US intelligence officials are now trying to do some damage control after a leak of
Pentagon documents, we'll tell you what the documents contained in just a moment.
But I think it's important to learn about the developments in regard
to how these leaks came about in the first place.
Now, we don't know exactly who leaked the documents.
There is already a full blown justice department investigation into this.
The leaked documents revealed confidential information about the war in Ukraine
as well as intel that the United States gathered on its own allies.
Again, more details on that in just a moment.
But to make matters even more embarrassing for the State Department,
the Guardian recently reported that this leak had been traced back to
a discord server about video games and youtubers.
So here's what we know, and this is in my opinion,
a little bit fluid and subject to change.
So this is what we know so far, but
don't get mad at us as the the facts might change a little bit in coming days, right?
This is just the initial reporting on the leak.
So the Guardian cites open source intelligence analysts as its source for
the report.
The report explains that before the leaked documents were made known to the general
public, they were circulating around several private discord servers,
the first of which was called Thug Shaker Central, okay.
So one intelligence analyst who spoke to the Guardian said this quote, posts and
channel listings show that the server users were interested in video games,
music, Orthodox Christianity and fandom for
the popular youtuber oxide who has a military themed youtube channel.
This server was not especially geopolitical in nature.
Although it's users had a staunchly conservative stance on several issues,
members told Bellingcat.
Now racial slurs and racist memes were shared widely.
>> Of course [LAUGH] >> It gives you, I mean,
it's yeah, >> Of course,
they already said it was conservative.
>> Okay.
So posts and channel listings show that the servers, users were interested in
video games, music, Orthodox Christianity, you get the point.
So the server was not especially geopolitical in nature,
just want to reiterate that.
Now, according to the report, the documents were leaked when one
server member posted them to win an argument about the war in Ukraine.
After that, the leaked documents started circling around a few other private
discords including a Mindcraft theme one before leaking to four chan.
So before we pivot to the contents of these leaked documents,
any thoughts on the way this was leaked?
>> Yeah, so, first of all [LAUGH], I get a little bit of a clarification.
So we show videos every once in a while.
Those are Rando playing video games.
That's not who it was leaked to, okay, just to be clear.
So now in terms of how they did the leak, well, it seems like it's a right winger
who did the leak and it's leaking to right wing Discord channel.
I don't know what Minecraft has to do with it, but that's kind of a fun angle.
But if it's going, it has anything to do with four chan, it's mental right wingers.
So now, is the substance correct?
I don't know.
[LAUGH] All right, I mean, I've never seen the right wing be correct about anything,
but we don't really know who the source is.
>> We don't know who the source is.
The doj along with the State Department is furious about this and
they're now engaging in an investigation, they want to find out who leaked it.
Because that's the one thing that the state department will
not stand for, right.
If you ever embarrass them on their conduct or things like this,
them spying on allies and committing war crimes, they won't self reflect and
maybe reconsider whether committing war crimes makes sense,
they'll just get mad at the leaker, [LAUGH].
>> Yeah, and so I don't want you to misinterpret what I'm saying.
Look, I am I surprised that they that there might be war
crimes that we committed.
Not at all, not at all.
The substance might be completely right.
We have no idea why they chose to put it on a right wing platform, etc.
But we do know that Minecraft has relocated to Russia to avoid
prosecution, okay.
>> But don't say things like that because I don't want anyone to think you're
being serious.
>> Okay, I got you.
But guys, there's a good reason why people are worried about it because they chased
Edward Snowden out of the country.
>> Right. >> They imprisoned and
tortured Chelsea Manning.
So the American government is brutal when you embarrass them, they show-
>> Julian Assangeanother example.
>> Julian Assange for sure.
If you actually do real journalism that challenges power, and again, I don't,
if it's true, I don't care if it comes from the right, the left,
I don't care at all, right.
But if you do that, you're in a world of trouble because if there's one thing,
the American government despises it's journalism.
>> So what's in the leaks?
That's the question, right?
And I don't trust very many sources to do good reporting on these kinds of topics.
But I do trust democracy now.
Amy Goodman had a pretty good segment on this, let's watch.
>> Concerning the war in Ukraine the leaked documents suggest Ukraine has
little chance of militarily defeating Russia.
One document from February predicted that Ukraine's ability to provide medium range
air defense to protect the front lines will be completely reduced by May 23rd.
The leaked documents also predicted the fighting between Ukraine and Russia and
the Donbas region is likely heading toward a stalemate.
Another document indicates members of Ukraine's security services were
responsible for sabotaging a Russian plane inside Belarus in late February.
The documents also appear to indicate us intelligence agencies had deeply
penetrated the Russian military giving the Biden administration internal
information about Russian war plans in Ukraine as well as operational plans for
the private mercenary group, Wagner in Africa.
The Washington Post reports, one leaked document reveals the Wagner group sought
to purchase arms from Turkey, a NATO ally.
