More than 100 secret US documents leaked on social media, causing a "nightmare" for the Five Eyes group

The scale of the leak of more than 100 documents, along with the sensitivity of the documents themselves, could be devastating, US officials said, according to the New York Times. A senior intelligence official called the leak a nightmare for the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing group that includes the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

The latest documents surfaced on Twitter and elsewhere a day after senior US officials said they were investigating the first leak. The first leaked documents were classified documents related to war plans in Ukraine. One page, dated February 23, was labeled “Secret/NoForn,” meaning the document was classified and not to be shared with foreign countries.

The US Justice Department said it had opened an investigation into the leak and was in contact with the US Department of Defense.

Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, said the leak of classified documents showed a serious security breach that could have hampered Ukraine’s military planning. “Since many of these are images of documents, it appears to be a deliberate leak by someone who wanted to damage the efforts of Ukraine, the United States, and NATO,” he said.

One analyst has described what has been leaked so far as just the tip of the iceberg.

On the morning of April 7, senior national security officials who had handled the initial leak said a new concern had arisen: Was that the only intelligence leak? By the afternoon of April 7, they had their answer when a second leak occurred.

Specifically, just as officials at the Pentagon and US national security agencies were investigating the origin of documents appearing on Twitter and Telegram, another document appeared on 4chan, an anonymous news platform. The document posted on 4chan was a map showing the war situation in the city of Bakhmut, Eastern Ukraine - the site of a fierce battle that has been taking place for months.

The first batch of leaked documents appears to have been posted in early March on Discord — a social media chat platform popular with gamers — according to Aric Toler, an analyst at Bellingcat, a Dutch investigative website.

But the leaked documents appear to be more than just top-secret war plans for Ukraine. Security analysts who have reviewed the documents circulating on social media say they also include sensitive information about China, the Indo-Pacific region, the Middle East and terrorism.

Officials at several US national security agencies said they were rushing to find the source of the leaks and acknowledged that it was likely that small amounts of classified information were being posted regularly on websites.

The Ukrainian military documents appear to include photographs of charts showing arms supplies, troop and battalion strength, and other plans. Pentagon officials acknowledge that they are legitimate US Defense Department documents, but the copies appear to have been altered in some ways from the originals. For example, the documents increase the US estimate of Ukrainian deaths and decrease the estimate of Russian deaths.

Ukrainian officials and pro-Russian bloggers said on April 7 that the leak was part of a disinformation effort by the other side to influence an offensive that Ukraine plans to launch in the spring.

A senior Ukrainian official said the leak appeared to be a Russian attempt to influence Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Pro-Russian bloggers warned against believing any of the information, with one suggesting it could be the work of Western intelligence to mislead Russia.

Meanwhile, US national security officials are trying to find the culprit. It is likely that the documents were not leaked by Ukrainian officials, because they did not have access to the specific plans. They will first determine who had access to the documents, according to a US official.

In Ukraine, Lieutenant Colonel Yurii Bereza, a battalion commander in the National Guard of Ukraine, denied the leak, saying that the information war had become so intense that it was no longer possible to determine what was true and what was false.

Experts say it is difficult to draw conclusions about who leaked the information and why. They say there are many examples of leaked documents being used in propaganda campaigns, and especially to spread disinformation, but what is happening with these US documents remains unclear.

The conflict in Ukraine has seen more document leaks than other conflicts in part because of the role of open-source and declassified intelligence in the conflict, said Kyle Walter, research director at Logically, a British company that tracks disinformation.

According to Tin Tuc Newspaper