Leaked Pentagon Documents Reveal Secrets About Friends and Foes

A trove of secret Pentagon documents that were exposed on social media have shed new light on the state of the war in Ukraine, showing just how deeply the United States has penetrated Russia’s military and intelligence services, and revealing that Washington also appears to be spying on some of its closest allies, including Ukraine, Israel and South Korea.

Here is what is known about the documents and the repercussions their exposure has had around the world.
The Pentagon said on Monday that top officials were investigating the disclosure of a trove of classified documents but offered no clues about the source of the leaks or how many people had access to the information.

“We’re still investigating how this happened, as well as the scope of the issue,” Christopher Meagher, the chief Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.

The leaked material, from late February and early March, but found on social media sites in recent days, outlines how deeply Russia’s security and intelligence services have been penetrated by the United States as well as dire ammunition shortages facing Ukraine’s military.

The documents revealed that Washington appears to be spying on some of its closest allies, including eavesdropping on conversations between senior South Korean national security officials over whether the country would sell artillery shells that might be used in Ukraine. That led to a political backlash in Seoul, where opposition lawmakers on Monday denounced what they called “a clear violation of our sovereignty by the United States.”

U.S. officials “are engaging with allies and partners at high levels” over the leaked documents, “to reassure them of our commitment to safeguarding intelligence,” Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, told reporters on Monday. But he declined to provide more specifics, including whether Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had reached out to officials in South Korea
The Pentagon said on Monday that top officials were investigating the disclosure of a trove of classified documents but offered no clues about the source of the leaks or how many people had access to the information.

“We’re still investigating how this happened, as well as the scope of the issue,” Christopher Meagher, the chief Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.

The leaked material, from late February and early March, but found on social media sites in recent days, outlines how deeply Russia’s security and intelligence services have been penetrated by the United States as well as dire ammunition shortages facing Ukraine’s military.

The documents revealed that Washington appears to be spying on some of its closest allies, including eavesdropping on conversations between senior South Korean national security officials over whether the country would sell artillery shells that might be used in Ukraine. That led to a political backlash in Seoul, where opposition lawmakers on Monday denounced what they called “a clear violation of our sovereignty by the United States.”

U.S. officials “are engaging with allies and partners at high levels” over the leaked documents, “to reassure them of our commitment to safeguarding intelligence,” Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, told reporters on Monday. But he declined to provide more specifics, including whether Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had reached out to officials in South Korea
When reports emerged late last year that South Korea had agreed to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish its stockpiles, it insisted that their “end user” should be the U.S. military. But internally, top aides to President Yoon Suk Yeol were worried that their American ally would divert them to Ukraine.

Mr. Yoon’s secretary for foreign affairs, Yi Mun-hui, told his boss, National Security Adviser Kim Sung-han, that the government “was mired in concerns that the U.S. would not be the end user if South Korea were to comply with a U.S. request for ammunition,” according to a batch of secret Pentagon documents leaked through social media.

The secret report was based on signals intelligence, which meant that the United States has been spying on one of its major allies in Asia.

Both Mr. Yi and Mr. Kim stepped down last month for unclear reasons. Neither man could be reached for comment.

South Korea was aware of the news reports about the leaked documents and planned to discuss “issues raised” by the leak with Washington, a senior government official in Seoul told reporters on Sunday. When asked whether South Korea planned to lodge a protest or demand an explanation from Washington, he said the government would study precedents from the past and similar cases involving other nations.
How highly sensitive U.S. intelligence documents on the war in Ukraine ended up on social media remained a mystery on Monday, with few clues — if any — yielding who might have leaked them. That did not prevent the Kremlin from saying something — or, really, nothing.

“These are quite interesting leaks,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters on Monday. “Everyone is analyzing and broadly discussing them.”

When asked if Russia bore any responsibility for the leak, he said, “No, I can’t comment on this in any way. We all know that there is in fact an inclination to always blame Russia for everything, and to attribute everything to Russia.”

The leak of the Pentagon documents, found on Twitter and other sites on Friday, wasn’t entirely in Russia’s best interests. They portrayed a battered Russian military that is struggling in its war in Ukraine and a military apparatus that is deeply compromised.

The documents also contain daily real-time warnings to American intelligence agencies on the timing of Moscow’s strikes and reveal the American assessment of a Ukrainian military that is also in dire straits.
To brace for the introduction of advanced NATO-supplied tanks on Ukraine’s battlefields, Russian forces are preparing to pay a bonus to troops who manage to damage or destroy one, according to recently leaked U.S. intelligence documents.

The monetary incentive is part of a larger tranche of initiatives structured to help Russian formations and boost morale as they struggle to seize territory in Ukraine’s east, the documents say.

“Financial incentives would be offered for the capture and destruction of foreign tanks, and videos of tanks being destroyed would be widely distributed to reduce the confidence of Ukraine and the West and reassure Russian troops of their ability to overcome this new weaponry,” according to the document, which was labeled top secret.

