Leaked Pentagon Documents Reveal Secrets About Friends and Foes (Published 2023) (2024)

The Pentagon says it is investigating the scope of the documents leak but declines to give specifics.

Mr. Patel would not address any potential damage to the U.S.-South Korea relationship, saying only that Washington’s commitment to the country “is ironclad. They are one of our most important partners in the region.”

Mr. Meagher, the Pentagon spokesman, declined to answer most questions about the investigation, citing a criminal inquiry launched by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Pentagon is leading a separate interagency team, including the White House, State Department and intelligence agencies, to determine the extent of the damage caused by the disclosures, and to assess what needs to be done to address the leak.

“That includes taking steps to take a closer look at exactly how this type of information is distributed and to whom, but beyond that, I’m not going to get into any more specifics,” Mr. Meagher said.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, called the leaks “quite interesting” on Monday and noted that “everyone is analyzing and broadly discussing them.”

When asked if Russia bore any responsibility for the leak, he said, “No, I can’t comment on this in any way. We all know that there is in fact an inclination to always blame Russia for everything, and to attribute everything to Russia.”

The leak could damage Ukraine’s war effort by exposing which Russian agencies the United States knows the most about, giving Moscow a potential opportunity to cut off the sources of information.

Mr. Meagher said that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III was initially briefed on the leak last Thursday morning. The next day, Mr. Austin began convening departmentwide meetings to address the widening disclosures.

“The secretary and Department of Defense, and the United States government take this apparent unauthorized disclosure extremely seriously,” Mr. Meagher said. “This is a top priority for us.”

Mr. Meagher said Pentagon and other U.S. officials began contacting congressional leaders and allies over the weekend to alert them to the disclosures.

The leak has already raised doubts about America’s ability to keep its secrets.

“The reports of intelligence leaks are incredibly concerning,” Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Monday. Mr. Rogers said the panel was “actively seeking answers from the Department of Defense.”

Mr. Patel also would not discuss any fallout over a claim in the leaked documents that the leadership of Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, had encouraged the agency’s staff and Israeli citizens to participate in mass anti-government protests.

As with the surveillance of South Korea, the document attributed the information about the Mossad to “signals intelligence,” or electronic eavesdropping. The Israeli government issued a statement on Sunday calling the assertions “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”

The leaked documents show that Seoul is torn between its policy and Washington over Ukraine.

A group of opposition lawmakers held a news conference in South Korea on Monday denouncing the United States for spying. They said the revelations included in the leaked documents may be “just the tip of the iceberg,” and strongly urged Washington to launch an investigation and ensure that similar acts did not happen again.

“This is a clear violation of our sovereignty by the United States and a super-scale security breach on the South Korean part,” they said in a statement.

Although U.S. officials have confirmed that the trove of leaked documents appear to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, at least one had been modified from the original at some point. And the apparent authenticity of the documents is not an indication of their accuracy.

The documents pertaining to South Korea showed a key American ally torn between Washington’s pressure on Seoul to help supply ammunition to Ukraine and its official policy of not providing lethal weapons to countries at war. Seoul feared that President Biden would call Mr. Yoon directly to press the matter.

“Yi stressed that South Korea was not prepared to have a call between the heads of state without having a clear position on the issue, adding that South Korea could not violate its policy against supplying lethal aid, so officially changing the policy would be the only option,” the document said.

Mr. Yi said that Mr. Yoon’s presidential secretary for national defense, Im Ki-hun, had promised to determine “a final stance by March 2.”

But their boss, Mr. Kim, was worried that if the announcement of Mr. Yoon’s state visit to Washington coincided with an announcement of South Korea changing its stance on providing lethal aid to Ukraine, “the public would think the two had been done as a trade.” Mr. Yoon’s state visit to Washington, which is to take place on April 26, was announced March 7.

