The Pentagon on Monday rushed to contain the fallout 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 highly classified documents, which officials have said appear mostly authentic, cover a range of topics, mainly relating to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
They include briefing slides, some that appear specifically prepared for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, while others seem to be 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.
The material also indicates 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 set to soon launch a counter-offensive against Moscow. The most recent documents are from early March.
A factor complicating the probe is that the documents, viewed by the Financial Times, are printed out and photographed, which officials said could make it harder to trace the origin of the leak.
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