For more than a year, an employee of a military base in the United States has allegedly shared, with approximately 24 people, confidential information from American intelligence on the Discord online messaging system, widely used by video game enthusiasts. The Washington Post collected testimonies from two members of the discussion group, on condition of anonymity.
They recount how one of their own, nicknamed “OG”, started sending long, sometimes difficult to decipher messages about American politics, security or geopolitics a year ago. “OG” said he copied classified documents he had access to in the course of his work on a US military base, the name of which the witness did not reveal. He spent “part of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cell phones and other electronic devices.”
“OG” would be the author of the online leaks which reveal, in particular, the concerns of the American intelligence services as to the viability of a Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russian forces, due to training and supply problems. US authorities have not publicly confirmed the authenticity of these documents, and it has not yet been independently verified. The Pentagon nevertheless claimed that the case posed a “very serious” risk to the national security of the United States.
One of the witnesses belonging to this “club by cooptation on Discord”, aged under 18, explains that the person responsible for the leak “worked hard for hours writing classified documents which he shared with his comrades on the Discord server”. These transcripts were accompanied by explanations for the other members of the group.
Secret US intelligence information was among those messages. The focus group was formed during the Covid-19 lockdown. Its members, who met on the internet, chatted, watched movies and prayed together. They also exchanged racist jokes. The name of the server of the group “Thug Shaker Central”, is a racist allusion, inviting its members to a certain freedom of tone.
In a video, seen by journalists from the Washington Post, “OG” poses at a shooting range and vociferates racist and anti-Semitic insults before firing several shots. However, the witness interviewed by the American daily ensures that it was not a “server aimed at recruiting fascists”.
However, the members of this group would have met four years ago on another Discord discussion, dedicated to firearms and military equipment, fads of far-right groups in the United States. They then left him to join the new group created by “OG”, where they would have become “a close-knit family”, according to the witness.
Twenty years old, respected by the other members, “OG” would be the leader and shares with them the secrets gleaned from his work. One of the members confides to the Washington Post a strange fascination for him: “He is slender. He is strong. He is armed. He is trained. Pretty much everything you might expect from a crazy movie.”
Despite everything “OG” gets carried away, one day, because of the insufficient esteem that the other members would have for him, according to him. “He got upset, and repeatedly said, ‘If you don’t want to interact with [the handwritten confidential information], I’m going to stop sending it.’ He criticizes them for being more interested in other content such as videos posted on Youtube.
It was then that he reportedly began sending photographs of the documents he has access to at his work. According to one member, “OG” “seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer others protection from the troubled world around them.” In a paranoid delirium symptomatic of America’s far-right networks, ‘OG’ viewed America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies as a ‘sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark’ claiming that the government was hiding horrible truths.
But the witness does not consider his “friend” a whistleblower. “OG” allegedly requested that the documents not come out of this 24-person loop. Some of them nevertheless found themselves, a few months ago, on another group on Discord, then on loops of the Telegram network, pro-Russian, until the New York Times revealed the affair, the 6 april.
“OG” would then have intervened in the Discord chat room in a “frenzied” state, according to the Washington Post witness. Panicked, the leaker explained having to disappear, provoking hysterical reactions from the other members of the group for whom “it was like losing a member of the family”.
The FBI and the American justice have opened investigations into the origin of these leaks. For the moment, the witnesses of the Washington Post have not yet been heard. One of them assures that he will not give the name of the “leader” of his group to the investigators if he is questioned, as long as “OG” has not left the United States.