Instead, according to the document, Mr. Kim “suggested the possibility” of selling 330,000 rounds of 155-millimeter artillery shells to Poland because “getting the ammunition to Ukraine quickly was the ultimate goal of the United States.”

Mr. Yi agreed that it might be possible for Poland to agree to being called the end user and send the ammunition on to Ukraine, but that South Korea would need to “verify what Poland would do.” It is unclear exactly what he meant by this because South Korea’s export control rules stipulate that its ​weapons or weapon parts sold to a foreign country should not be resold or transferred to a third country without Seoul’s approval.

The senior South Korean official on Sunday declined to reveal details of what he called “internal discussions” within Mr. Yoon’s government. But he added that “nothing has been finalized” and that there was still “no change” in Seoul’s policy on Ukraine. South Korea has been shipping humanitarian aid to Ukraine but has insisted that it would not directly provide any lethal weapons.

“South Korea’s position has been that it will cooperate with the United States while not clashing with Russia,” said Yang Uk, a weapons expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. “The documents leaked put South Korea in a more difficult position.”

And the mere fact of the spying taking place, leaving aside what it might uncover, is a damaging revelation, he said.

“It’s reasonable to suspect that the United States spies on top defense and security officials in Seoul, but it’s bad news for the general public ahead of the South Korea-U.S. summit,” he added. “People will ask, ‘We have been allies for seven decades, and you still spy on us?’”

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Who leaked the U.S. intelligence documents? No one will say, but the Kremlin has some observations.

Although the material reinforces that the U.S. has a clearer understanding of Russian military operations than it does of Ukrainian planning — an idea that intelligence officials have long acknowledged — Mr. Peskov also suggested that the leaks provide compelling arguments for the idea that Washington has been spying on President Volodymr Zelensky of Ukraine.

“This cannot be ruled out,” Mr. Peskov said, in response to a question about whether Mr. Zelensky was being spied on.

“The fact that the United States has been spying on various heads of state, especially those in European capitals, has been revealed on many occasions for a long time and has caused scandals,” he said.

The leak has already complicated relations with allied countries and raised doubts about America’s ability to keep its secrets. The documents could also hurt diplomatic ties in other ways.

The newly revealed intelligence documents make plain that the United States is not spying just on Russia, but also on its allies. While that would hardly surprise officials of those countries, making such eavesdropping public could hamper relations with key partners, like South Korea, whose help is needed to supply Ukraine with weaponry.

Russia promises bonus pay to troops who destroy NATO tanks, documents say.

Britain, Germany, Poland and the United States have pledged to send dozens of their militaries’ main battle tanks before an expected Ukrainian spring offensive against Russian forces in occupied Ukraine. The new tanks are supposed to outclass their Soviet-era counterparts, which both Ukraine and Russian forces have been using.

But sound defensive and offensive strategies, including the use of small portable anti-tank guided missiles and anti-tank mines, have often managed to mitigate the presence of tanks on the battlefield, as seen in earlier phases of the war and other conflicts in the Middle East.

The Russian strategy to destroy the tanks, according to the documents, calls for “establishing three fire zones based on range.”

“At the same time, personnel training efforts would be administered to educate on the vulnerabilities of NATO tanks.”

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, both sides have used tanks as mobile artillery and to support infantry attacks on enemy trenches. The new NATO tanks would be important in both roles if Ukraine hopes to retake Russian-captured territory in the coming months.

The Kremlin has a record of creativity in how it rewards achievements considered important to the state. Olympic gold medalists sometimes receive cars or apartments. The main suspect behind the poisoning of a Russian intelligence turncoat in London in the 2000s was given a seat in Russia’s Parliament.

Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting.

The leak suggests the U.S. could try to press Israel to provide lethal aid to Ukraine

The “most plausible” of four options laid out in the assessment is that Israel could adopt the “Turkish model” under U.S. pressure and provide lethal defense systems through third parties while advocating a peaceful conclusion to the war in Ukraine and offering to host mediation efforts. The document notes that Turkey has successfully maintained cordial relations with Russia while facilitating arms transfers to Ukraine.

