The Pentagon Investigates the Leaked Social Media Documents of Ukrainian War and the Spies on the Internet: A Response to the Biden Administration
The Pentagon has stood up an “interagency effort” to assess the impact of the leak, but US officials and close allies already fear the revelations could jeopardize sensitive sources and compromise important foreign relationships.
The Justice Department is investigating how the trove of highly sensitive documents, which include details about how the US spies on friends and foes as well as intelligence on the war in Ukraine, ended up on social media sites.
There is little information about who leaked the information, or how it ended up on social media sites.
“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 deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement over the weekend. “An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners.”
The leak of sensitive documents online has been a cause of concern for Congressional lawmakers, but they are not in the know about what has happened.
Senate and House Intelligence committee leaders want answers from the Biden administration. Senate counterparts have requested one as well as the House Intelligence Chairman who is scheduled to receive a briefing on Monday.
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The posts are photos of crumpled documents laid on top of magazines and surrounded by other random objects, such as zip-close bags and Gorilla Glue. A source familiar with the documents told CNN they looked as if they had been folded up in a pocket and removed from a secure location.
The leak in South Korea is the strongest response yet by an ally, as the Biden administration scrambles to contain the damage from apparent U.S. espionage on its partners. The State Department spokesman said Monday that U.S. officials were engaging with allies and partners at high levels to assure them of their commitment to safeguard intelligence. But he declined to provide more specifics, including whether Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had reached out to officials in South Korea.
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.
The document says the US has been looking intoUkrainian President Zelensky. According to a source close to Zelensky, Ukrainian officials are angry 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.”
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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.
Mr. Yoon’s office would not comment beyond Mr. Kim’s remark. Poland agreed to buy billions of dollars of South Korean weapons in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
An intelligence report about Israel, meanwhile, has sparked outrage in Jerusalem. The CIA produced a report that says the Mossad encouraged protests against the country’s new government and made several explicit calls to action.
US allies know the US intelligence community tracks friendly nations, but diplomats in some of them said it was frustrating that information was exposed publicly, which would hurt the US reputation.
Two Five Eyes diplomats told CNN that they have not yet received a damage assessment or progress in identifying the leaker from the US.
The official also pointed out that it was alarming to see one of the documents from February titled “Russia-Ukraine: Battle for the Donbas Region Likely Heading for a Stalemate throughout the decade. The document notes the challenges with assessing the “endurance of Ukraine’s operations.”
The private US assessment pointing to a likely yearlong stalemate is not helpful, the official said.
Mykhailo Podolyak, the adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said on his Telegram channel Friday that he believes the documents that have been disseminated are inauthentic, have “nothing to do with Ukraine’s real plans” and are based on “a large amount of fictitious information” disseminated by Russia.
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US government officials “are engaging with allies and partners at high levels over this including to reassure them of our commitment to safeguarding intelligence and the fidelity of securing our partnerships” following the leak, State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said Monday.
At the State Department, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has been tapped to lead the diplomatic response, according to a US official familiar with the matter.
The Easter holiday slowed the pace of discussions, but one of the diplomats stated that they expect a US update in the coming days.
The documents are part of a daily intelligence briefings prepared for the Pentagon’s top brass, including Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, officials told CNN.
The Pentagon team working to determine the scale and scope of the leak includes the Defense Department’s legislative affairs, public affairs, policy, general counsel, intelligence and security, and joint staff offices, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Chris Meagher said Monday.
Asked if the government has any sense of who leaked the documents, 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.
The interagency probe is being coordinated with the Pentagon’s Office of Intelligence and Security, according to three US officials, and could take months to complete. The documents that are marked Top Secret were posted on a social media platform earlier this year, and it will be examined to see if any sources have been compromised.
A senior US official told CNN that too many people have access to very sensitive information, and said thatthousands of people probably saw the documents before they hit the internet.
While many officials tend to take classified information home, one senior US official said, the fact that the paper was folded up “tells me this person did not have that authority.”
“We’re still investigating how this happened, as well as the scope of the issue,” assistant to the Secretary of Defense for public affairs, Chris Meagher, told reporters on Monday. There are some steps to be taken to take a look at how this type of information is distributed. We’re also still trying to assess what might be out there.”
Pentagon officials have been warned that anything they say about the situation could be used as part of the criminal investigation, officials said, so officials are being extremely careful with how they describe the leaked documents.
It is embarrassing and a senior defense official said the Defense Department’s White House Liaison Office had warned them to be more careful about social media and keeping track of classified material.
There is a version of the daily update published to a classified site that is accessible to people with proper clearances. Downloads themselves are not necessarily suspicious, officials said, but that access is recorded.
The senior US official added that “any office where there’s a boss” has a Microsoft version of a tablet that has been decommissioned. The Joint Staff Chairman’s daily intelligence summary informs the presidential daily brief, as well as Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information, is included in that tablet.
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Investigators will undoubtedly be examining printer logs from the last several months, officials said, which could potentially limit the pool of suspects.
“You can print Top Secret documents but only to a printer that is networked to Top Secret computers,” one of the senior US officials said. Each printer has a unique identifier and everything printed is traceable, another senior Pentagon official said.
The online photos of the printed documents will be inspected for any markings that could indicate where the printed documents came from, another US official said.
Mr. Yoon’s administration has insisted that the scandal would not and should not damage his country’s alliance with the United States. On Tuesday, his government said the leak was unimportant and that Defense Minister Lee had discussed the matter with his American counterpart.
Neither the Pentagon nor the South Korean presidential office responded to CNN’s request for more details. Meagher stated on Monday that there were some images that appeared to have been altered.
As CNN has previously reported, one leaked document listing Russian and Ukrainian casualty numbers as part of the war in Ukraine was altered in recent weeks to more than halve the number of Russian deaths before being spread on pro-Russian Telegram channels.
South Korea’s defense of the alliance with the United States is a failure of national interest at a time of ceaseless provocations and threat from North Korea
Legislators in the US are looking for answers. The Pentagon has notified the relevant congressional committees of their probe, including the Senate Intelligence and Senate Armed Services committees, sources said.
According to the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, anyone who points to sources and methods can be in serious danger. And that can mean people being killed, that can mean technologies being shut down. The bad outcomes on the battlefield are a result of that.
SEOUL — Opposition lawmakers in South Korea criticized the leaked Pentagon documents as a major security breach and possible evidence of U.S. spying as the government of President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday sought to downplay the disclosures and defend Seoul’s alliance with Washington.
It is very disappointing if it is true that the US has spied on us, since it undermines the South Korea-US alliance, the leader of the Democratic Party said. If it was true, he added, Washington should also apologize to the South Korean people.
The office of Mr. Yoon said on Tuesday that it had a system in place to stop attempts to spy on its officials. It accused opposition lawmakers of spreading “fake, negative suspicions” in order to gin up votes.
“This is a self-damaging act against national interest that undermines the South Korea-U.S. alliance at a time of ceaseless provocations and nuclear threat from North Korea,” it said.
“The North paraded these nonoperational systems to portray a larger, more capable missile force than it possesses and to mitigate the risk of damage to its real missiles,” it said. Independent analysts have long said that the missiles North Korea shows during its parades were likely imitations.