Washington has been upset for days by the leaking online of secret US documents about the war in Ukraine, which come in part, at least it is said, from the Pentagon. These are documents that include data and estimates on the developments in the war in Ukraine and shed light on methods used by the American secret services to collect information, highly sensitive data and possibly reveal their sources.

Veil of mystery

Speaking on camera to Reuters, analyst Thomas Reed, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, says that compared to other leaks, it is the only one that contains comprehensive classified information. In fact, on 20 pages there are reports from various secret services. Another 20 pages are maps and military updates from Ukraine. “Comprehensive intelligence reports in some cases are very specific,” he notes. “That is, they refer to specific conversations that individual people had or that related to a specific action that the Russian Ministry of Defense was planning to take in Ukraine. That way now, they will know when they said it and to whom. So they will try to limit how the information got out. And the more specific the reports, the more likely they are to succeed. And that is very damaging.”

Much is still shrouded in mystery. For weeks now the American media have been talking about documents with sensitive information, but the issue needs a lot of attention because fake material is also circulating. The investigative network Bellingcrat proved that some of the documents have been falsified after the fact. In any case, the case is particularly embarrassing for the US government and the secret intelligence services. Once again it turns out that the US intelligence apparatus has produced such a volume of secret documents and inside information that it is impossible to keep it secret.

“We take this very, very seriously”

Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of employees and outside contractors with special clearances appear to have had access to those documents, the Washington Post newspaper reported, citing a statement from a Defense Department official. The Pentagon has taken the reins of the investigations, from where the “leak” probably took place. A spokesman admitted that publishing them online “represents a very high security risk”. At the press briefing, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declined to speculate.

“We take this very, very seriously,” he assured. “There is no excuse when these kinds of documents are made public. They don’t deserve to be in public. They are worth protecting. This way we will find the end of the thread. And then if there are actions that need to be taken as we learn more about the extent of what happened, obviously we will take them.” So the USA, after Edward Snowden and the leak of secret information from the CIA and the National Security Service, Chelsea Manning with the publication of secret videos and documents on Julian Assange’s Wikileaks platform, and other similar cases, now has the most damaging leak 21st century information.