The other three outlined situations that could encourage Israel to provide lethal aid, on a sliding scale of plausibility, involve Russia’s transferring strategic systems to Iran, Israel’s archenemy, or expanding assistance to Iran’s missile or nuclear programs; the United States’ using its leverage should Israel seek increased support for its operations against Iran; and Russia’s incurring Israeli casualties by employing sophisticated air defense systems against Israeli warplanes operating in Syria, thus complicating Israel’s relations with Russia.

For years, Israel and Russia have maintained a de-confliction mechanism to avoid fatal errors in Syria. Israeli officials notify their Russian counterparts about impending strikes as Israel tries to stem the flow of arms that Iran sends to its proxies in both Syria and Lebanon and to limit a military buildup on its northern border.

The document lists Israeli weapons that could be transferred to Ukraine, including the Barak-8 and Spyder surface-to-air missiles and Spike anti-tank guided missile.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the leaked assessment publicly, said on Sunday that Israel had taken “a very clear stand in support of Ukraine since Day 1 and had decided to focus on humanitarian aid,” mostly because of Israel’s strategic interests regarding Russia’s influence and the Iranian presence in Syria.

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A pro-Russian hacking group may have targeted Canada’s energy infrastructure.

On Feb. 25, Russian-based cyberactors compromised the Canadian I.P. address of an unnamed gas pipeline company and claimed that sufficient damage had been done to undermine the company’s profits, according to the assessment, citing signals intelligence. The cyberactors, the report said, were aiming not to “cause loss of life” but economic damage. As of Feb. 27, it added, the group had maintained access to the I.P. address and was on standby for other instructions.

I.P. addresses are the unique sequences of numbers assigned to every website, computer, game console or smartphone connected to the internet.

While Canada’s information technology security agency declined to comment on the leaked intelligence, it said in an email that a recent National Cyber Threat Assessment had expressed concern about the potential disruption of critical infrastructure, in particular internet-connected operational technology “that underpins industrial processes.”

Canada, a strong ally of the United States and a NATO member, has been among the most fervent critics of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, imposing sanctions on more than 2,400 Russian individuals and entities.

The country, which is the largest source of oil imported to the United States, has a wide array of pipeline systems of various sizes and lengths to serve both the Canadian and American markets. The pipelines largely originate in the province of Alberta, but there are also regional systems in other provinces.

Canada’s federal cyberprotection agency previously warned that the pipelines could be struck by the same kind of audacious digital attack that targeted a major American pipeline in May 2021. At that time, one of the largest pipelines in the United States, which carries refined gasoline and jet fuel from Texas up the East Coast to New York, was forced to shut down after being hit by ransomware, in a vivid demonstration of the vulnerability of energy infrastructure to cyberattacks.

Ransomware is a type of modern-day piracy that has targeted businesses, local governments and hospitals. In some cases, victims receive emails with links or attachments that contain software that encrypts files on their computers and holds them hostage until ransoms are paid.

Experts say that criminal groups that have loose affiliations with foreign intelligence agencies have been known to operate on their behalf in waging such attacks.

Assaults on critical infrastructure have been a major concern for a decade, but they have accelerated in recent years in the United States and beyond after breaches. Among them were the SolarWinds intrusion by one of Russia’s intelligence agencies and another against some types of Microsoft-designed systems that was attributed to Chinese hackers.

A leaked document shows the dire nature of the battle for Bakhmut.

However, the leaked assessment focused on a related theater of the battle for Bakhmut, including two flanking maneuvers by the Russian Army through fields and villages to the city’s northwest and southwest that were intended to encircle Ukrainian troops by cutting off supply roads.

It described internal Ukrainian military deliberations on how to respond, with commanding generals deciding to deploy elite units from the military intelligence agency to push back the Russians.

