FILE PHOTO: The Pentagon building. © Digital Vision via Getty Images
The Pentagon suspects that a US citizen may have been behind the apparent leak of a trove of classified information containing several bombshell revelations, Reuters has reported.
Photos of documents appearing to originate from the Pentagon, with many marked as highly classified, were posted online in March. However, their potential authenticity was only reported by Western media last week.
The documents contain purported Pentagon data on Ukraine's military strategy and resources, allege illegal surveillance activity by the US against Israel and that Israeli spy agency Mossad organized demonstrations against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
There are multiple theories on the possible motivation behind the leak, a US official told Reuters 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 have claimed they could not rule out that some of the documents could have been doctored to mislead the inquiry or to disseminate false information.
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.