(Washington) The leak of classified American documents, particularly related to Ukraine, poses a “very serious” risk to the national security of the United States, the Pentagon said on Monday.
President Joe Biden was made aware of the situation, which appears to be of growing concern to his administration, “late last week,” his spokesman John Kirby said.
Among these documents, which were leaked online on Thursday by the New York Times1one takes stock of the state of the conflict in Ukraine at the beginning of March, others evoke the situation on specific fronts, such as Bakhmout, or the crucial anti-aircraft defenses of Kyiv.
Some also seem to indicate intelligence gathering carried out by the United States and targeting some of its allies: a document mentions, for example, that leaders of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, would have defended the demonstrations against the controversial reform of the judicial system in Israel.
AFP consulted certain documents marked “secret” or “top secret”, without being able to confirm their authenticity.
If he did not want to comment on the authenticity of these documents, John Kirby, spokesperson for the national security council attached to Joe Biden, spoke of the concern of the American authorities.
“We don’t know who is responsible for this. And we don’t know if they have more [de documents] to publish” online, he said, before adding: “Is this a matter of concern for us? Absolutely. »
” Disinformation ”
The fact that these documents are circulating online represents “a very serious risk to national security and can potentially fuel disinformation”, a spokesman for the United States Department of Defense, Chris Meagher, also told reporters on Monday.
We continue to investigate how this happened, as well as the extent of the problem. Steps have been taken to analyze […] how this type of information was distributed and to whom.
Chris Meagher, spokesman for the United States Department of Defense
The Justice Department has opened a separate criminal investigation.
The steady stream of photographs of classified documents have been discovered on Twitter, Telegram, Discord and other platforms in recent days, although some may have circulated online for weeks before attracting media attention.
Many of them are no longer available on the sites where they originally appeared, and US authorities are reportedly working to have them all removed.
The Secretary of Defense himself, Lloyd Austin, was not made aware of the problem until the morning of April 6 – the day the leak was revealed later that day by the New York Times – said the Pentagon spokesman.
“Reassure” the allies
US officials have reached out to Washington’s allies about the matter, “including to reassure them of our commitment to protecting intelligence and our ability to secure our partnerships,” said US diplomacy spokesman Vedant Patel. .
The relevant parliamentary committees have been informed, the Pentagon had earlier indicated.
Defense Department spokesman Meagher said a team was working to determine whether the documents were genuine, and noted that in any event, the released photos appeared to contain sensitive information.
“Photos appear to show documents in a format similar to that used to provide daily updates to our senior Ukraine and Russia-related operations, as well as other intelligence updates,” he said. he said, but some “seem to have been modified”.
At least one of the documents seems to have been altered to suggest that Ukraine suffered greater losses than Russia, when the supposed original said the opposite.
The consequences of these leaks could be significant, even deadly for US intelligence sources.
“The release of classified and sensitive information can not only have enormous consequences for our national security, but also lead to death,” warned Chris Meagher.