Thread: New Batch of Classified Documents Appear on Social Media Sites

A new batch of classified documents that appear to detail American national security secrets from Ukraine to the Middle East to China surfaced on social media sites on Friday, alarming the Pentagon and adding turmoil to a situation that seemed to have caught the Biden administration off guard.


The scale of the leak — analysts say more than 100 documents may have been obtained — along with the sensitivity of the documents themselves, could be hugely damaging, officials said. A senior intelligence official called the leak “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” in a reference to the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes nations that broadly share intelligence.

The latest documents were found on Twitter and other sites on Friday, a day after senior Biden administration officials said they were investigating a potential leak of classified Ukrainian war plans, include an assessment of Ukraine’s air defense capabilities. One slide, dated Feb. 23, is labeled “Secret/NoForn,” meaning it was not meant to be shared with foreign countries.


Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, said the leak of the classified documents represented “a significant breach in security” that could hinder Ukrainian military planning. “As many of these were pictures of documents, it appears that it was a deliberate leak done by someone that wished to damage the Ukraine, U.S., and NATO efforts,” he said.


One analyst described what has emerged so far as the “tip of the iceberg.”


Early Friday, senior national security officials dealing with the initial leak, which was first reported by The New York Times, said a new worry had arisen: Was that information the only intelligence that was leaked?


By Friday afternoon, they had their answer. Even as officials at the Pentagon and national security agencies were investigating the source of documents that had appeared on Twitter and on Telegram, another surfaced on 4chan, an anonymous, fringe message board. The 4chan document is a map that purports to show the status of the war in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the scene of a fierce, monthslong battle.


But the leaked documents appear to go well beyond highly classified material on Ukraine war plans. Security analysts who have reviewed the documents tumbling onto social media sites say the increasing trove also includes sensitive briefing slides on China, the Indo-Pacific military theater, the Middle East and terrorism.


The Pentagon said in a statement on Thursday that the Defense Department was looking into the matter. But privately, officials from several separate national security agencies acknowledged both a rush to find the source of the leaks and a potential for what one official called a steady drip of classified information posted on sites.


The documents on Ukraine’s military appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries, troop and battalion strengths, and other plans. Pentagon officials acknowledge that they are legitimate Defense Department documents, but the copies appear to have been altered in certain parts from their original format. The modified versions, for example, overstate American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and underestimate estimates of Russian troops killed.


On Friday, Ukrainian officials and pro-war Russian bloggers suggested the leak was part of a disinformation effort by the other side, timed to influence Ukraine’s possible spring offensive to reclaim territory in the east and the south of the country.


A senior Ukrainian official said that the leak appeared to be a Russian ploy to discredit a counteroffensive. And the Russian bloggers warned against trusting any information in the documents, which one blogger said could be the work of “Western intelligence in order to mislead our command.”


Behind closed doors, chagrined national security officials were trying to find the culprit. One official said it was likely that the documents did not come from Ukrainian officials, because they did not have access to the specific plans, which bear the imprint of the offices of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. A second official said that determining how the documents were leaked would start with identifying which officials had access to them.


The first tranche of documents appeared to have been posted in early March on Discord, a social media chat platform popular with video gamers, according to Aric Toler, an analyst at Bellingcat, the Dutch investigative site.


In Ukraine, Lt. Col. Yurii Bereza, a battalion commander with Ukraine’s National Guard whose forces have fought in the country’s east in recent months, shrugged off news of the leak.


He noted that information warfare has been so intense that “we can no longer determine where is the truth and where is the lie.”


New Batch of Classified Documents Appear on Social Media Sites – DNyuz

Russia likely behind U.S. military document leak, U.S. officials say

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Russia or pro-Russian elements are likely behind the leak of several classified U.S. military documents posted on social media that offer a partial, month-old snapshot of the war in Ukraine, three U.S. officials told Reuters on Friday, while the Justice Department said separately it was probing the leak.


The documents appear to have been altered to lower the number of casualties suffered by Russian forces, the U.S. officials said, adding their assessments were informal and separate from the investigation into the leak itself.


The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter and declined to discuss the documents in any detail.


The Kremlin and Russia's embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.


An initial batch of documents circulated on sites including Twitter and Telegram, dated March 1 and bearing markings showing them classified as "Secret" and "Top Secret."


Later on Friday, an additional batch appearing to detail U.S. national security secrets pertaining to areas including Ukraine, the Middle East and China surfaced on social media, the New York Times reported.


Reuters was not able to verify the authenticity of the documents.


The U.S. Justice Department said late on Friday it was in touch with the Defense Department and began a probe into the leak. It declined further comment.


