WASHINGTON (AP) — A Major leak of classified US documents that has shocked Washington and revealed new details of intelligence gathering, possibly started in a chat room on a social media platform popular with gamers.
Held on the Discord platform, which hosts real-time voice, video, and text chats, a thread originally set up to talk about a range of topics related to the war in Ukraine. As part of debates about Ukraine, according to a member of the chat, an unidentified poster shared documents that were supposedly classified, first typed them out with the poster’s own thoughts, and then, a few months ago, began posting images of papers. places with pleats in it.
The messages seem to have gone unnoticed outside of chat until a few weeks ago, when they began to circulate more widely on social media and were picked up by major news outlets. The leaks have alarmed US officials and prompted an investigation by the Justice Department.
The data contains startling and surprisingly timely details about US and NATO aid to Ukraine. They also hinted at efforts to aid Ukraine in its war with Russia, including an expected spring offensive.
The extent of exposure has yet to be determined. It is also unclear whether any government worked to share or manipulate the documents.
When asked on Monday whether the US government was actually waiting for more intelligence documents to appear online, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied: “The truth and the honest answer to your question is, we don’t know. And is that a matter of concern for us? You’re absolutely right.”
Top Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher urged caution when “promoting or amplifying any of these documents,” adding that “it looks like slides have been tampered with.”
But the breach underlines the difficulties the US and other governments face in securing classified information. Congressional reviews and experts have long warned of weaknesses in US counterintelligenceof the challenges of monitoring an estimated 3 million people with security clearances, and of agencies producing and overclassifying so much information that the US has no reliable control over it.
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“I think the intelligence community has adapted and gotten better at preventing all kinds of mass electronic leaks,” said Kellen Dwyer, a former Justice Department prosecutor who was part of the team that brought a federal case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange tightened. “But they clearly haven’t become good enough.
The Associated Press interviewed a person who said he was a member of the Discord chat group in which documents appeared over several months. The person, who said he was 18 years old, declined to give his name out of concern for his personal safety.
The AP was unable to independently confirm many details shared by the person and the original chat room has been deleted.
The AP looked at images of documents that appeared on the discussion forums in recent weeks. They include a top secret analysis of the deeper ties between the intelligence agencies Russian FSB and United Arab Emirates agenciesthe oil-rich Persian Gulf state that hosts a US air base and cooperates with Washington on many security matters.
Citing intelligence agencies, the March analysis says FSB officers were caught claiming that the UAE had agreed with Russia “to cooperate against US and British intelligence agencies”.
An Emirati government spokesman said the allegations are “categorically false”. US officials from several agencies declined to comment on the document.
The AP also saw an analysis of what could happen in the war between Russia and Ukraine in certain “wild card” scenarios, including if Russian President Vladimir Putin or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy died. The analysis is marked secret, a lower classification level than top secret.
If Putin were to fire his top military advisers and the war escalates, the document speculates he could approve the use of tactical nuclear weapons if “the elites question Putin’s decision-making and the Russian armed forces are unable to address shortages of manpower and equipment”.
In the worst-case scenario, Zelenskyy’s death could prompt Europe to limit arms supplies, the document said. But a “senior Ukrainian leader” could also maintain domestic and foreign support, it says.
The investigative journalism organization Bellingcat, which specializes in sifting through social media and open source records, interviewed the same person and two others in the Discord chat room, dubbed “Thug Shaker Central.”
Bellingcat reported Saturday that documents from Thug Shaker Central appear to have been shared in another chat room, “WowMao.” From WowMao, the documents seem to have spread further — eventually becoming the subject of a story in The New York Times on Thursday, which first reported that the Pentagon investigated an infringement.
The Discord user who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity says he was talking to others — including the person who spent months posting documents he or she said were secret — when the Times story broke.
“We kind of lost it all,” said the Discord user. “We couldn’t believe what happened.”
The person said his primary motivation for speaking to the media was to clear the reputation of a third person who goes by the screen name “Lucca”. Messages from Lucca containing many of the documents were widely shared on Twitter and other social media. Those documents were reported by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets.
Lucca “is just a kid,” said the poster speaking to the AP. “He just consistently posted it to mess with people.”
The poster declined to identify the person who originally uploaded the documents to Thug Shaker Central or confirm whether that person worked for the US government. He referred to the original uploader by a nickname, “the OG”
But the poster said the person who first posted the documents didn’t seem to be driven by ideology or exposing government secrets in a broad sense, but rather to impress people in their group.
If that person were to be arrested, the poster said he had copies of “well past hundreds” of pages of records.
He wanted to protect fellow posters in the now-defunct chat, but also believed the documents contained secrets Americans should know.
“If the OG gets arrested, I’ll leak them all,” the poster said.
___ Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Eric Tucker in Washington, and Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report
