Man known online as ‘OG’ is said to have access to large amounts of classified material and to regard intelligence services as repressive.
The man responsible for the leak of hundreds of classified Pentagon documents is reported to be a young, racist gun enthusiast who worked on a military base, and who was seeking to impress two dozen fellow members of an internet chat group. The Washington Post interviewed a teenage member of the group, who described the man, referred to by the initials “OG”, from their online correspondence, and shared photographs and videos. The Post also viewed a video of a man identified as OG at a shooting range with a large rifle.
“He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target,” the report said. OG told fellow members of the same internet group that he worked on a military base, which was not named in the report, where his job involved viewing large amounts of classified information. The leaked documents have laid bare secrets about Ukraine’s preparations for a spring counter-offensive, US spying on allies such as Ukraine, South Korea and Israel, and the tensions between Washington and allied capitals over arming Kyiv.
There is increasing evidence that the leak was not an intelligence operation by a state actor aiming to discredit the US, but more likely the consequence of a Pentagon policy of granting top secret security clearances to huge numbers of service members, civilians and contractors. The number of employees and contractors in the entire US government with top secret clearance is about 1.25 million.
OG appears to have acted as a leader on a server originally set up in 2020 on the Discord messaging platform by a small group of gun enthusiasts and gamers. The group went by several names, but most often it was known as Thug Shaker Central. Starting last year, OG is reported to have posted the documents on a channel on the server he named “Bear vs Pig”, a reference to the Ukraine war but also a viral video showing pigs fighting off a black bear.
According to the teenage member of the group interviewed by the Post, OG “had a dark view of the government”, portraying the government, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence agencies, as a repressive force. He ranted about “government overreach”. The Post said details were confirmed anonymously by other members of the group, and that it had viewed a total 300 photographs of classified documents, three times the number previously thought to be circulating.
Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/13/pentagon-leaks-og-source-military-base-discord-report