The person behind the leak of top secret US government documents is a young gun enthusiast who was the first to share them on social media. Washington message.
The release of the documents – which led to a criminal investigation by the Justice Department – contained classified information about the war in Ukraine, as well as classified assessments of US allies.
Two members of a group on the online social platform Discord told the paper that hundreds of pages of material had been posted there by a man who told them he worked at a US military base and took the documents home.
The man, known as “OG”, regularly posted documents about the group for months, members said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Some of the information in the documents was so sensitive that it was marked “NOFORN,” meaning not to be shared with foreigners.
The group of about 24 people, including people from Russia and Ukraine, came together because of their “mutual love of weapons, military equipment and God” and formed an “invitation-only club 2020 on Discord”.
OG told group members that he “spent part of the day in a secure facility that banned cell phones and other electronic devices” and that he “worked for hours writing classified documents to share with his colleagues on the Discord server.”
Dozens of photos of documents have been found on Twitter, Telegram, Discord and other sites in recent days, though some may have been circulating online for weeks if not months before gaining media attention.
US authorities have not publicly confirmed that the materials shown in photos posted on social media and other websites are genuine, and their authenticity has not been immediately independently verified.
However, the document leak caused headaches for Washington, exposing US concerns about the feasibility of a Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russian forces and suggesting that it was spying on allies Israel and South Korea.
Many of the documents are no longer available on the sites where they first appeared, and the United States is working to remove them.
The consequences of the apparent escape could be significant – even deadly – endangering US intelligence resources while providing US enemies with valuable intelligence.
Source: DN
