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The Leaked Pentagon Documents: Their Discovery and Implications to the Senate Intelligence Causal Process and the Security of Social Media
The repercussions from the leak ofclassified Pentagon documents that rattled US officials, members of Congress and key allies in recent days have been assessed and contained by the Biden administration.
The Department of Justice is looking into how a cache of highly sensitive documents, which include details about how the US spies on friends and foes, ended up on social media sites.
But, to date, little is known about who may have been responsible for the leak or how some of the nation’s most tightly guarded secrets ended up on social media sites.
The Defense Department has tightened the flow of sensitive information due to the review of the matter, but the documents are usually available to hundreds of people across the government, officials said.
Congressional lawmakers have also expressed concerns about the apparent scope of the leak and sensitivity of the documents posted online but largely remain in the dark about what has occurred.
The Senate Intelligence Committee leaders are asking for answers from the Biden administration. House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Mike Turner is scheduled to receive a briefing on Monday and his Senate counterparts have jointly requested one as well.
The posts are photos of crumpled documents laid on top of magazines and surrounded by other random objects. It is as if they had been hastily folded up and shoved into a pocket before being removed from a secure location, a source familiar with these kinds of documents told CNN.
The Biden Administration and South Korea Overshadowed by South Korea’s Leaky Information: How the U.S. and Ukraine Can Ensure Security in the War
The Biden administration scrambles to contain the damage from apparent US espionage on its partners, including Ukraine, after the leak of information in South Korea. U.S. officials “are engaging with allies and partners at high levels” over the leaked documents, “to reassure them of our commitment to safeguarding intelligence,” Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, told reporters on Monday. He refused to give more information, including whether the Secretary of State 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.
One document reveals that the US has been spying on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The source close to Zelensky said that the leak was unsurprising.
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.
Israel: Where are we going? The diplomatic response to the US intelligence briefing after the “Russia-Ukraine: Battle for the Donbas Region Likely” report
Jerusalem was incensed by an intelligence report about Israel. 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.
Key allies who are part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom) have not yet been given a briefing by the US on where they are on the damage assessment or efforts to identify the leaker, two Five Eyes diplomats told CNN on Monday.
“We expect the US to share a damage assessment with us in the coming days, but we cannot wait for their assessment. Right now we are doing our own,” said an official from a country that is part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement with the US, which includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
The documents from February titled the “Russia-Ukraine: Battle for the Donbas Region Likely” was alarming to the official. Heading for a friend throughout the next decade. The document notes the challenges in assessing the endurance of Ukraine’s operations.
“Gains for Ukraine will be hard to accomplish, but it does not help to have the private US assessment pointing to a likely yearlong stalemate revealed publicly,” the official said.
The adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine said in a Telegram channel Friday that the documents have nothing to do withUkraine’s real plans.
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.
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has been tapped to lead the diplomatic response to the leaked US intelligence documents, according to a US official familiar with the matter.
The diplomats said the Easter holiday slowed the pace of discussion, and that they would be receiving a briefing from US officials in the coming days.
Still, officials familiar with the situation tell CNN the documents appear to be part of a daily intelligence briefing deck prepared for the Pentagon’s senior leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
Milancy Harris, the deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, will be in charge of the effort on the Pentagon side, officials said. The investigation will also try to determine the scope of the leak, since officials do not yet know whether it has been contained or whether there are more classified documents still circulating online.
The National Security Council Coordination of Strategic Communications John Kirby said Monday that the Department of Defence had referred the case to the Department of Justice for further investigation into the leak of documents.
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. It will chiefly examine whether any sources and methods have been compromised since the documents, many of which are marked Top Secret, were posted on a social media platform earlier this year.
A senior US official told CNN that “thousands” of people likely saw the documents before they hit the internet because many people have access to very sensitive information.
One senior US official said that the folded paper made it clear to him that the person had not the authority to take classified information home.
“We do need the public and our allies, in particular, to know what changes are being made to avoid this ever happening again,” he added. There is a clarification. The Pentagon is involved in the investigation into the leaks.
The Pentagon has been warned that nothing they say could be used in a criminal investigation, so officials are very careful with how they describe the documents.
“It’s embarrassing,” a senior defense official said, adding that there have been stern notes from the Defense Department’s White House Liaison Office to be more careful about social media and keeping track of classified material.
A classified site can be accessed by people with the proper clearance, as a daily update version is also published to that site. Downloads of the slides themselves are not necessarily suspicious, because that access is recorded, officials said.
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 is contained in that tablet and informs the presidential daily brief.
Multiplicity of Ukrainian and Russian War Casualty Numbers Revealed in a Pentagon and High-Relevance Pentagon Papers
The investigators will likely look at the printer logs for the last several months, which may limit the number 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. One senior Pentagon official said that everything is traced by each printer, and that each printer has a unique ID.
A US official said that the photos of the printed documents that appeared online will be scrutinized for any markings which could identify the printer from which they were printed.
Kim said “No” when asked if the conversation was authentic, according to the national news agency. Mr. Kim was going to Washington for a meeting with Mr. Biden.
Neither the Pentagon nor the South Korean presidential office responded to CNN’s request for more details. Some of the images appear to have been altered, according to Meagher.
CNN previously reported that one document listing Russian andUkrainian casualty numbers as part of the war in Ukraine was altered in recent weeks to less than 50 Russian deaths before being spread on pro-Russian Telegram channels.
The Pentagon has notified the congressional committees of a super-scale security violation that the United States has spied on South Korea
Lawmakers in the US are searching for answers. The Pentagon has notified the relevant congressional committees of their probe, including the Senate Intelligence and Senate Armed Services committees, sources said.
Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN on Monday that “anything that points to sources and methods carries the very real risk that those sources and methods go away. It can mean people being killed or technologies being shut down. And that translates into bad outcomes on the battlefield.”
The highly classified leaked documents suggest that the United States has been spying on top national security officials in Mr. Yoon’s administration, which opposition lawmakers described as “a super-scale security breach” while accusing Washington of “violating the sovereignty” of a key ally.
“If it is true that they have spied on us, it is a very disappointing act that undermines the South Korea-U.S. alliance, which is based on mutual trust,” Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, told foreign media reporters on Tuesday. If it was true, he wants Washington to apologize to the South Korean people.
Mr. Yoon’s office claimed on Tuesday that it has a strong system in place to protect its officials from espionage. It said the opposition lawmakers were spreading fake, negative suspicions to get votes.
It said the act was against national interest because it had taken place at a time of nuclear threat from North Korea.
The documents also said that North Korea had conducted checks on March 1 to prepare for an ICBM test flight. (The North launched an ICBM on March 16.) Another document said that the record-breaking number of intercontinental ballistic missile-class launchers North Korea showed during a military parade in February were “most likely carrying nonoperational systems.”
