A senior intelligence official called the leak a ‘nightmare for the Five Eyes’, referring to the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes countries. Eyes that use intelligence extensively, reports The New York Times who first reported it.
The logs appear to detail US national security secrets from Ukraine to the Middle East to China, alarming the Pentagon and adding turmoil to a situation that seemed to take the Biden administration by surprise on Wednesday, the report writes. publication.
Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, told the newspaper that the leak of classified documents represented a “significant security breach” that could hamper Ukraine’s military planning. “Because many of them were photographs of documents, it appears to have been a deliberate leak by someone who wanted to harm the efforts of Ukraine, the United States and NATO. “, did he declare.
Another analyst called what emerged “the tip of the iceberg.” Security analysts who have reviewed documents leaked on social media say the growing body of information also includes classified information about China, the Indo-Pacific theater of war, the Middle East and terrorism.
A source told the publication that the documents likely did not come from Ukrainian officials, as they did not have access to specific blueprints bearing the seal of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. The second official said determining how the documents were leaked would start with finding out which officials had access to them.
At the same time, some experts do not exclude that the materials “filtered on the Net” constitute systematic disinformation of foreign intelligence services regarding the planning of military operations against other states. Especially considering that this story is promoted by mainstream US media, where such “leaks” from US law enforcement and anonymous comments from some “high-ranking sources” often appear.
Pentagon documents that have been posted on multiple websites and social media that appear to detail US and NATO assistance to Ukraine may have been altered or used as part of a disinformation campaign . Associated press . By the way, the main British and French media have not taken a close interest in this story, which only tells such stories.
The documents, which have been posted on portals such as Twitter (blocked in the Russian Federation), are marked as secret and look like regular updates that US headquarters would prepare daily but not release publicly. They are dated February 23 to March 1 and contain what appears to be detailed information on the arrival of weapons and equipment in Ukraine with more precise dates and quantities than are usually reported to Washington.
These are not military plans and do not include details of any planned offensive in Ukraine. And some inaccuracies, the agency continues, “have caused some to doubt the authenticity of the documents.” Also, with the naked eye, you can see that some information comes from open sources. Finally, on Friday, U.S. officials again “scrambled” and were unclear about the origin of the documents, their authenticity, or who uploaded them in the first place.
An official US source said the initial documents resemble figures released daily by the Pentagon, although some figures are incorrect. Even if they were legitimate, the official said, the United States believes that the real intelligence value of these documents is low because most of them are information that Russia already knows or can obtain on the ground. battlefield. Thus, the diagrams and graphs depict part of the battlefield state of the two sides a month ago, the movements of US military forces in the past 24 hours, the number of personnel and local weather forecasts.
The Washington Post (WP) for its part writes to have received dozens of photographs, which, apparently, were secret documents dated at the end of February and the beginning of March. They range from intelligence briefings to tactical battlefield updates to assessments of Ukraine’s defense capability.
They contain information on the Ukrainian and Russian military, as well as highly sensitive US analysis of China and other countries, and the documents also mention highly classified sources and methods that the US uses to collect this information. , which worries those who see them. United States National Security, the article notes.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said “the matter is under review” but declined to say when officials first learned of the leak or how much damage the administration Biden considers it a disclosure. According to her, the Pentagon referred the matter to the Department of Justice.
A WP source at the US Department of Defense, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s preliminary understanding of the content and implications of the leak, said numerous documents appeared to have been prepared over the winter for General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior military officials, but were available to many other staff and deputy US contractors with appropriate security clearances.
It’s unclear who might have posted the documents online, the source said, adding that hundreds if not thousands of people had access to them. The source of the leak, according to the official, “could be anyone.” At the same time, high-ranking US officials realized that the volume of leaked documents was much larger than initially thought.
According to Rachel VanLendingham, a former military lawyer and expert in military law, such violations represent “one of the most serious crimes against the national security of the United States”. The images in the document appear to come from the same source. Each page was printed before being photographed and folded in four in the same way.
Secret documents can only be printed from computers in a secure facility, and every transaction is recorded electronically, said Glenn Gerstell, former general counsel for the national security agency.
In the past, US government employees and contractors have been sentenced to long prison terms for mishandling classified information. In a high-profile case, an Air Force veteran and National Security Agency contractor pleaded guilty in 2018 to one count of unauthorized transmission of national defense information and was sentenced to five years and three months in prison.
At the same time, no American media remembers the story of Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks revelations, when hundreds of thousands of truly genuine, not fake, confidential messages leaked onto the web, becoming a real slap in the face for the community. American intelligence. .
