Pentagon Investigating Leak of Classified Documents About Military Plans in Ukraine Transcript

The Pentagon is investigating the leak of classified documents detailing US and NATO military support plans for Ukraine. The security breach comes as Russia intensifies its fight for the city of Bakhmut. Here’s David Martin.

As the US arms and trains Ukraine ahead of its expected spring offensive, documents containing details of the buildup appeared on social media. One titled Status of the Conflict as of 1 March, is marked Top Secret and appears to be a daily update provided to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

(00:34)
Is this just embarrassing or does it do real damage to the cause of defeating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

I think it’s both. Undermining confidence between the cooperation of the United States and NATO and Ukraine, and also within the US government, distracting us when we should be entirely focused on supporting Ukraine.

But former US Ambassador to Russia now CBS News contributor John Sullivan points out some of the information appears to be doctored.

Elevating Ukrainian casualties beyond a level that the US believes has actually occurred and vastly understating Russian casualties. So makes Russia look good, makes Ukraine look bad.

The document puts the number of Russians killed in action at 16 to 17,500, wildly different from what General Mark Milley recently told Congress.

As you know publicly, the Russians have well over 200,000 casualties.

Another update, marked Secret, gives the expenditure rates for Ukrainian artillery. A number, the Pentagon has not disclosed.

(01:47)
The Pentagon is trying to get the documents off social media at the same time it is investigating how they got there in the first place. Catherine.

David, having looked at these now public records. What stood out to you?

The fact that they’re public.

Exactly.

There’s a lot of classified information over here and classified information leaks all the time. Sometimes it’s deliberate, sometimes not, but rarely do the underlying classified documents leak, and that’s what happened in this case. These documents are carried around the building in a pouch, hand to hand. Somewhere in that chain, somebody was able to photograph these documents and then get them up on social media.

Boy, it sounds like a insider problem, insider threat almost.

I think it is. It could be a fluke because somebody turned their back for a minute or somehow it got sent to somebody it shouldn’t have been sent to and then got printed out and photographed. So one of the key things that they’ll be looking for here is the period of time that these documents cover.

(03:16)
Right now, from what I’ve seen, it seems to be a very specific point in time. The end of February, beginning of March, but we’re getting now news of all these additional documents, 50 or more classified documents, which are also now starting to show up on social media and these cover not just Ukraine, but other parts of the world as well.

Wow, that’s significant. David Martin, thank you for your reporting.

Sure thing.