The Pentagon said on Sunday that the US is assessing the impact of an apparent leak of a trove of highly classified documents on national security.
The breach appears to include assessments and secret intelligence reports involving not only Ukraine and Russia, but also highly sensitive analyses of US allies, according to the Justice Department.
While the Defense Department is still reviewing the validity of photographed documents circulating online, they “appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement.
“An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on US national security and on our allies and partners,” Singh said.
The Justice Department said on Saturday that it had spoken with the Defense Department about the matter and that an investigation had been launched.
In recent days, dozens of leaked documents and slides have appeared on Twitter, Telegram, Discord, and other sites, and new documents continue to emerge.
According to US officials, some documents appeared to be manipulated, but many were consistent with CIA World Intelligence Review reports shared at high levels within the White House, Pentagon, and State Department.
According to defense analysts, any breach of internal classified US documents would be damaging as well as potentially embarrassing.
Furthermore, the leak would be useful to Moscow because it would demonstrate how deeply US intelligence has penetrated parts of the Russian military apparatus, according to US media.
Other documents appear to contain information about internal debates within US allies’ governments.
The New York Times reported that among the documents were discussions about South Korea’s debate over whether to provide the US with artillery shells for use in Ukraine.