Over 100 More Classified Docs Appear Online Revealing US Secrets ‘From Ukraine To Middle East To China’
A more expanded document dump and leak of highly classified materials are being reported in the wake of the initial disclosure that memos related to US strategy in the Ukraine war appeared online, including material marked “Top Secret”. One senior intelligence official was quoted in the report as saying the leak is “a nightmare for the Five Eyes” – in reference to the intelligence-sharing nations of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Like the Ukraine war plans earlier reported on by the Times, some of these latest documents appeared on Twitter and other social media platforms, and they include reports labelled with one of the highest classification ratings of “Secret/NOFORN” – which means they are sensitive enough to not be shared with even foreign allies.
Interestingly, the NY Times notes that one intelligence slide which is circulating features “an alarming assessment of Ukraine’s faltering air defence capabilities.” But these leaks, some of which actually appeared on a Discord server devoted to discussing Minecraft and other unusual places, include more than the initial content on Ukraine war planning.
The report quotes one analyst who warns this is likely “the tip of the iceberg” and that more major leaks are coming, or possibly have already happened, in something which could begin to rival the ‘Pentagon Papers’ of the Vietnam War era. This assessment suggests a leak from inside allied forces, and not from a foreign adversary, even though US officials are accusing Russian-linked entities online of being the chief spreaders of the leaked documents.
US officials are also warning that some of the documents may have been digitally altered to fit a more pro-Kremlin narrative, as we detailed earlier. Twitter has acknowledged that US officials are requesting that it act to scrub classified materials from the platform.
There’s growing concern that the leaks could be coming from within the Ukrainian military. Pentagon and US intelligence officials are also scrambling to discover the source of the leak in an ongoing investigation. Likely this is to result in greater scrutiny of Kyiv and how its chain of command handles sensitive data shared from the Pentagon.