The documents, from late February and early March but found on social media sites in recent days, outline critical shortages that the Ukrainian military is facing. The intelligence reports show that the United States also appears to be spying on Ukraine’s top military and political leaders, a reflection of Washington’s struggle to get a clear view of Ukraine’s fighting strategies.

The leak pulled back the curtain on decision-making inside the Ukrainian military command in a way not seen in public before.

The Ukrainian military has effectively safeguarded key secrets throughout the war, including foreshadowing of the successful, surprise counterattack last summer in the Kharkiv region that swept over Russian lines. Ukrainian officials have called the document leak a Russian propaganda ploy.

“Ukrainian forces as of 25 February were almost operationally encircled by Russian forces in Bakhmut,” the leaked intelligence assessment noted.

The leaked assessment said that Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s director of military intelligence, offered to deploy elite units under his command for two weeks to push back Russian troops threatening the supply road. It cited General Budanov as describing Ukraine’s position at the time as “catastrophic.”

Roman Mashovets, an adviser to Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, also offered a cleareyed assessment in a briefing, the document says.

Mr. Mashovets advised that a single supply road, winding over hills to the west of Bakhmut, remained accessible for the forces inside the city — and that it was under artillery fire.

“Mashovets reported that, for those reasons, the morale in Bakhmut was low, with the Ukrainian forces under the impression that they were almost operationally encircled,” the leaked assessment said.

In the fighting on the plains of southeastern Ukraine, encirclement poses a grave danger feared by soldiers on both sides.

Once surrounded, ammunition quickly runs low, wounded soldiers cannot be evacuated and those still fighting are at risk of being overrun and killed. The commander of ground forces in the east, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, called the single supply road the “last breathing tube” and asked that Kraken, a unit in the military intelligence agency, be deployed to Bakhmut, the document said.

The leak opened a window on internal deliberations in the Ukrainian leadership and showed a Western intelligence assessment that Bakhmut was teetering by late February.

Yet the broader picture it paints was hardly secret. Russian forces had closed in on supply roads in February, according to the military’s daily briefings and public comments by soldiers fighting in the area, before Ukraine sent in reinforcements. A variety of elite units joined the fight.

This fighting, which came after the intelligence assessment was written, was successful in pushing Russian forces far enough from the roads to allow resupply of soldiers in the city and evacuation of the wounded.

But it came at a strategic cost for Ukraine, which has been seeking to retain its best trained and equipped soldiers for a counteroffensive anticipated in the coming weeks or months.

Wagner’s influence extends far beyond Ukraine, the leaked documents show.

The choice of Mali as a fig leaf for such an arms smuggling operation shows just how influential Wagner has become since it first established a presence in that country a few years ago, working to provide security for a military junta that took over in 2021. Another document, citing a Wagner employee, said there were more than 1,645 Wagner personnel in Mali, which the document said had sparked security concerns in neighboring Ivory Coast.

But the weapons scheme also shows how much further Wagner must now go for its supplies, a sign that Western sanctions against Russia have begun to bite.

“This is a very interesting sign that there’s a degrading of their capabilities,” said Candace Rondeaux, an expert on Wagner who is a senior director at New America, a Washington think tank. “Going further afield certainly suggests impact U.S. and European sanctions are starting to have on degrading the pipeline.”

Before the Ukraine war, little was known about Wagner. Though mercenary fighters associated with the group known by that name had appeared on the battlefields of Syria and Libya, its origins were shadowy and there was debate over whether Wagner existed at all or was simply a product of Kremlin mythmaking.

But in September, after years of denying any connection with the group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close confidant of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and a businessman who had served as caterer for important Kremlin events, acknowledged that he had created Wagner.

Since then, Mr. Prigozhin has become an unavoidable — and menacing — fixture of the war, donning a helmet and body armor to visit his troops at the front line, while calling for the firing (or worse) of military leaders who have refused to follow his cavalier example. In one of the more disturbing episodes of the war, he endorsed the execution by sledgehammer of a Wagner fighter who had defected to the Ukrainian side but was sent back in a prisoner exchange.

