US officials scramble to unearth source of intel leak

Washington: US officials have launched an investigation to pinpoint the source of a leak after highly classified documents containing intel raging from Ukraine’s air defenses to Israel’s Mossad spy agency surfaced online. A few experts in US suspect that someone within the country leaked the documents in question owing to the nature of the information that touches upon topics like Ukraine, China, the Middle East and Africa. Michael Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official told Reuters, “The focus now is on this being a US leak, as many of the documents were only in US hands.” The possibility of a pro-Russian element behind the leak has not been ruled out by investigators. Officials say that if an external source is found to be behind the leak it would be one of the most serious security breaches the US would witness since the WikiLeaks case where more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the platform. After the leak was disclosed, Reuters reviewed  Reuters has reviewed more than 50 documents labeled “Secret” and “Top Secret” that first appeared last month on social media websites, beginning with Discord and 4Chan. While some of the documents were posted weeks ago, their existence was first reported on Friday by the New York Times. Although the authenticity of the documents could not be independently verified by Reuters, some of the details mentioned in them talked about battlefield casualty estimates from Ukraine that appeared to be altered in order to minimise the losses sustained by the Russian side. It is not clear why at least one is marked unclassified but includes top-secret information. Some documents are marked “NOFORN,” meaning they cannot be released to foreign nationals. The possibility of doctoring the information on the documents to mislead investigators after they were leaked has also not been ruled out, said two US officials involved in the probe. They also warned that false information may have been disseminated to harm America’s security interests.

In a statement on Sunday, the Pentagon said it was reviewing the validity of the photographed documents that “appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material.”

The Pentagon has referred the issue to the Department of Justice, which has opened a criminal investigation.

Biden said last week, “Classified war documents detailing secret American and NATO plans for building up the Ukrainian military ahead of a planned offensive against Russia were posted this week on social media channels.”

With inputs from agencies

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