U.S. national security agencies are reviewing how they share their most sensitive secrets inside the U.S. government, and dealing with the diplomatic fallout from the release of dozens of confidential documents, three U.S. officials said.
Some of the documents, another official said, would most likely have been available to thousands of people with U.S. and allied government security clearances despite being highly sensitive, as the information directly affected those countries.
“The Pentagon has needed to curtail the unbridled access to some of the most sensitive intel when they’ve no justifiable reason to have it,” the first official said.Article content Although the release appears to be the most serious public leak of classified information in years, officials say it so far does not reach the scale and scope of the 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables that appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2013.Since the leak first came to light in March, the investigators have been pursuing theories ranging from someone simply sharing the documents to show off the work they were doing to a mole inside the U.S.
The aim, he said, appeared to be to drive a wedge between Ukraine and the United States, Kyiv’s largest provider of military support.