He has created an army out of freed Russian convicts and hired guns that one of the leaked Pentagon documents assessed to be about 22,000 strong in the area around Bakhmut —possibly larger than the entire Ukrainian contingent along that front.

Even as Mr. Prigozhin has criticized Russia’s military leadership, demanding in one instance that failed generals be stripped of their ranks and forced to march barefoot to the front, the military establishment appears to have jumped to do Wagner’s bidding, according to the leaked documents.

After Mr. Prigozhin publicly accused the Russian military in late February of failing to provide his troops with sufficient ammunition, unnamed Defense Ministry officials seemed to go into damage-control mode, acknowledging Mr. Prigozhin’s claims might be true and proposing to double the amount of munitions supplied to Wagner forces, according to a C.I.A. document.

Later, the ministry issued a rare public response to Mr. Prigozhin, but gave no hint that it had caved. The ministry declared that it devoted “priority attention to the supply of everything necessary for all volunteers and fighters in assault units,” and gave a detailed account of the number of shells provided over a three-day period in late February.

What neither the Russian military nor Wagner have been able to escape is infiltration by the American intelligence establishment.

The documents indicate American spies have been gathering signals intelligence from Prigozhin associates, allowing them to glimpse the inner workings of Wagner’s operation. One document describes how American intelligence operatives apparently listened in on a Prigozhin associate in February planning to recruit prisoners again into Wagner’s ranks.

American intelligence officials also picked up that Mr. Prigozhin wanted prisoners returning home from the battlefield to help in the recruitment effort.

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Israel denies a claim that leaders of its spy agency encouraged its workers to join protests.

Israel, which returned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power in December as the head of the most far-right government coalition in its history, was paralyzed by protests and strikes in March after the government revealed plans to overhaul the country’s judiciary. The proposed changes, which were criticized by Israel’s closest ally, the United States, aim to curb judicial review of legislation and give the government more control in the selection of judges.

According to the leaked documents, an assessment attributed to a Central Intelligence Update from March 1, leaders of the Mossad “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli Government.”

According to the documents, the information was obtained through signals intelligence. Many of the leaked documents are labeled with orders that they are to be shared only among American intelligence agencies.

Current and former Israeli intelligence officials said the agency’s rules and longstanding tradition of nonpartisanship would have precluded direct involvement by the agency’s leadership in a political crisis.

The Israeli government said in its statement that “the Mossad and its senior officials did not — and do not — encourage agency personnel to join the demonstrations against the government, political demonstrations or any political activity.”

It added: “The Mossad and its serving senior personnel have not engaged in the issue of the demonstrations at all and are dedicated to the value of service to the state that has guided the Mossad since its founding.”

Some Mossad employees, however, requested and received permission to participate in the demonstrations as private citizens. The Mossad chief, David Barnea, in consultation with Israel’s attorney general, allowed junior employees to participate so long as they did not identify themselves as members of the organization, according to a defense official familiar with the agency’s policy.

Several hundred former Mossad employees, including five former chiefs, also signed a statement in March opposing the overhaul promoted by the government.

Israeli political commentators said on Sunday that the leaked assessment appeared to confuse the notions of “encouraging” and “allowing,” and to mix up the actions of former Mossad employees with those of current employees.

Ultimately, the protesters stalled the proposal’s progress and the government said it would delay the legislation for several weeks and allow time for negotiations with the opposition parties.

The Mossad itself has never taken a position on any political or social controversy in Israel. Also, in contrast to the Shin Bet, which deals with domestic security, the Mossad works exclusively outside the country.

The information included in the leaked documents, however, has some overlap with unsubstantiated accusations promoted by Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son. The younger Mr. Netanyahu has claimed that hostile elements inside Israel’s intelligence community and the U.S. State Department were behind the protest. The State Department has denied any involvement.