DOJ, Pentagon Open Investigation After Ukraine War Docs Leak Online

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the all-up-in-everyone's-business dept

It’s tough to be considered a trusted partner in the resistance against the Russian invasion of Ukraine if you can’t keep your most secret documents secret. No source for the embarrassing (and possibly harmful) leak has been identified, but that’s presumably what the US government hopes to find out ASAP.

The Justice Department has joined the Pentagon in an urgent effort to determine how secret military documents on the war in Ukraine made their way onto multiple social media sites.

A small number of documents, including some marked “top secret,” were found on Twitter and Telegram on Wednesday. Since then, journalists, researchers, and social media sleuths have uncovered additional classified documents posted as early as March 1 on additional sites. This raises a host of questions about how widespread the breach may be and how much damage it could cause.

The Defense Department has confirmed the leaked documents are authentic. So, that identifies the source. But why they’ve been posted publicly remains a mystery. The Ukraine government is pointing its finger at Russian operatives, claiming it’s an attempt to muddy the international waters with this seemingly counterproductive public posting.

If the Russians are indeed behind this, the leak could be a strategic move designed to expose the extent of the US government’s Ukraine war-related surveillance dragnet. This report from the New York Times delves into the leaked documents and comes away with some surprising findings. Like the fact that our participation in the war effort involves spying on… Ukraine’s government and military.

The leak, the source of which remains unknown, also reveals the American assessment of a Ukrainian military that is itself in dire straits. The leaked material, from late February and early March but found on social media sites in recent days, outlines critical shortages of air defense munitions and discusses the gains being made by Russian troops around the eastern city of Bakhmut.

The intelligence reports seem to indicate that the United States is also spying on Ukraine’s top military and political leaders, a reflection of Washington’s struggle to get a clear view of Ukraine’s fighting strategies.

This does seem a bit strange, but the documents show the Defense Department is doing a better job tracking the Russian military effort than getting a handle on the details of Ukraine’s response to the invasion. The leaks ultimately help the Russian war effort, though, giving that government an idea of what’s being watched and where its own operational security is failing.

It also suggests the US government can’t be trusted to keep secrets, which is always an uncomfortable position to be in, especially when efforts to circumvent other nations’ operational security are now part of the public record, thanks to OPSEC failures on the home front.

With tensions already high, this sort of thing just doesn’t help.

The documents could also hurt diplomatic ties in other ways. The newly revealed intelligence documents also make plain that the United States is not spying just on Russia, but also on its allies. While that will hardly surprise officials of those countries, making such eavesdropping public always hampers relations with key partners, like South Korea, whose help is needed to supply Ukraine with weaponry.

There are only about 100 pages, of which the NYT viewed 50. But there’s a wealth of information in them, apparently all of it real. It includes information pulled from several sources, including the NSA, CIA, the State Department. It also mentions intel drawn from FISA-authorized surveillance sources. It not only discusses what’s been collected but how it’s being collected.

But for all the effort made to keep an eye on the war in Ukraine, all it apparently took was the existence of pockets to circumvent multiple layers of operational security.

The documents appeared online as hastily taken photographs of pieces of paper sitting atop what appears to be a hunting magazine. Former officials who have reviewed the material say it appears likely that a classified briefing was folded up, placed in a pocket, then taken out of a secure area to be photographed.

Sometimes the best tech is almost no tech at all. From the hands of a hunting magazine purchaser to Discord, and from Discord to everywhere else. Something in those photos is bound to give investigators something to work with, but the Defense Department admits “hundreds, if not thousands” of government employees and officials have the security clearance to access these briefings. And it’s a safe bet a decently sized percentage of those thousands have at least a passing interest in hunting.

Whatever the origin story of this leak, it clearly helps Russia more than anyone else. But if there’s an upside, it’s that Russia’s entire military apparatus appears to be compromised. Plugging those leaks will take time and the US government will be watching this response the entire time.

Filed Under: dod, doj, leaks, russia, ukraine, us