The US military has admitted some of the slides were “similar in format” to classified reports
In the first official comment on the online publication of classified military intelligence documents, a spokesman for the US Department of Defense said on Monday that this represented a “very serious risk” to Washington.
The documents pose “a very serious risk to national security and have the potential to spread disinformation,” Chris Meagher told reporters.
A Pentagon team is working to assess whether the documents are genuine, but the photos circulating on various social media platforms “appear to show documents similar in format to those used to provide daily updates to our senior leaders on Ukraine and Russia-related operations, as well as other intelligence updates,” Meagher added, while insisting that some “appear to have been altered.”
While the initial revelations concerned the Ukraine conflict, the latest batch of files that appeared on Friday contained information about China, South Korea, the “Indo-Pacific military theater,” the Middle East, counter-terrorism operations, and Israel.