A leak of such sensitive documents is highly unusual.


"We are aware of the reports of social media posts and the Department (of Defense) is reviewing the matter," Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said.


A CIA spokesperson said the agency was also aware of the posts and was looking into the claims.


One document posted on social media said 16,000 to 17,500 Russian forces had been killed since Russia's Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine.


The United States believes the actual figure is much higher, at around 200,000 Russians killed and wounded, officials have said.


Ukrainian forces repelled Russia's initial advance on Kyiv early in 2022, and the conflict, which Moscow calls a "special military operation," has become one of grinding trench warfare in the east and south.


Speculation has been mounting about what offensives Kyiv and Moscow might attempt in the war's second year. The leaked documents did not appear to offer any specific insight into Kyiv's war plans.


A Ukrainian presidential official said on Friday that the leak contained a "very large amount of fictitious information" and looked like a Russian disinformation operation to sow doubts about Ukraine's planned counter-offensive.


"These are just standard elements of operational games by Russian intelligence. And nothing more," Mykhailo Podolyak said in a written statement.

Russia likely behind U.S. military document leak, U.S. officials say

I am not buying it at all. But that's just my opinion.

The open admission of large numbers of skeleton brigades with virtually no internal info about them on the nato end seems like BS. Plus the casualty numbers are ridiculous.

The fact the numbers have been tweaked suggests it was Russia for sure.

What should alarm the US and everyone else is the ease with which the documents were obtained.

Russia, China, Iran, N. Korea and even Syria are very good at this shit.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

The fact the numbers have been tweaked suggests it was Russia for sure.

Obviously.

Aren't they just yet another set of classified doc that were hanging around in some US politicians garage?

Originally Posted by malmomike77

Aren't they just yet another set of classified doc that were hanging around in some US politicians garage?

Do a favor and ask your MI6 contacts for us.

Originally Posted by bsnub

Do a favor and ask your MI6 contacts for us.

bbbut if he did MoneyPenny says he'd have to red you

Leaked Documents Reveal Depth of U.S. Spy Efforts and Russia’s Military Struggles

WASHINGTON — A trove of leaked Pentagon documents reveals how deeply Russia’s security and intelligence services have been penetrated by the United States, demonstrating Washington’s ability to warn Ukraine about planned strikes and providing an assessment of the strength of Moscow’s war machine.


The documents paint a portrait of a depleted Russian military that is struggling in its war in Ukraine and of a military apparatus that is deeply compromised. They contain daily real-time warnings to American intelligence agencies on the timing of Moscow’s strikes and even its specific targets. Such intelligence has allowed the United States to pass on to Ukraine crucial information on how to defend itself.


The documents lay bare the American assessment of a Ukrainian military that is also in dire straits. The documents, from late February and early March but found on social media sites in recent days, outline critical shortages of air defense munitions and discuss the gains being made by Russian troops around the eastern city of Bakhmut. The intelligence reports show that the United States also appears to be spying on Ukraine’s top military and political leaders, a reflection of Washington’s struggle to get a clear view of Ukraine’s fighting strategies.


The material reinforces an idea that intelligence officials have long acknowledged: The United States has a clearer understanding of Russian military operations than it does of Ukrainian planning. Intelligence collection is often difficult and sometimes wrong, but the trove of documents offers perhaps the most complete picture yet of the inner workings of the largest land war in Europe in decades.


American officials said while the documents offer hints about U.S. methods to collect information on Russian plans, U.S. intelligence agencies do not yet know if any of their sources of information will be cut off as a result of the leak. American officials have conceded they have lost some sources of information since the war began, but the new documents appear to show that America’s understanding of Russian planning remains extensive.


But the leak has the potential to do real damage to Ukraine’s war effort by exposing which Russian agencies the United States knows the most about, giving Moscow a potential opportunity to cut off the sources of information.


The leak has already complicated relations with allied countries and raised doubts about America’s ability to keep its secrets. After reviewing the documents, a senior Western intelligence official said the release of the material was painful and suggested that it could curb intelligence sharing. For various agencies to provide material to each other, the official said, requires trust and assurances that certain sensitive information will be kept secret.


The documents could also hurt diplomatic ties in other ways. The newly reveal intelligence documents also make plain that the U.S. is not just spying on Russia, but also its allies. While that will hardly surprise officials, making such eavesdropping public always hampers relations with key partners, like South Korea, whose help is needed to supply Ukraine with weaponry.


Senior U.S. officials said an inquiry, launched Friday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, would try to move swiftly to determine the source of the leak. The officials acknowledged that the documents appear to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, using reports from the government’s intelligence community, but that at least one had been modified from the original at some later point.


