Stealth at heart of investigation into leak at the Pentagon

Pentagon documents containing US government intelligence on Ukraine, China and other countries were first shared on Discord before spreading to 4chan and Telegram in what may be the largest national security breach in a decade.

The US is a victim of more cyber attacks than any other country. It also suffers from often highly damaging leaks of classified information.

The combination has given the counterintelligence community a headache, especially as technology and espionage have grown exponentially in recent years.

Finding the culprit responsible for putting top secret documents into the public domain is a thankless task for investigators because potentially thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands, of people in sensitive jobs have access to such material daily.

“The mood is anger. It’s a massive betrayal,” one US Department of Defence official told Politico.

“I’m sick to my stomach,” said another.

The investigations by the Pentagon and the US Department of Justice into the leak of more than 100 highly classified documents about the war in Ukraine, as well as spying operations against allies including South Korea and Israel, are focused on exposing the culprit before more secrets appear on social media. Stealth, not cyber hacking, is at the heart of the investigation.

About 1.3 million US government employees and contractors have access to documents marked top secret, covering all the government departments and agencies.

In this case the dissemination of material would have been more restricted, yet the investigators still have the prospect of interrogating several thousand military and civilian employees.

The Pentagon’s joint staff alone, from where the leaked documents originated, is made up of about 800 civilians and 1200 service members from the army, navy, marine corps, air force, national guard and coastguard. Their job is to support General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

However, there will be clues, and narrowing down suspects may not be too complex. All the documents appear to be distributed printouts of briefing notes. They were then photographed and folded in haste, judging by their creased appearance, before being removed, possibly in a pocket or bag. This indicates the leaker had access to paper copies of the documents rather than extracting them electronically.

This would suggest carelessness on the part of those responsible for disseminating the classified documents. If they were printed inside the Pentagon, there is likely to be a record of when and where this occurred.

The documents were then sent to Discord, the social media platform, and appeared online last month. There will be a paper trail that could be traced to a particular department or office, or even to an individual.

Investigators also will look at motivation as well as the modus operandi of the leaker. Staff will be questioned about colleagues who may have uttered even the slightest criticism of US policy towards Ukraine.

The Times