New Batch of Classified Documents Appear on Social Media Sites
Secret documents that appear to detail American national security secrets on Ukraine, the Middle East and China have surfaced online.
3 MIN READ
WASHINGTON — 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 officials 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 represents “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?
The State of the War
- War Plans Leaked: The Pentagon is investigating a leak of classified documents detailing secret American and NATO plans for building up the Ukrainian military ahead of a planned offensive against Russian troops. The documents were recently posted on social media.
- Macron in China: President Emmanuel Macron of France and Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, called for a rapid return to peace talks to end the war in Ukraine during a visit by Macron to China.
- Finland’s Entry to NATO: The Nordic country officially became the military alliance’s 31st member, in what amounts to a strategic defeat for President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
- Drone Warfare: Using aerial drones to spot the enemy and direct artillery fire has become a staple of war for Ukraine and Russia, especially in the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut.
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.”
Natalia Yermak contributed reporting.
More in Politics
Try Something Different
Editors Picks
Julian E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarnes • Facebook
Eric Schmitt is a senior writer who has traveled the world covering terrorism and national security. He was also the Pentagon correspondent. A member of the Times staff since 1983, he has shared four Pulitzer Prizes. @EricSchmittNYT
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. @tmgneff
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent, and was part of the team awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, for its coverage of the Ebola epidemic. @helenecooper
VP Biden’s Former Assistant: Classified Docs Left Unlocked in Penn Biden Center Closet
Classified documents were transported from then-Vice President Joe Biden’s safekeeping to the Penn Biden Center, where they were kept in an unlocked closet and remained accessible to center employees and potentially others, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) revealed Tuesday after an interview with Biden’s former assistant, Kathy Chung.
Chung, who current Biden administration officials appear to blame for the mishandling of Biden’s classified documents, told Comer that Biden’s classified documents remained unsecured at the Penn Biden Center for years and remained accessible to her until May 2022.
“This story does not begin in November 2022, as represented by President Biden’s attorney,” Comer said in a statement. “[T]hen-White House Counsel Dana Remus tasked Kathy Chung with retrieving these boxes from the Penn Biden Center as early as May 2022.”
Public records reported by the New York Post suggest that Chinese Communist Party-linked individuals or entities donated at least $54 million between 2014 and 2019 to the Penn Biden Center.
According to a CNN source, the classified documents found at Biden’s “private office” at the center pertain to Iran, the U.K., and Ukraine, where the Biden family conducted business deals.
On Monday, Comer raised concerns about Biden’s classified document scandal in connection with the Biden family business schemes. “We don’t the know the true extent of what he [Joe Biden] has done,” Comer said. “All we know is he had classified documents scattered all over the place dating back to the time as U.S. senator.”
“There is one document in particular that I can tell you from my investigation of Biden family influence peddling that we are very concerned about with respect to the document that Hunter Biden sent to officials at Burisma in Ukraine,” Comer said. “It was a government document. We are concerned that it may have been one of the classified documents.”
Comer’s investigation comes as Chung was hired as Joe Biden’s assistant after a recommendation from Hunter Biden. Chung appears in numerous email threads on Hunter’s “laptop from hell,” including Hunter’s correspondence to Chung about being hired as Joe Biden’s assistant.
According to Legistorm, Chung worked for Joe Biden until January 19, 2017, right before Joe Biden left the vice presidency. However, she told Comer she was tasked by a former White House lawyer to access the documents as recently as May 2022, contradicting statements from Joe Biden’s lawyers about the timeline of events.
The White House has failed to fully explain why Joe Biden’s lawyers were looking through the Penn Biden Center papers on November 2 when the classified documents were discovered.
Notably, the classified document scandal was leaked to CBS News on January 9, weeks after the initial trove was found by Biden’s personal lawyers in November. The establishment media has reported at least three times that Biden and the DOJ agreed to hide the scandal from public view with likely no plans to disclose it.
Joe Biden is currently under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Hur in connection with classified documents found at his Wilmington home and in his office at the Penn Biden Center.
Peter Schweizer: Americans Have Gone to Jail for Doing Far Less Than What Hunter Biden Has Done
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/08/protecting-biden-crime-family-gamer.html
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation and the Obama book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the Warren and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/08/protecting-biden-crime-family-gamer.html
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation and the Obama book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the Warren and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption.
James Comer: Trump Indictment Spurs GOP County Attorneys to ‘Go After the Bidens’
The Trump indictment has encouraged local attorneys to find ways to use their prosecutorial power to investigate the Biden family business for wrongdoing, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said Wednesday.
“I had two calls yesterday, one from a county attorney in Kentucky and one from a county attorney in Tennessee,” Comer told Fox News. “They were Republican, obviously, both states are heavily Republican. They want to know if there are ways they can go after the Bidens now.”
Comer explained that far-left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s charges against former President Donald Trump, which many legal experts consider weak, have “opened a can of worms” and set a precedent on how political opponents are treated.
“They’ve set precedents now that we can’t go back on,” Comer said.
He also noted Republicans can expect more Democrat officials, incentivized by political gain, to target Republicans in the future.
“And now you’re going to start having ambitious political people like Alvin Bragg try to make a name for themselves and go after big pie-in-the-sky federal cases. And it’s just not a good path that we need to go forward on in our judiciary,” he said.
WATCH: Trump: “They Can’t Beat Us at The Ballot Box,” So Now They Try “The Law”
RSBN / RumbleThe Kentucky congressman is investigating Joe Biden and the Biden family for nine violations, including money laundering and wire fraud. The probe has involved subpoenaing bank records and requesting cooperation from family business associates. The probe has begun to deliver success.
Comer’s comments come after Trump was arraigned on Tuesday. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree Tuesday afternoon during his historic arraignment, which brought huge TV ratings.
As Breitbart News reported, television ratings of the Trump indictment soared to 10.2 during the middle of Tuesday’s workday, surpassing many of the most popular shows on television, including the average ratings of 2022 evening news (6.47), the 2023 Golden Globes (1.1), the 2023 Oscars (4.0), and Trump’s own Celebrity Apprentice’s best rating of 10.1 in its 2004/2005 season.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
No comments:
Post a Comment