The United States has disclosed that it is carrying out checks to determine possible effects of a leaked trove of highly classified documents on National Security.
The leak is being investigated by the states Justice Department Pentagon said on Sunday.
Also to be assessed are secret intelligence reports that touch not only on Ukraine and Russia but highly sensitive analyses of US allies.
According to Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh in a statement, “while the Defense Department is still reviewing the validity of photographed documents circulating online, they “appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material.”
He added that, n interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on US national security and on our allies and partners.”
The Justice Department said Saturday it has been in touch with the Defense Department about the issue and had opened an investigation.
Meanwhile, a steady drip of dozens of leaked documents and slides have made their way onto Twitter, Telegram, Discord, and other sites in recent days, and new documents continue to surface.
Washington Post reported that some documents appeared to have been manipulated but many were consistent with CIA World Intelligence Review reports that are shared at high levels within the White House, Pentagon, and State Department.
Defense analysts say any breach of internal classified US documents would be both damaging and potentially embarrassing.
In addition, the leak would prove valuable to Moscow by showing how deeply US intelligence has penetrated parts of the Russian military apparatus, US media said.
Other documents include apparent information about the internal debate within the governments of US allies.