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good evening.
I am William brangham.
John yang is away.
More details are emerging about
how an apparent trove of
intelligence documents leaked
onto social media sites over the
last few months.
With the justice department
investigation already underway,
the Washington post is reporting
that these files, many seemingly
from the Pentagon and highly
classified, provide details
about the war in Ukraine and how
the U.S. Additively spies on its
allies and its foes.
It includes details about the
near downing of a British spy
plane, by Russia, near Ukraine
last year.
For the latest on this, we are
joined now by Dan Lamothe.
He covers the Pentagon and the
U.S. Military for the
"Washington post" and has been
reporting this story.
Dan, thanks so much for being
here.
Before we get into the content
of what these documents say, is
there any question as to whether
or not these are legitimate
intelligence and military
documents?
Darren: There is no question
that there are some legitimate
military and intelligence
documents that have been posted
online.
The problem has become, as we
sort through these, some of
these as they have proliferated
across the internet, have been
doctored.
So you are trying to sort
through what is a real document,
but is a document that has been
altered, and whether there might
be any things in here outright.
William: How would you describe
what is the bulk of what is in
these documents?
>> The majority of the documents
that I have seen appear to be
from probably the same packet of
information.
Many of them are stamped with
"Joint staff," chairman of the
joint chiefs of staff.
One of the reasons these
documents spread is there is a
lot of information on current
up-to-date operations.
That is ok so long as it stays
within the world of the people
who have clearance to see them.
William: As I mentioned, there
are ditches about how the
Ukrainian military is holding up
against the Russian operation,
but there are also details about
how the U.S. Spies on some of
its allies and its foes.
In particular, what do they
reveal in that regard?
Guest: There is a number of
traveling things in terms of
being out in the open and even
as we sort through how to report
this, there is at least a
discussion you have about when
do we put this on a newspaper or
in a television broadcast.
But we have reached a point
where these things have
proliferated through telegram,
Twitter, discord where the
documents seem to have been
first uploaded. So and then
they've also been online for
weeks, so they have spread a
great deal.
At some point you need to have a
conversation out in the open
about what these things are and
what problem it presents to have
them there.
In this case, the topics ranged
from Iran or North Korea,
Hungary, a number of different
countries.
It references satellite
programs, signals intelligence,
basically radio intercepts in
many ways.
Things that you don't
necessarily want the sources and
methods in terms of how this
information has been gathered,
out in the open.
William: Can you give us a sense
from talking to all of your
sources, how big of a deal they
see this as?
We have had leaks in the past --
Wikileaks and the Pentagon
papers and the Afghan papers.
Some of those were retrospective
looks.
But this is about ongoing,
current conflicts and crises all
over the world.
How troubled our administration
and military officials about
these leaks?
Guest: To my knowledge at least
I don't think it is in the same
bucket as Wikileaks leaks, or the Edward Snowden
things are conflicted.
But it is nonetheless troubling
to have some of the stuff in the
open, particularly open
assessments of Ukraine's combat
capabilities, gaps in their
capabilities, you know, and the
idea that these have been out
and available for weeks and in
some cases doctored the
doctoring often favored Russian
Russian point of view, so you
start wondering who has viewed
them how they may have shaped
their operations around it.
There's a number of troubling
consequences that go with that.
William: As I mentioned, the
department of justice is
investigating.
What do we know about who might
have stolen these and leaked
them out?
Guest: Very little in terms of
the initial source at this
point, I mean, the assumption
would be the initial, um, source
would have had the clearance.
But there's also the possibility
that the initial source was
negligent with the documents as
opposed to deliberately putting
them online, and they somehow
ended up in somebody else's
hands.
In terms of the way this might
look, anything that is printed
out in the documents that have
been uploaded, at least the ones
that I have seen, are basically
photographs of printed pages.
So the assumption would be that
the U.S. Government are going to
go back to look and try to
figure out who had printed
copies.
Who may have printed it out and
shouldn't have and kind of
trying to backtrack with a
universe of people is that had
these printed copies in their
hands back in February and
March.
William: What is a possibility,
how concerned are your sources
that the leak of these documents
could hurt U.S. Interests?
In the sense that we either are
revealing how we gather
intelligence or it gives other
adversaries the opportunity,
then, to combat that
surveillance?
Guest: In terms of the
specifics, they have been very
careful about talking about that
and the steps they may take,
other than acknowledging that
they are trying to take steps to
combat that and deal with that.
The other thing is that they
will have to be have hard
conversations with allies and
partners.
When you are referencing the
spying you do on a long time
ally or basically there is some
encouragement here that we are
closely tracking both Russia and
Ukraine, both in terms of what
they are doing, but also what
they are saying and how they are
thinking, to the extent we can.
Those are difficult
conversations to have with
somebody, even if you are