US investigators reportedly have four or five theories on what motivated the party behind the alleged breach of secrecy
The Pentagon suspects that a US citizen rather than a foreigner may have been responsible for the apparent leak of classified information containing several bombshell revelations, Reuters has reported. Officials offered several explanations of what may have motivated the leaker.
Photos of documents appearing to originate from the Pentagon, with many marked as highly classified, were posted online in March. However, Western media reported that they may be authentic only last week.
There are four of five theories on why the person or the group behind the leak did it, one of the US officials interviewed by Reuters said on condition of anonymity. They range from a “disgruntled employee to an insider threat who actively wanted to undermine US national security interests,” the news agency said on Sunday.
Part of the ongoing investigation focuses on looking into how widely intelligence is shared internally to limit the sample of possible culprits, according to the sources.
Reuters stressed that it could not independently authenticate the leaked materials. US investigators claimed they could not rule out that some of the documents could have been doctored to mislead the inquiry or to disseminate false information.
Media outlets produced a number of explosive reports based on the leak, some of which indicate that the US is spying on its closest allies, such as South Korea or Israel. One story asserted that the Israeli spy agency Mossad was fueling protests against Benjamin Netanyahu, a claim that the serving prime minister rejected as false.
Several of the documents purportedly show the Pentagon’s perception of and actions regarding the conflict in Ukraine. The Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, was one of the targets of US espionage, CNN has reported. Another story by The Washington Post claimed that in late September 2022 Russia “almost shot down” a British spy plane.