Documents also show that Egypt,
a close US ally secretly planned to produce 40,000 rockets for Russia.
>> I mean, that's a lot of tea.
In fact, there's additional details that have been reported that you should
know about including the fact that there are NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine.
So the leaked documents also indicate, well, one document dated March 23rd refers
to the presence of a small number of Western special forces operating inside
Ukraine without specifying their activities or location.
The UK has the largest contingent 50 followed by Latvia 17,
France 15, and the United States 14 and
the Netherlands they have sent one NATO member to Ukraine.
>> So look, it sounds believable.
So, some in mainstream media hide Ukraine as if they're about to take over Russia,
right.
No, but so the fact that they're not quote unquote winning but
kind of in a stalemate, least surprising news I've ever heard.
They try to sabotage a Russian fighter, least surprising news I've ever heard.
Wow, it's in Belarus.
Look, I get that he could drag more things into it, but
if you think that the Ukrainians, the Americans, the Russians aren't all
operating in other countries against one another, you're nuts.
You just don't know this stuff at all.
Right, and so I'm not surprised we infiltrated the Russian military.
Well, I hope to God we did, right.
The Russians are trying to infiltrate us or the Chinese, by the way,
including our allies.
Israel often tries to infiltrate us.
We do the reverse back to them, right.
So every time people pretend that we're pure as the driven snow and
we would never spy on the Russians.
Are you kidding?
I mean, I think they should be fired if they're not spying on the Russians, right.
So, again, that's their job that I get it.
The only part that's problematic, again, I get, I'm not surprised by it, but
it's problematic is the NATO forces that are on the ground in Ukraine.
>> They're also spying on Zelenskyy too.
It's not just Russia that they are just spying.
>> Of course, we're spy Zelenskyy, of course we are.
>> Yep. >> Come on guys,
please don't be this naive, right?
Whatever the merit of this story, I would be shocked if it wasn't happening,
even if the story isn't true, right.
So, and by the way,
you can tell from the reaction that it might be more likely to be true because.
>> No, Kirby is losing his mind.
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah. >> That gives you the sense that like, ok,
well, something that looked like not that credible on Minecraft, for Chan,
these are the least.
>> Yeah. >> Minecraft fight, for
Chan is the least credible thing in the world, right?
But the State Department reaction to it makes you think, wow,
looks like they got a roof and pretty good source.
>> Yeah, and the State Department has not given us any
reason to believe that these leaked documents are a hoax, okay?
They are furious about this,
which seems to confirm that these documents are very much real.
What I raised a little bit of concern over is the reporting pertaining to how
the leaked documents went into circulation in the first place.
I don't know, it's just a gut feeling I have no evidence to provide for
why I feel that way.
It's just a gut instinct, but we'll see how that part of the story develops.
But to be quite honest with you, that part of the story is less interesting to me and
less important to me than what the actual leaked documents contain.
And they do contain a lot of damning information.
A few other things I wanted to quickly mention including our relationship with
Israel.
It's really interesting when you hear our politicians and
the executive branch talk about Israel overtly, but behind the scenes,
the document titled Israel Pathways To Providing Aid To Ukraine.
Says, Jerusalem will likely consider providing lethal aid under increased
US pressure or perceived degradation in its relationship with Russia.
And in addition to that, we were spying on Israel, okay.
So one document reveals that the United States had also been spying on
Vladimir Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president,
that is unsurprising said a source close to Zelinskyy, but
Ukrainian officials are deeply frustrated about the leak.
>> Yeah, so again, the only people who are mainstream media
reporters are incredibly naive would be surprised by any of this.
Of course, we spying on everybody including our allies, right?
And the part that, that nobody talks about
Israel in regards to Israel is how we use them as an ally.
If you're looking at it from the outside,
you think like what does Israel ever do for us?
We give them billions of dollars, we gave them iron dome, okay, that's all good,
that means Israel is protected, but then they turn around and
never listen to us about the Palestinians, the settlements, any like encroachment.
And so you name it, they never do anything for us, right?
But what you don't know is behind the scenes every once in a while when we need
dirty work, our CIA, our intelligence guys goes to Israel and go, hey,
you wanna do the dirty work for us.
>> Yep. >> And so
that's the part that they don't say out loud.
And by the way, probably the number one reason they're most pissed about these
leaks because that's the stuff that's super sensitive.
But again, I wanna finish the thought on the NATO troops inside Ukraine.
The reason why I point that out as the most dangerous to these revelations is
if the Russians drop a bomb and it lands on NATO soldiers,
then I don't want our side going.
Well, that's it, they killed a guy from the Netherlands and a guy from the US.
That's it, we got to go to World War III, no, no, no, no, no, no.
If you're gonna put soldiers inside Ukraine, that's on you.
That's not on the Russians.