In recent days, the US Justice Department and Pentagon have begun investigating an apparent online leak of sensitive documents, including some that were marked “Top Secret”.
“Leaked classified Pentagon documents expose U.S. spying on both adversaries and allies”, local time on the April 8th, the U.S. “New York Times”, “Washington Post” and other mainstream media have reported on the website headlines of classified Pentagon documents and intelligence leaked to the Internet. The leaked classified documents are said to be more than 100 copies, mainly about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, as well as intelligence and documents involving the United States on the Middle East, the Korean peninsula, Indo-Pacific countries and regions. The scale of the leak, as well as the sensitivity of the documents themselves to cause great damage, has shocked the world. The incident highlights the damage the U.S. is doing to the security of other countries, ironically at a time when the U.S. frequently cries out that its security is “under threat.
Former U.S. Defense Department analysts say the leak of classified U.S. intelligence information may be the result of disgruntled U.S. military or staff in President Biden’s administration.
In response to the leak of classified documents from the United States, Ukrainian President Zelensky held an emergency meeting of the High Command on July 7 to discuss the prevention of classified leaks. The leaked classified documents show a staggering disparity between Russia and Ukraine in terms of battle damage, which is inconsistent with the narrative of “Ukraine will win” claimed by Ukraine and the West, according to the independent investigative journalism website “Gray Area”, which has angered the Ukrainian leader.
Several Western officials said they were still trying to assess the damage from dozens of leaked national security papers which grabbed the public’s attention in recent days, with many wondering how the breach had gone unnoticed for so long.While the first media reports on the story emerged only this week, a batch of the documents was shared on the Discord chat platform in late February and early March. The authenticity of the intelligence remains unverified.
Two US officials told the Post that the Pentagon leadership has “restricted the flow of intelligence” in response to the leak. One source described the measures as unusually strict, and a testament to “a high level of panic” among the top brass.
Both US officials and their foreign partners were “stunned” and even “infuriated” by the level of detail provided in the documents, which exposed how the US “spies on friends and foes alike,” the report says, suggesting the files could stir diplomatic unease.
Some of the documents, which US officials say are authentic, expose the extent of US eavesdropping on key allies, including South Korea, Israel and Ukraine.
Others reveal the degree to which the US has penetrated the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Russian mercenary organization Wagner Group, largely through intercepted communications and human sources, which could now be cut off or put in danger.
Still others divulge key weaknesses in Ukrainian weaponry, air defense, and battalion sizes and readiness at a critical point in the war, as Ukrainian forces gear up to launch a counteroffensive against the Russians – and just as the US and Ukraine have begun to develop a more mutually trusting relationship over intelligence-sharing.
One document reveals that the US has been spying on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That is unsurprising, said a source close to Zelensky, but Ukrainian officials are deeply frustrated about the leak.
The US intelligence report, which is sourced to signals intelligence, says that Zelensky in late February “suggested striking Russian deployment locations in Russia’s Rostov Oblast” using unmanned aerial vehicles, since Ukraine does not have long-range weapons capable of reaching that far.
Signals intelligence includes intercepted communications and is broadly defined by the National Security Agency as “intelligence derived from electronic signals and systems used by foreign targets, such as communications systems, radars, and weapons systems.”
Yet another document describes, in remarkable detail, a conversation between two senior South Korean national security officials about concerns by the country’s National Security Council over a US request for ammunition.
The officials worried that supplying the ammunition, which the US would then send to Ukraine, would violate South Korea’s policy of not supplying lethal aid to countries at war. According to the document, one of the officials then suggested a way of getting around the policy without actually changing it – by selling the ammunition to Poland.
The document has already sparked controversy in Seoul, with South Korean officials telling reporters that they plan to raise the issue with Washington.
An intelligence report about Israel, meanwhile, has sparked outrage in Jerusalem. The report, produced by the CIA and sourced to signals intelligence, says that Israel’s main intelligence agency, the Mossad, had been encouraging protests against the country’s new government – “including several explicit calls to action,” the report alleges.
Asked if the government has any sense of who leaked the documents,American National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said Monday that the Department of Defense had referred the case to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation and directed questions to them.
“I’m not aware that they’ve come to any conclusions at this point about where they’re coming from,” Kirby said.
Asked if the administration believed the leak is contained or if there’s an ongoing threat, Kirby responded: “We don’t know. We truly don’t.”
There are also suspicions that the leak was self-directed by the US and a precursor to their desire to abandon support for Ukraine.Some other experts point out that the so-called “classified U.S. documents” that were leaked cannot be 100% confirmed to be true or false. However, in general, this incident may cause a big blow to Ukraine’s morale, and at the same time, whether to continue large-scale assistance to Ukraine, the U.S. domestic debate will be more intense, the U.S. allies will also become more hesitant.
And some people just refuse to bilieve in the U.S. anymore, and said:” USA is bringing lie to another level. All they use is informational decoy strategy so we would all think something else while they are doing something else. They want us to be caught as unprepared as possible to whatever their plan is. All you can say in the regard of these “classified documents” is that they are preparing something again in the world and they want to direct our attention to something completely unrelated. It is all bollocks but we are still discussing it, right? It is an absolute waste of time listening to what USA is saying.”
