WASHINGTON: Classified documents that appeared online, with details ranging from Ukraine’s air defenses to Israel’s Mossad spy agency, have US officials scrambling to identify the leak’s source, with some experts saying it could be an American.

Officials say the breadth of topics addressed in the documents, which touch on the war in Ukraine, China, the Middle East and Africa, suggest they may have been leaked by an American rather than an ally.

“The focus now is on this being a US leak, as many of the documents were only in US hands,” Michael Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, told Reuters.

US officials said the investigation is in its early stages and those running it have not ruled out the possibility that pro-Russian elements were behind the leak, which is seen as one of the most serious security breaches since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2013.

In response, the Kremlin said on Monday that there was a general tendency to always blame Russia for everything when asked about accusations that Moscow may have been behind a leak of US intelligence documents about a number of countries, including Ukraine .

When asked about allegations that Russia may have been responsible, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “I cannot comment on this in any way. You and I know that there is in fact a tendency to always blame everything on Russia. It is, in general, a disease.”

Asked about the idea that Washington had spied on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Peskov, who called the leaks “quite interesting”, said that could not be ruled out. “But the fact that the United States has been spying on various heads of state, especially in European capitals, for a long time now, has come up repeatedly, causing various scandalous situations,” he said.

Following disclosure of the leak, Reuters has reviewed more than 50 documents labeled “Secret” and “Top Secret” that first appeared last month on social media websites, beginning with Discord and 4Chan. While some of the documents were posted weeks ago, their existence was first reported on Friday by the New York Times.

Reuters has not independently verified the authenticity of the documents. Some giving battlefield casualty estimates from Ukraine appeared to have been altered to minimize Russian losses. It is not clear why at least one is marked unclassified but includes top secret information. Some documents are marked “NOFORN,” meaning they cannot be released to foreign nationals.

Two US officials told Reuters on Sunday that they have not ruled out that the documents may have been doctored to mislead investigators as to their origin or to disseminate false information that may harm US security interests.

The White House referred questions to the Pentagon, which said in a statement on Sunday it was reviewing the validity of the photographed documents.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2023