that he believes that, when the Intelligence Services find the alleged author of the leaks - something that he assumes will happen - he will not have a fair trial and will be sent instead to "Guantanamo or somewhere dark", and has even added that perhaps he will be "murdered".