On Friday, dozens of confidential documents appeared on various platforms including Twitter, Telegram and 4chan, containing very confidential information from the US Department of Defense, i.e. the body of the US administration that deals with security. Such publications are very rare, and are generating a lot of concern in the US intelligence community: a US official told the New York Times that the removal and publication of these documents could become “a nightmare” for the United States and the countries with which they share much of their intelligence information, namely the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Already in early March, over 100 images of documents marked as “top secret” and other terms that indicate the presence of highly sensitive information had ended up on a server dedicated to fans of the Minecraft video game. Documents are given a “top secret” designation when US officials believe their disclosure could cause exceptionally serious harm to national security. It is not yet clear whether the documents released on Friday are the same ones that emerged online in March.
The US Department of Defense, which among other things directly coordinates and supervises all the agencies that deal with national security, has confirmed that these are documents from their archives, and that it is investigating to identify who stole them.
The main suspicion, shared by various Western intelligence experts, is that the documents were stolen and released – almost all in their original form, but some altered, according to the US Department of Defense – to complicate the war effort in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States has been the single most influential country in organizing international military and economic support for Ukraine.
Former Pentagon official Mick Mulroy told the New York Times that the leak of confidential documents represents “a serious violation of US security”. “Given that these are mainly document photos, it appears that this was a deliberate action, done by someone who wishes to harm the efforts of Ukraine, the United States and NATO,” Mulroy added.
Among the documents published on the web, writes il Wall Street Journal, there are a not very optimistic assessment of Ukraine’s air defense capabilities; an updated map of the state of fighting in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, several photographs of graphs of arms deliveries, the state of Ukrainian troops and battalions; the schedules and routes of western reconnaissance aircraft in the Black Sea; the vulnerabilities of some weapons supplied to Ukraine; and the composition and armaments of the nine U.S. and Allied-trained Ukrainian Army brigades for the upcoming spring offensive.
The Defense Department said some of the photos were manipulated, mainly to skew estimates of war dead in Ukraine, by overestimating Ukrainian casualties and underestimating Russian casualties. A senior Ukrainian official, always on condition of anonymity, told al New York Times to believe that the leak was orchestrated by Russia, while various Russian bloggers on Telegram claim that it is a Western ploy to put further responsibilities on Russia.
– Read also: Who are the Russian “military bloggers”?
In addition to classified information on the war in Ukraine, the documents published online also show various statements on US positions on military strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and domestic assessments of countries such as Israel and South Korea.
The US Department of Justice also said it had opened an investigation into the leak and was in contact with the Department of Defense, but did not add anything else on the possible identity of the perpetrator or perpetrators.