| See yesterday’s here, here, here, and here. |
The latest leak, revealed by the New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
on Friday, comes on the heels of the Pentagon announcing earlier in the day that it is investigating photos that supposedly expose highly classified plans for a spring military offensive by Ukrainian forces.
The new batch of documents surfaced on the message board website 4chan, Twitter, Telegram and other websites Friday afternoon.
The new trove of material also includes secret briefing slides on China, the Indo-Pacific military theater, the Middle East and terrorism, the New York Times reported.
More material related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also appeared on social media sites Friday.
One new leaked document is a map that purports to show the status of fierce fighting currently underway in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, according to the New York Times
The Post also discovered five new documents posted on the social media platform Telegram that reportedly shows Ukrainian air defense positions, combat equipment numbers and maps of the combat situations in Kharkiv and southern Ukraine.
| Courtesy of No More BS, Zero Hedge’s take: |
Like the Ukraine war plans earlier reported on by the Times, some of these latest documents appeared on Twitter and other social media platforms, and they include reports labeled with one of the highest classification ratings of "Secret/NoForn" - which means they are sensitive enough to not be shared with even foreign allies.
Interestingly, the NY Times notes that one intelligence slide which is circulating features "an alarming assessment of Ukraine’s faltering air defense capabilities." But these leaks, some of which actually appeared on a Discord server devoted to discussing Minecraft and other unusual places, include more than the initial content on Ukraine war planning:
But 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.
The report quotes one analyst who warns this is likely "the tip of the iceberg" and that more major leaks are coming, or possibly have already happened, in something which could begin to rival the 'Pentagon Papers' of the Vietnam war era.
A former senior Pentagon official, Mick Mulroy, was also quoted as saying this could possibly hinder Ukrainian military planning given that "many of these were pictures of documents" and thus "it appears that it was a deliberate leak done by someone that wished to damage the Ukraine, U.S., and NATO efforts."
This assessment suggests a leak from inside allied forces, and not from a foreign adversary, even though US officials are accusing Russian-linked entities online of being the chief spreaders of the leaked documents.
US officials are also warning that some of the documents may have been digitally altered to fit a more pro-Kremlin narrative, as we detailed earlier. Twitter has acknowledged that US officials are requesting that it act to scrub classified materials from the platform.