President Joe Biden said the US was close to concluding investigations into the leak of sensitive documents that exposed American spying practices and assessments of Russia’s war in Ukraine, even as he sought to downplay the impact of the disclosures.
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden said the US was close to concluding investigations into the leak of sensitive documents that exposed American spying practices and assessments of Russia’s war in Ukraine, even as he sought to downplay the impact of the disclosures.
“There’s a full-blown investigation going on right now, as you know, with the intelligence community and the Justice Department,” Biden told reporters in Dublin on Thursday.
Referring to who leaked the documents, Biden said, investigators were “getting close, but I don’t have an answer.”
He downplayed the significance of the leaks, which have presented a fresh diplomatic headache for the administration during an overseas presidential trip.
“I’m not concerned about the leak,” Biden said. “I’m concerned that it happened. But there’s nothing contemporaneous” in the documents, he said.
But officials have expressed deep regret about the leaks because they reveal secrets about how the US collects intelligence.
Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the breach “remains deeply concerning, and there is more work to be done to find the source of the problem and better protect classified information.”
“I and my office are in contact with the Department of Defense and the intelligence community as they work to find the source of the breach and figure out what information is still potentially at risk,” Smith said in an interview. “In addition to what has been released publicly, we need to know what else may be compromised.”
Some Biden administration officials have privately said they believe the person responsible was an American.
The highly classified military documents, which were initially circulated on the Discord chat app, revealed US assessments on the Russian invasion in Ukraine, as well as US intelligence gathering on allies including Egypt, South Korea and Israel.
Some of the leaked documents were believed to be from assessments compiled for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a group of the Defense Department’s most senior uniformed leaders, according to people familiar with the matter.
One of the documents dated Feb. 15, for example, is entitled “Daily Intelligence Update, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” prepared by the JCS “J-2 intelligence Directorate” and contains short assessments of topics on Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Iran and Israel. Other documents carry the notation of “Classified by Directorate for Intelligence, J-2, Derived From Multiple Sources.”
The leak has triggered investigations by the Justice and Defense departments and raised global concerns about US handling of classified materials.
“We are certainly reviewing the national security implications of the disclosure and the mitigation of the impact release of these documents could have on US national security and also our partners and allies,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier Thursday during a press briefing in Dublin.
Jean-Pierre urged social media companies to prevent the circulation of information that could hurt national security.
Read more: US Urges Social Media to Stop Users Sharing Leaked Documents
“We do believe that social media companies have a responsibility to their users, and to the country, to manage the private-sector infrastructure that they create and now operate,” she said.
–With assistance from Tony Capaccio and Roxana Tiron.
(Adds Smith comments, starting in 7th paragraph)
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