One senior U.S. official called the leak “a massive intelligence breach,” made worse because it lays out to Russia just how deep American intelligence operatives have managed to get into the Russian military apparatus. Officials within the U.S. government with security clearance often receive such documents through daily emails, one official said, and those emails might then be automatically forwarded to other people.


Another senior U.S. official said tracking down the original source of the leak could be difficult because hundreds, if not thousands, of military and other U.S. government officials have the security clearances needed to gain access to the documents. The official said that the Pentagon had instituted procedures in the past few days to “lock down” the distribution of highly sensitive briefing documents. The documents posted online were photographs of folded papers, some with images of a magazine behind them, information that may help investigators.


The documents show that nearly every Russian security service appears penetrated by the United States in some way. For example, one entry, marked top secret, discusses the Russian General Staff’s plans to counter the tanks NATO countries were providing to Ukraine, including creating different “fire zones” and beginning training of Russian soldiers on the vulnerabilities of different allied tanks.


Another entry talks about an information campaign being planned by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence unit, in Africa trying to shape public opinion against the United States and “promote Russian foreign policy.”


While some of the intelligence briefs offer analysis and broad warnings of Russian plans, others are the kind of actionable information that Ukraine could use to defend itself. One entry talks about the Russian Defense Ministry formulating plans to conduct missile strikes on Ukraine’s forces at specific sites in Odesa and Mykolaiv on March 3, an attack that the U.S. intelligence agencies believed would be designed to destroy a drone storage area, an air defense gun and kill Ukrainian soldiers.


Still another entry discusses a report in February disseminated by Russia’s National Defense Command Center about the “decreased combat capability” of Russia’s forces in Eastern Ukraine.


While the documents were compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, they contain intelligence from many agencies, including the National Security Agency, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Some of the material is labeled as having been collected under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, or F.I.S.A., noting that its further distribution is not allowed without the permission of the attorney general.


One section of the documents is labeled as being the C.I.A. Operations Center Intelligence Update from March 2. That section discusses intelligence on how the Russian ministry of defense had considered steps to counter accusations that it had not been supplying munitions to Wagner group troops in Ukraine “according to a signals intelligence report.”


The documents reveal that American intelligence services are not only spying on the Russians, but are also eavesdropping on important allies.


In the pages posted online, there are at least two discussions about South Korea’s debate about whether to give the U.S. artillery shells for use in Ukraine, violating Seoul’s policy on providing lethal aid. One section of the documents reports that South Korean officials were worried that President Biden would call South Korea’s president pressuring Seoul to deliver the goods.


Another section of the documents, from the C.I.A., is more explicit about how the United States has learned about the South Korean deliberations, noting the information was from “a signals intelligence report.”

Leaked Documents Reveal Depth of U.S. Spy Efforts and Russia’s Military Struggles – DNyuz

'Awfully Convenient': Leaked NATO Plans for Ukraine Should Be Taken 'With Grain of Salt’

While the sudden leak of numerous classified US documents related to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine reportedly prompted the Pentagon to launch an investigation into the matter, the way the "revelation" was covered by the media makes it look somewhat suspect.


Classified documents that purportedly outline US and NATO plans for the Ukrainian military were leaked to the public this week, and if US media is to be believed, the Pentagon has already rushed to investigate this apparent breach of security.


During an interview with Sputnik, international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda pointed out that the story was broken by the New York Times. According to him, given that US officials are now claiming that part of the story is true and part of it is not, it begets the question: “why was it leaked and what did they want us to believe?”


The leak, Sleboda suggested, likely comes “from the American side or someone within the American side,” with the analyst noting that some of the leaked papers “confirm information that we really already knew,” such as the data about the newly-formed Ukrainian brigades. He suggests taking the leaked information "with a grain of salt."

Regarding the rationale behind the sharing of the leaked information on social media, Sleboda argued that “a lot of it maybe [was] buttressing the public knowledge of US support for the offensive that is about to be launched.”


“We know that NATO considers it their last-ditch effort, they do not have the ability to continue to sustain the Kiev regime in terms of ammunition, artillery shells, other gear, and for them this is all or nothing,” he mused. “So they’re expecting success out of this and they do not appear to have a plan B in that regard. Plan B might default the Plan D, which is NATO troops enter Western Ukraine or some NATO member-states enter West Ukraine, say Poland and the US, possibly Romania.”


He also observed that the leaked information does not include any specific battle plans, “which seems awfully convenient.”

Leaked NATO Plans for Ukraine Should Be Taken 'With Grain of Salt'