Leaks in the government are like earthquakes, they shake things up and make everyone run for cover! The latest leak of classified documents about the war in Ukraine was so serious, even the Pentagon is looking for a “plumber.”
The leak of highly secret documents about the war in Ukraine has sent shockwaves through the US government, just like a small earthquake that could shake up a city. Even though the White House is trying to stop the leaks, they are worried that more information could get out, which would make the leaks even more dangerous.
Chris Meagher, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, stated to the press that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin learned for the first time on Thursday that a number of classified briefing slides had been leaked. These slides detailed the activities of the United States military in the conflict in Ukraine as well as intelligence involving other countries.
The whole unfortunate incident happened this way: On February 26, the security service of Ukraine, the SBU, came to a surprising conclusion. Their own agents in Belarus had gone against orders earlier that day and attacked a Russian spy plane. There were American spies listening in. They noticed the piece of information in a highly secret slide about the war in Ukraine that the United States' joint staff passed around on March 1. Within a few days, that report and more than 50 others had been printed and put on the internet. It seems to be the most serious leak of U.S. intelligence in ten years.
Some of the leaked files, which include military reports on the war in Ukraine and CIA reports on a wide range of global issues, were posted on Telegram, a popular messaging app in Russia. This got a lot of people's attention. Bellingcat, a group that looks into things, says that some of them were posted on March 1 and 2 on Discord, a popular chat site for video game fans. Some secret information came out as early as January.
As the slides were shared on Telegram, at least one was crudely changed to make the number of Ukrainian casualties higher and the number of Russian casualties lower. Other slides, however, didn't seem to have been changed in any obvious way. According to The Economist, a news magazine, the reports were probably real American documents, because the Pentagon confirmed it was true. A Pentagon spokesman said that it was leading a group of people from across the government to look at the damage. High-level officials talked with partners and allies all over the world. As the Department of Justice started looking into where the leak came from, the Biden administration was looking more closely at how and to whom this kind of information is given out. The timing couldn't be worse. The Ukraine is getting ready for a counterattack that could start in a few weeks. The information that got out is a very interesting look at the state of its armed forces.
On several slides, the West's plans to arm and train Ukraine's army are explained in great detail. This includes the status of each Ukrainian brigade, its inventory of armor and artillery, and the exact number of shells and precision-guided rockets that Ukraine fires each day. If the information is correct, Russian military intelligence might be able to figure out which brigades have been given the job of breaking through Russian defenses at the start of the offensive. Then, Russia could carefully watch these units to figure out where an offensive would be best placed. One slide shows that the operation is likely to be led by the Ukraine's 10th Corps, which makes its headquarters an easy target for Russia.
The documents that show the state of the Ukrainian air defenses may be the ones that do the most damage. After being hit over and over by Russian drones and missiles, these are in bad shape. Based on how fast they were being fired, it was thought that the country would run out of Buk missiles on March 31, but it is not clear if this has happened. It will only have S-300 missiles until about May 2nd. About 90 percent of Ukraine's medium-range air defenses are made up of these two types. The Pentagon says that the remaining batteries, which include Western air defense systems, can't fire as much as the Russians, but on April 4, it said it would send more interceptor missiles. The report says that by May 23, Ukraine will no longer be able to protect its front lines. A table inside the report shows when all of each type of missile will be used up, and a map shows where each battery is.
Spying on Allies: America's Best Kept Secret (Not Anymore)
But the leaked documents don't paint a very good picture of Russia's military. Even though it almost wiped out the city of Bakhmut in the east, its combat power is severely crippled. The Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States says that 35,000 to 43,000 Russian soldiers have died, which is twice the number of Ukrainian deaths. Over 154,000 Russian soldiers have been wounded, which is about 40,000 more than the number of Ukrainian injuries. Also, Russia has lost more than 2,000 tanks and only has 419 left in theater. On another slide, it says that Russia's grinding campaign of attrition in the east is heading toward a stalemate, and that the likely result will be a war that lasts longer than 2023.
The documents will affect politics in a wide range of ways. One slide says that there are 97 special forces members from NATO countries in Ukraine. Fifty of them are from Britain, 17 are from Latvia, 15 are from France, and 14 are from the United States. Most of them are probably teaching their Ukrainian counterparts how to do their jobs. Countries often use special forces in secret. Even so, the Kremlin is likely to use the news to back up its claim that it is not just fighting Ukraine, but all of NATO.
The leak is also a reminder that American spies gather information on their allies. When it was revealed in 2013 that America's National Security Agency (NSA), which is in charge of signals intelligence, had spied on Angela Merkel, who was the German chancellor at the time, and other world leaders, this fact caused a huge uproar. The latest batch of documents shows that American agencies are spying not only on Ukrainian generals and spies, but also on officials in Hungary, Israel, South Korea, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN watchdog. One report from the CIA says that the leaders of Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence agency, told its employees and Israeli citizens to protest against controversial changes to the law.
More importantly, the leaks show not only who the U.S. is spying on, but also how. For example, the SBU's assessment of the attack on the Belarus plane is marked not only as "top secret," which is the highest level of classification in the United States, but also as "SI-G." Officials who are familiar with the notation say that this acronym stands for information that comes from highly sensitive signals intelligence, like phone taps or electronic intercepts. But because many of the leaked documents describe specific conversations between people or groups (including those in the Russian military and intelligence agencies), they might help the targets figure out how America is getting the information.
Thomas Rid of Johns Hopkins University says that the release of these documents is probably one of the four most important leaks of intelligence in this century. The other three are the theft of files by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, in 2013 and the release of NSA and CIA hacking tools in 2016 and 2017, respectively. There could be a lot of damage. The leak proves that American intelligence agencies have gotten very deep into Russia. But Russian spies and generals are likely to take steps to protect themselves, like changing how they talk to each other – or communicate in general.
There is a possibility that American allies will be reluctant to reveal secrets now. A significant number of people in the United States have access to sensitive information. Over 1.3 million of them, including a large number of contractors and individuals like Edward Snowden, have access clearance to top secret files. Yet in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, sensitive material was disseminated to a far wider audience than before. These attacks occurred in part because intelligence was not shared fast and extensively enough between agencies. The end consequence was a system with more leaks. Because of this, Ukrainian generals already had a healthy respect for the confidentiality of their information. It's possible that they'll freeze up at a crucial juncture now. Mr. Rid made the observation that if something of this nature had occurred in the United Kingdom, in Israel, in Germany, or in Australia, the United States would have completely stopped sharing intelligence.
Notes
Cooper, H., Barnes, J. E.,
Schmitt , E., & Gibbons-Neff, T. (2023, April 7). New Batch of
Classified Documents Appears on Social Media Sites. Retrieved from The New
York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/07/us/politics/classified-documents-leak.html
Copp, T., & Baldor, L.
C. (2023, April 10). Leaked Documents a 'Very Serious' Risk to Security:
Pentagon. Retrieved from Yahoo! News: https://www.yahoo.com/news/leaked-documents-very-serious-risk-190706906.html
The Economist. (2023, April
10). A Leak of Files Could Be America’s Worst Intelligence Breach in a
Decade. Retrieved from
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/04/10/a-leak-of-files-could-be-americas-worst-intelligence-breach-in-a-decade
Trofimov, Y., McMillan, R.,
& Weinberger, S. (2023, April 9). New Details on Intelligence Leak Show
It Circulated for Weeks Before Raising Alarm. Retrieved from Wall Street
Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-details-on-intelligence-leak-show-it-circulated-for-weeks-before-raising-alarm-7730a395
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