Pentagon's Highly Classified Documents Surfaced Online: What Has Been Revealed

Pentagon's highly classified documents, which recently surfaced on social media, reveal the extent of U.S. espionage activities that monitor not only adversaries but also key allies, according to CNN.

This has greatly alarmed U.S. officials, who fear that the revelations could jeopardize covert sources and critical international relations.

The New York Times was the first to report on the documents circulating on social media, which American officials say are authentic. The publication has warned that "this could harm diplomatic relations" and that "the leak of information has already complicated relations with allied countries and raised doubts about America's ability to keep its secrets secure."

Le Monde reported that the French government had to deny last week that French soldiers were present in Ukraine. "French troops are not participating in operations in Ukraine," France's Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu told the newspaper. "These documents do not originate from French military sources; we do not comment on documents whose source is unknown," they added.

However, multiple leaked documents that have circulated online suggest that French soldiers are indeed present on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to Politico.

As noted by The Guardian, one photographic document suggests that "less than a hundred special operations officers from NATO member countries, including France, America, Great Britain, and Latvia, are already operating in Ukraine."

The Pentagon document published on social media contains information about an incident involving a British reconnaissance aircraft over the Black Sea in the autumn of 2022, The Washington Post reports. According to the newspaper, the classified document claims that a Russian fighter jet allegedly "nearly struck the British Rivet Joint (...) reconnaissance aircraft near the shores of Crimea" last September.

In October 2022, UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace told the House of Commons that a Russian Su-27 fighter jet had approached the British aircraft within nearly five meters and, according to the British side, "fired a missile." However, Wallace later described the incident not as an attempt to "hit" a reconnaissance aircraft but as a "technical malfunction" and noted that this had been discussed with senior representatives of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The document contains detailed information about reconnaissance flights of Western aircraft over the Black Sea from September 29, 2022, to February 26.

The Department of Justice and the FBI have joined the investigation initiated by the Pentagon regarding the sources and methods of the document leaks. However, finding the initial source of the leak "can be difficult, as hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. military personnel and other officials have access to the necessary security clearances to view the documents," Associated Press notes.