A second trove of leaked classified documents, this one much broader than just on U.S. war planning for Ukraine, has appeared over the past 24 hours. According to a second New York Times report posted last night, this second trove is larger and broader and potentially more damaging. The Times cites analysts saying that more than 100 documents may have been obtained which—along with the sensitivity of the documents themselves—could be hugely damaging, U.S. officials said. A senior intelligence official called the leak “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” in a reference to the long-running intelligence sharing arrangement among the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
The latest documents which were found on Twitter and other sites on April 7, include an alarming assessment of Ukraine’s faltering air defense capabilities. One slide, dated Feb. 23, is labeled “Secret/NoForn,” meaning it was not meant to be shared with foreign countries.
The most bizarre part of the story is that these documents reportedly first surfaced on two video game chat channels called 4chan and Discord before making their way to Twitter. One document that appeared on 4chan purports to show the status of the war in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
But, the Times continues, 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.
While publicly, Pentagon officials are saying nothing about the document leaks other than that they’re investigating them, privately, the Times says, officials in several national security agencies acknowledged both a rush to find the source of the leaks and a potential for what one official said could be a steady drip of classified information posted on sites. 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.
Reuters, in a story posted 50 minutes before the time stamp on the New York Times story, cited unnamed officials claiming that Russia or pro-Russian elements are likely behind the leak of the first set of documents on April 6. This supposition is based solely on the fact that the casualty figures for Russia cited in one of those documents is far lower than the official U.S. estimates propagated by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.
