U.S. says leak of classified documents poses ‘serious’ security risk

The apparent leak of highly classified US documents, many related to the war in Ukraine, poses a “very serious” risk to the national security of the United States, the report said. Pentagon on Monday.

Leak under investigation Ministry of Justiceappears to include classified intelligence assessments and reports that go beyond Ukraine And Russiabut also analysis of allies USA.

The documents circulating online pose “a very serious threat to national security and can spread disinformation,” he told reporters. Chris MeagherAssistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.

“We continue to investigate how this happened, as well as the extent of the problem. Steps have been taken to take a closer look at how this type of information is shared and to whom,” Meagher added.

A continuous stream of dozens of photographs of documents was found in Twitter, Telegram, discord and other sites in recent days, although some of them may have been circulating on the Internet for weeks, if not months, before they started getting media attention last week.

Many of them are no longer on the sites where they first appeared, and, apparently, USA keep working on removing them.

Meagher stated that the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was not informed of this until the morning of April 6; the day the newspaper article was published New York Times about documents.

Many papers are related to Ukrainefor example, one provides information about a country’s air defenses, or another about international efforts to increase its military forces.

Surveillance of US allies

But others point to surveillance USA about his allies, such as the one who claims that the heads of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad they advocated nationwide protests against the controversial plan for judicial reform.

US officials have been in contact with international allies Washington The Pentagon said the relevant congressional committees have been briefed on the matter.

Meagher declined to comment on whether the documents were genuine, saying the Pentagon team was working on such an assessment, but noted that the photos circulating online appear to contain sensitive information.

“The photographs appear to show documents similar in format to those used to provide daily updates to our leaders at Ukraine and operations related to Russiaas well as other intelligence data,” he said, but some “appear to have been tampered with.”

This includes a document circulating on the internet that appears to have been forged to show that Ukraine suffered more losses than Russiawhen the seemingly original version said otherwise.

The consequences of an apparent leak can be significant – even deadly – endangering US intelligence sources and providing valuable information to the country’s enemies.

“Revealing sensitive classified material could have huge implications not only for our national security, but also lead to loss of life,” Meagher said.

(According to AFP)