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Washington evaluates the dangers of classified information leaks

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The United States is assessing any risks to its national security that could arise from leaking classified documents, especially those related to the conflict in Ukraine, the US Department of Defense said Sunday.

This leak of classified documents, made public by The New York Times last week, includes not only reports and documents related to the conflict in Ukraine, but also belongs to highly confidential analyzes of US allies.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said: “An interagency collaboration has begun to assess the impact (leakage) of these video documents on national security, as well as on our allies and partners.”

The US Department of Justice, which launched an investigation on Saturday, is trying to determine the source of the leaks and is still verifying the authenticity of the released documents.

The Washington Post quoted US officials as saying that some of these documents were forged. But most of them are original and consistent with CIA reports circulating in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, according to the same source.

Some of them contain information related to the internal discussions of governments allied with the United States. For example, according to The New York Times, one of the documents highlighted government discussions in South Korea about the possibility of supplying Ukraine with American artillery shells.

Officials say the wide range of topics in the documents, which cover Ukraine, China, the Middle East and Africa, indicate they were leaked from a US citizen rather than an ally.

“Now the focus is on the fact that this is a leak from the United States because many of these documents were only in the possession of the United States,” Michael Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, told Reuters.

US officials have indicated that the investigation is at an early stage, and his administration leaders do not rule out the possibility that pro-Russian elements are behind the leak, which is considered one of the worst security breaches since the WikiLeaks leak. in 2013, which included more than 700,000 documents, video clips and diplomatic cables.

Two U.S. officials told Reuters on Sunday they were open to falsifying the documents to mislead investigators about their origin or spread false information that could harm U.S. security interests.

Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are concerned about the leaked documents, the documents are only a partial snapshot of the conflict in Ukraine a month ago, and not recent estimates.

The official told Reuters that officials are looking into motives that could push one or more U.S. officials to leak such sensitive information.

He added that investigators had considered four or five leads, including that the person who released the documents was one of the disgruntled employees or one of the house’s officials seeking to harm U.S. national security interests.

Source: AFP+Reuters.

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