The hunt for the Pentagon leaker

The United States is a victim of more cyber attacks than any other country in the world. It also suffers from often highly damaging leaks of classified information. The combination has given the American counter-intelligence community a headache of vast proportions, especially as technology and espionage have grown exponentially in recent years. Finding the culprit responsible for putting top secret documents into the public domain is a thankless task for leak investigators because potentially thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of people in sensitive jobs have access to such material on a daily basis. The investigations by the Pentagon and the US Justice Department into the leak of more than 100 highly classified documents about the war in Ukraine as well as spying operations against allies including South Korea and Israel are focused on exposing the leaker before more secrets appear on social media. Stealth, not cyber hacking, is at the heart of the investigation. Around 1.3 million US government employees and contractors have access to documents marked top secret. But that covers the whole gamut of government departments and agencies. In this case the dissemination of material would have been more restricted; and yet the investigators still have the prospect of interrogating several thousand military and civilian employees. The Pentagon’s Joint Staff alone from where the leaked documents originated is compromised of around 800 civilians and 1,200 service members from the army, navy, Marine Corps, air force, national guard and coast guard. Their job is to support General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. However, there will be clues, and narrowing down potential suspects might not be too complex. All the documents appear to be distributed printouts of briefing notes. They were then photographed and folded in haste judging by their creased appearance, before being removed, possibly in a pocket or bag. This indicates the leaker had access to paper copies of the documents rather than extracting them electronically. This would suggest carelessness on the part of those responsible for disseminating the classified documents. Under normal protocols, documents marked top secret would be held electronically in dedicated computer systems located in rooms where it would be forbidden to enter with cameras or mobile phones. The documents were then sent to a social media platform called Discord and appeared online last month. There will be a paper trail that could be traced to a particular department or office or even to an individual. Investigators will also look at motivation as well as the modus operandi of the leaker. Staff will be questioned about colleagues who may have uttered even the slightest criticism of US policy towards Ukraine. For US allies, especially the four other members of the exclusive Five Eyes intelligence network -Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – the latest airing of classified information, much of it gleaned from signals intelligence interceptions, will once again raise concerns about America’s vulnerability to insider leaks. Ten years ago Edward Snowden, a former technical assistant with the CIA and ex-contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), removed tens of thousands of sensitive files from the NSA and made them public, generating worldwide embarrassment for Washington.