The Russian strategy to deal with the new tanks was tucked away in a trove of U.S. intelligence documents that were leaked online in video game chat rooms before making their way to other social media sites in recent days. U.S. officials have said the documents are legitimate, though at least one of the dozens of pages of classified reports had been altered.

Though intelligence gathering is difficult and the reports it yields are sometimes wrong, the documents have given the clearest look yet at the internal workings of both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries since the war began last year. Both sides are struggling with casualties and setbacks, the documents say.
— One of the secret Pentagon documents that was exposed on social media lays out an American assessment of scenarios that could lead Israel to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine — in contravention of current Israeli policy.

Israel’s policy so far has been to offer humanitarian assistance. It is also working with Ukraine to develop a custom-made, smart early-warning system to help Ukraine defend itself against incoming rockets and missiles.

But Israel has rebuffed Ukrainian requests to supply it with more robust weaponry for air defense, such as Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome missile interception system, and has ruled out providing it with offensive weapons.

Israel has tried to maintain a delicate balancing act, helping Ukraine mainly in the civilian sphere while avoiding provoking Russia. Russia has a military presence in Syria, where Israel conducts frequent airstrikes against Iranian and pro-Iranian targets.

Senior U.S. officials said the F.B.I. was working to determine the source of the leaked documents. The officials acknowledged that the documents appeared to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, using reports from the government’s intelligence community, but that at least one document had been modified from the original at some point.
A hacking group, under the guidance of Russia’s Federal Security Service, may have compromised the I.P. address of a Canadian gas pipeline company in February and caused damage to its infrastructure, according to leaked Pentagon documents.

If the attack by the cybercriminal group, Zarya, succeeded, the intelligence report said, “it would mark the first time” the United States intelligence community “has observed a pro-Russia-hacking group execute a disruptive attack against Western industrial control systems.”

The New York Times was unable to verify the U.S. intelligence assessment independently, and the Canadian national agency responsible for signals intelligence and cybersecurity, the Communications Security Establishment, said it did not comment on specific cybersecurity episodes.

According to the Pentagon’s assessment, on Feb. 15, Zarya shared screenshots with the Federal Security Service — the main successor agency to the K.G.B., known by its Russian initials, F.S.B. — that purportedly showed that the attacker had the capability to increase valve pressure, disable alarms and make emergency shutdowns of an unspecified gas distribution station in Canada.

“The F.S.B. officers anticipated a successful operation would cause an explosion at the gas distribution station, and were monitoring Canadian news reports for indications of an explosion,” the report said.
The Ukrainian Army was close to losing a key battle of the war. A single, tenuous supply road for Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the streets of the eastern city of Bakhmut was taking fire. A general called the threatened road the “last breathing tube.”

This dire assessment of fighting in Bakhmut, one of the longest running and most lethal battles of Russia’s war in Ukraine, appears in a new batch of classified documents that appears to detail American national security secrets.

The assessment captures only one moment, from late February, in the now 10-month-long fight for Bakhmut, a midsize university and mining town of questionable strategic significance but one that both sides have freighted with political meaning.

The city is now mostly in ruins, as fires sweep through buildings and soldiers fight in fierce, block-by-block combat.

Ukrainian soldiers have fought human-wave assaults by former convicts in the Wagner mercenary group and by elite Russian special forces troops, and they have endured round-the-clock artillery bombardments.
A cache of leaked Pentagon documents circulating online portrays the Russian military as running out of steam, short on men and equipment, and facing stalemate. But one group of Russian fighters stands as an exception.

The mercenary group Wagner — known for its skill on the battlefield, its army of former prisoners and its murder of at least one perceived traitor with a sledgehammer — remains a potent force, with influence not just in Ukraine, but all over the world, according to the documents. Wagner, the documents say, is actively working to thwart American interests in Africa and has explored branching out to Haiti, right under the nose of the United States, with an offer to help that country’s embattled government take on violent gangs.

Senior U.S. officials said the F.B.I. was working to determine the source of the leak. The officials acknowledged that the documents appeared to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, using reports from the government’s intelligence community, but that at least one had been modified from the original at some later point.

According to one confidential document, emissaries from Wagner secretly met with “Turkish contacts” in February, slipping onto NATO territory in search of weapons and equipment for its fight in Ukraine.

Whether weapons actually changed hands and the Turkish authorities were aware of the effort was not clear. Officials from the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not immediately comment on the revelation.
The Israeli government issued a statement on Sunday firmly rejecting assertions contained in the leaked Pentagon documents that the leadership of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, had encouraged the agency’s staff and Israeli citizens to participate in the anti-government protests that roiled the country in March.

Mossad and other senior Israeli defense officials denied the assessment’s findings, and The New York Times was unable to independently verify the U.S. intelligence assessment.

The statement issued on Sunday by the Israeli prime minister’s office on behalf of the Mossad described the assertion as “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”

Senior U.S. officials said the F.B.I. was working to determine the source of the leaked documents. The officials acknowledged that the documents appeared to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, using reports from the government’s intelligence community, but that at least one had been modified from the original at some later point.

The apparent authenticity of the documents, however, is not an indication of their accuracy.

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