A leak of top-secret US documents could have the potential to do serious damage to intelligence-sharing relationships with Australia and other allies, an expert tells Crikey.
The alleged culprit behind the Pentagon leak was arrested overnight in Massachusetts by an armed group of federal agents.
Footage from the arrest shows the man, identified in US media as 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard Jack Teixeira, being apprehended wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
Teixeira allegedly shared pictures of printed-out documents in a private chatroom on the gaming platform Discord over the past few months. The documents then spread to the message board 4chan, Russian Telegram channels, and other social media.
“The leaking of top-secret information, particularly top-secret information that includes intelligence seemingly compiled from multiple countries put together, is obviously very, very serious and can potentially do damage to very sensitive and trusted intelligence-sharing relationships,” Australian National University national security scholar William Stoltz told Crikey.
“It appears that there are details in the leaks that relate to quite practical and important details about operational planning in Ukraine, things like the expenditure of munitions, which would have been an immediate utility to Russian commanders in the field.
“It’s probably not a stretch to say that the leaking of this information has immediately put people’s lives at risk.”
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has reportedly decided to alter some battle plans in the wake of the leak.
At least one of the documents mentioned Australian defence equipment being sent to Ukraine, although that bit of information has been shared openly by the Australian government and is not necessarily sensitive in itself.
“While the documents themselves may be classified top secret, not all the information contained in them is going to necessarily be at that level,” Stoltz said.
Stoltz qualified his remarks by acknowledging that the fact the documents appeared to have been accessed and leaked by a “maverick” US individual, rather than by a foreign intelligence agency, would likely give US intelligence partners some measure of relief.
“This is unfortunately just kind of par for the course of creating, sharing and handling secret information — while you can do absolutely everything to contain it … there’s always a human element that makes it not entirely secure at any point.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers told reporters in Washington, DC, earlier this week that he viewed the breach as “very serious”.
Chalmers was in the US capital for meetings with global counterparts, including one with Ukraine’s minister of finance.
Asked if he anticipated the leak would impact the meetings, Chalmers said: “That remains to be seen.”
“I mean, obviously that’s a very serious breach. We saw some of that analysis come to light publicly, but the conversations that I expect to have with my friend and counterpart from Ukraine [are] about the support that Australia is providing for the war effort.”
An anonymous official from a country from the Five Eyes — the intelligence-sharing network that includes the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — told CNN the leak was “alarming”.
Another Five Eyes official told CNN: “We expect the US to share a damage assessment with us in the coming days, but we cannot wait for their assessment. Right now we are doing our own … We are poring over these documents to figure out if any of the intelligence originated from our collection.”
A member of the Discord chat where the documents originated — named “Thug Shaker Central” — told The Washington Post the leaker, known as “OG” in the chat, had originally typed out the documents to share them, before eventually proceeding to share pictures of the material instead.
“If you had classified documents, you’d want to flex at least a little bit, like hey, I’m the big guy,” the member told the Post.
“There is a little bit of showing off to friends … as well as wanting to keep us informed.”
The Post story indicated some 300 documents may have been leaked to the chat.
The New York Times reported its journalists were able to link the leak to Teixeira because of clues left in the pictures, including the texture of a table and the pattern of floor tiles visible in the images, which could be linked to other photos posted online.
One of the early posts of the material outside the Discord chat was made by an anonymous 4chan user last Thursday.
“[Russia is] outnumbering Ukies on all fronts and Russia is only able to make marginal gains,” the person wrote alongside a picture of a document showing troop losses from both sides.
Another anonymous person, perhaps posing as an intelligence agent, replied: “Delete this now please. We will be able to find you from the crease pattern.”
The first poster replied “No”, and posted another supposed leaked document.
US Attorney-General Merrick Garland said Teixeira will be charged under a provision of the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to remove or transmit classified national defence information, the Associated Press reported.
The US military and Justice Department have opened a joint investigation to get to the bottom of how the leak happened.
Australia’s Defence Chief Angus Campbell said earlier in the week the US had been “engaging with partners” to figure out how damaging the leak might be.
“This, by reports, is a serious leak,” Campbell said.
“It is being investigated seriously by US authorities, and they are engaging with partners in order to better understand the potential consequences of that information being released into the public.”
