Global Courant 2023-04-13 18:19:43
President Biden said on Thursday that the US is “close” to finding the person responsible for leaking Pentagon documents that the Defense Department says contain “sensitive and top secret material.”
“I can’t (give an update) right now. There is a full investigation going on with the intelligence community and the Department of Justice and they are getting close,” Biden told reporters during his trip to Ireland. “I don’t have an answer for you.”
The president also said, “I’m concerned that it happened, but there’s nothing simultaneous that I know of significant significance.”
Biden’s comments came after The Washington Post released a report claiming that the person behind the leak is a man in his 20s who worked at a military base and shared the classified information on the chat app Discord.
A Pentagon team “continues to review and assess the veracity of the photographed documents circulating on social media sites,” officials say. (STAFF/AFP via Getty Images)
LEAKER OF CLASSIFIED AMERICAN MILITARY-BASED INTELLIGENCE WORKS, POSTED DOCUMENTS ON DISCORD: REPORT
The outlet reportedly spoke to a fellow member of the chat group the leaker ran on Discord. The Post’s teenage source claimed he knew the leaker’s real name and where he lived, but said he would not help authorities locate him.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also told reporters Thursday that the Defense Department has taken “steps to further restrict access to sensitive information” in the wake of the leaks.
“We are certainly reviewing the national security implications of the disclosure,” she said. “And I might add, you know, to mitigate the impact of the release of these documents on our US national security and also on our allies and partners.
On Tuesday, Fox News reported that the leak of the documents may have come from outside the Pentagon, based on conversations with several US defense and intelligence officials.
The source who spoke to The Washington Post told the paper that the leaker ran a Discord group called “Thug Shaker Central,” identifying himself only as “OG.”
US SPECIAL Forces IN UKRAINE AT EMBASSY, OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED, AS PENTAGON DOCUMENT PROBE HEATS UP
Biden made the comments about the document leak investigation during a state visit to Ireland on Thursday, April 13.
The teen, who the Post said had parental permission to talk to the outlet, said “OG” shared large amounts of classified material with him and about two dozen other members of the chat group.
Members of the group, described as “close-knit” by the Post’s source, reportedly include foreign citizens from Russia and even Ukraine.
Many of the messages were written out by “OG”, who reportedly grew tired of writing out the information and later resorted to taking and posting pictures of the documents and sharing them with members.
The Washington Post reports that “OG” obtained the sensitive information from his job at an unnamed “military base.”
The source told the Post he believed “OG” was only sharing the documents to keep members of the group “in the loop” and was not hostile to the US government, nor was he working to help any other country.
“He’s not a Russian agent. He’s not a Ukrainian agent,” the source told the Post.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby revealed to Fox News on Wednesday that there is a “small U.S. military presence” at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine after being asked about leaked Pentagon documents suggesting that US Special Forces are active in the war-torn area. country. (Anatolii Siryk/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images/Fox News)
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The top-secret information included movements of senior political leaders, updates on military forces, detailed maps of battlefield conditions in Ukraine, and satellite images of the aftermath of Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian facilities. Other documents, according to the report, include the potential trajectory of North Korean ballistic nuclear missiles that could reach the US and photos and information about the surveillance technology linked to the Chinese spy balloon that the Biden administration let the US in February. float.
The source claimed that “OG” had no intention of being a whistleblower. However, the classified documents were leaked on February 28 by another teenage user from the group and spread across the internet.
Fox News’ Sarah Tobianski contributed to this report.
