Last Thursday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin learned that highly classified documents from the Pentagon pertaining to the Ukrainian war and more had been leaked online.
Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Chris Meagher told reporters at a press conference on April 10 that the leak posed a “very serious” risk to national security, per AP News.
As to how the leak happened, Meagher answered, “The truth and the honest answer to your question is: We don’t know. And is that a matter of concern to us? You’re darn right it is.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the source of the leak at the request of the Pentagon.
The New York Times broke the news of the leaked documents last week, noting that one seemed to originate from the Joint Chiefs of Staff office.
The documents contain intelligence on other countries in Asia and the Middle East, as well as sensitive information on military activities.
The use of U.S. drone spy planes in Ukraine is discussed alongside the details of U.S. and NATO plans to equip Ukrainian forces with weapons and ammunition as they prepare for the spring offensive, per USA Today.
As Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, explained to reporters on April 8, it is also unclear whether more secret documents could be released, per USA Today. This is worrying to many officials.
The leaked documents were revealing in terms of the scope of the U.S. intelligence network. Alongside an infiltration of Russia’s security and intelligence services, allies such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, South Korea’s national security service, and Israel’s intelligence agency seem to have been spied on, per CNN.
While sensitive in nature, the information leaked was several weeks old and none shared specific battle plans.
Military officials have also suggested that some details relating to the number of casualties suffered by Ukrainian and Russian forces have been forged. U.S. estimates of those killed on the Ukrainian side have been inflated, whereas those killed on the Russian side have been reduced, per the NYT.
Some other officials have pointed to the documents as inauthentic, including Mykhailo Podolyak, who is the adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.
Podolyak said on his Telegram channel on April 7 that he believes the documents are part of a disinformation campaign by Russia, per CNN.
As many scramble to mitigate the damage of the leak, the motivation of those who released it is unknown.
The leak is believed to have originated in a chat discussing Ukraine on Discord, a social media network, per AP News. A user allegedly posted them months ago but they went weeks without being noticed.
An anonymous source claimed that the Discord user who posted the material “is just a kid” who wanted to show off, per AP News.
Others have suggested that the leak may have been committed by an extremist who sympathizes with Russia and Vladimir Putin, an ideologue seeking to alter the course of the war, or a disloyal U.S. spy, per USA Today.
As the investigation continues, the leak is reminiscent of the WikiLeaks incident in 2013 that led to the jailing of Chelsea Manning.
While her sentence was eventually commuted by then-President Barack Obama, she originally faced 35 years in jail for her alleged involvement in what was the largest leak of confidential documents in U.S. history.
