The Pentagon rushed to contain the fallout on Monday from a leak of classified intelligence documents about the war in Ukraine as well as other sensitive information from Asia and the Middle East.
The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into the leak of dozens of documents, and US officials are working to determine the source of the leak and what ramifications it could have on the battlefield and on US efforts to gather intelligence.
“The Department of Defense continues to review and assess the validity of the photographed documents that are circulating on social media sites and that appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said. “An inter-agency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on US national security and on our allies and partners.”
The breach — which appeared to be the most significant since Edward Snowden leaked a trove of classified documents about US intelligence activities a decade ago — included apparently highly classified documents. Officials have said they appear mostly authentic, and cover a range of topics, mainly relating to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
They include briefing slides, some that appear specifically prepared by the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, while others seem to be from intelligence products included in daily briefings for other national security officials. Other than the war in Ukraine there are references to China, Iran, South Korea and Israel.
The documents point to important challenges for both Ukraine and Russia, and purport to show that both countries face setbacks in training and equipping troops. However, they appear to indicate that Ukraine’s air defences are particularly vulnerable and the country has a dwindling supply of air-defence missiles that have so far kept Russia from deciding to greatly involve its air force in the war.
“This is bad news for everyone,” a European official said. “It’s bad news for the Ukrainians, it’s bad news for the Americans because everyone sees how they operate and its bad news for the allies more generally because we see that the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition, which is not the best message you want in the air.”
The 50 pages of documents reviewed by the Financial Times also indicate that American intelligence has penetrated Russian military officials at the highest level and can gain information to inform Ukrainian decisions on a daily basis.
The documents, which first appeared on a messaging platform in January called Discord and more recently circulated to other social media including Twitter and Telegram, have sown chaos and paranoia among Washington’s national security apparatus ahead of a critical moment in the Ukraine war. Kyiv’s forces are expected to soon launch a counter-offensive against Moscow. The most recent documents are from early March.
Officials have said their efforts to trace the origin of the leak have been complicated because the documents that have appeared online have been printed out and photographed.
Several theories are circulating around the Pentagon about who could have leaked the documents and what may have motivated them do so, officials said. Some experts said the leaks could have been the work of an American citizen.
“The documents have some useful operational information, and their leak could also have some [public relations] value for Russia. But was it really a Russian sting?” said Dan Lomas, lecturer in intelligence and security studies at Brunel University in London. “The documents reveal how good US intelligence is and the extent to which it has penetrated Russian agencies — and the FSB, GRU and SVR have already had a bad war. So an insider job is far more likely. The enemy within is always the bigger threat.”
Western officials and analysts said it will take time to pin down the source of the leak given the scale of the American intelligence apparatus.
Some of the revelations sparked discontent and denials among allies, such as one report from intercepted communications suggesting that leaders of Israel’s Mossad encouraged protests against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhauls.
Israel’s government’s said in a statement on behalf of the Mossad that the assertion was “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever”.
“The Mossad and its senior officials did not — and do not — encourage agency personnel to join the demonstrations against the government, political demonstrations or any political activity,” the statement said.
The leaked material also appeared to contain details of internal deliberations by South Korean officials over whether to send ammunition to the US, which might be passed on to Ukraine. Seoul has resisted pressure from western officials to give military assistance to Ukraine, citing a law that prohibits the country from supplying arms to countries engaged in conflict.
The reports appear to have been based on signals intelligence, suggesting that the US had been spying on its ally, but Korean officials have sought to play down the episode’s significance. A spokesperson for South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol, who is due to make a state visit to Washington later this month, said only that Seoul would be seeking “appropriate measures” from the US.
British officials also pushed back on a description in the documents of an October episode involving a British surveillance plane that was allegedly nearly shot down by a Russian fighter jet.
“These reports contain inaccuracies and do not reflect what happened in International air space over the Black Sea,” a British defence source said.
Additional reporting contributed by James Shotter in Jerusalem and Christian Davies in Seoul.
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