Everything About the Ukraine Leak Is Incredibly Weird

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/ukraine-intelligence-leak/673703/

No paywall
https://archive.is/N2oKN

A recent U.S. intelligence leak is already shaping up to be one of the most damaging breaches in years, revealing highly sensitive information about the war in Ukraine, Israeli domestic politics, America’s deep penetration of high-level Russian military plans and operations, and more. By last count, approximately 100 pages of classified slides and briefing materials from the Pentagon have been discovered floating around the internet. Many pages included intelligence that is stunning in its timeliness. Some materials were marked “top secret.” Most are considered genuine. The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation, furious military leaders are reviewing how the Pentagon handles classified information, and an interagency task force is scrambling to assess whether the damage is a bad nightmare or a really bad nightmare.

Big breaches are nothing new. Chelsea Manning, then an Army intelligence analyst, handed over hundreds of thousands of classified documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. The former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden stole an estimated 1.5 million documents containing information about some of the most highly classified intelligence programs in the U.S. government. Another NSA contractor, Hal Martin, pleaded guilty to willful hoarding of national-defense information after being accused of stashing perhaps 500 million pages of secrets in his house, car, and garden shed.

Protecting secrets has always been a strange business in which trust can be dangerous, deception can be useful, and things may not be what they seem. A spy turns out to be a double agent. Real intelligence is fed to an adversary to gain trust so they can be duped with fake intelligence later. Cracking a code works only if the other side doesn’t know it’s been compromised. James J. Angleton, the CIA’s first counterintelligence chief, famously described his job as a “wilderness of mirrors,” a phrase from a T. S. Eliot poem.

But this latest breach stands apart for its sheer weirdness.

The leak apparently began weeks ago, when an anonymous member of a small online group posted some files on Discord, a messaging platform popular with video gamers. The documents were reposted to larger Discord channels focused on the Minecraft computer game and a Filipino YouTube celebrity. They eventually found their way—in doctored form—to a Russian-propaganda account on Telegram, entered the wilds of Twitter, and got picked up by the mainstream media.

*snip*

[multigraincracker]

1. Could it be the

Trump Dump?

[Wounded Bear]

3. Not trump, but probably his supporters...nt

[Nevilledog]

4. I think it's someone they embedded before leaving and linked to Kash Patel.

What really makes this feasible to me is:

1. They're fascists
2. They're using it to argue that Biden's got bigger problems with classified info than Trump taking docs.

[underpants]

5. My first thought. There are Trump appointees here and there

If it helps Putin I immediately suspect Trump people to be involved.

[onecaliberal]

2. pisswig or one of his associates did it.

[relayerbob]

6. I think there is some psyop shit going on here

Perhaps, they are tracking them to find out who would leak. Also, throws the Russians off guard, since they won't know which parts are real and which is not, assuming *any* of it is real. Also, it misdirects people from watching from the actual events on the ground, as Ukraine prepares to retake their country.

I agree, it all is too weird and just smells to high heaven.

[Renew Deal]

7. I agree that it's weird. It seems like something an unamerican congress person or one of their

extremist staff members would do.

[woodsprite]

10. Or buddies of retired colonel Michael Flynn. nt

[Kennah]

8. Casualty numbers make me suspect Vlad is behind this

[Snoopy 7]

9. Don't forget

They never mention how updated the information is. It could very likely be stuff that Trump stole. All this is all the people that he’s controlling that could be letting the stuff out. Don’t forget how many classified documents are still missing. Last counted it was about 49 classified folders that are missing or that they knew of.

[former9thward]

11. Every single news story has mentioned the date range of the information.

It is from Feb-March 2023. How could Trump be letting out stuff from 2 years after he was in office?

[usonian]

12. Trust nothing.

Do you think that sickos would pass up an opportunity to embarrass the administration and muddy the espionage case against Der Führer?

Putin or his fifth column here in the U.S.
Maybe it's Chat-GOP at work.

Nobody in the know is going to verify or repudiate any of this.
If it were true, you'd have to shred yourself after reading it.

[Hassler]

13. Nothing on Truth Social from loudmouth traitor Orange Judas. He

Must be involved.

[Igel]

14. It apparently was posted over time.

It's nearly random. Relations with Egypt, other countries. Ukr-Russian war. Stuff not truly related to the US.

It's apparently photographs of print outs. People are scouring the background for clues--which may be distractions or may be useful.

It mean, it could be a mole. Could be a "plant" or embedded subversive Trumpian agent. Could be somebody on a mission to just be a disruptor for whatever reason, or convinced that the US is wrong in everything and wants to show it.

Could be the husband or teen son of a person with classified access who just wants to say, "Look how important I am!" by posting on a gamer group.

We don't know what we don't know.

[gratuitous]

15. The weirdest thing to me is . . .

The usual gang of idiots from the whackadoo right hasn't jumped on this leak and put all the blame on the Biden administration. Like the curious incident of the dog in the night from Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze, the silence from the right is most curious.

[Nevilledog]

17. See post 4

[Nevilledog]

18. Here they come...

Link to tweet

[bluestarone]

16. When we have people, sitting in Congress that are 100% tRUMP supporters

THIS is what happens. I trust NONE of them!