The person behind a massive leak of classified military documents from the Pentagon he worked at a military base and posted sensitive national security secrets within a group of online acquaintances, The Washington Post first reported Wednesday.
The Washington Post report covers new ground in the identification of the alleged leaker of highly classified Pentagon documentsincluding some casting a pessimistic view of the US on the war in Ukraine, and providing the first known details about who may be behind a major national security breach that has rocked Washington in recent days.
The leaker, described in the Post story as a lonely young gun enthusiast, was part of a chat room of about two dozen people on Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers, where he shared his love. for weapons and military equipment, The Washington Post reported, citing an interview with a friend of the leaker who was also part of the group.
The leaker’s friend told the Post that it would not reveal the identity of the alleged leaker or his location to authorities.
The leaker, who goes by the nickname “OG,” began posting messages to the Discord chat room last year that referenced military jargon, The Post reported. In the months that followed, the leaker posted messages appearing to transcribe classified information from US documents, according to the report.
“They were, he recalled, what appeared to be almost verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job at a ‘military base,’ which the member refused to identify,” The Post reported, referring to messages posted by anonymous user
“He is an intelligent person. He knew what he was doing when he published these documents, of course. These were not accidental leaks of any kind,” said the young member of the group who first had access to the documents.
The Discord chat room, or “server,” disappeared from the network after news of the leaks broke last week, according to a CNN review of Discord’s servers.
Discord users later posted some of the documents to another invite-only server. Some Discord users thought the documents were fake because they didn’t think anyone would be cheeky enough to post them online, according to a CNN review of messages on the platform.
Bellingcat, an investigative outlet, first reported on the connection between the leaked documents and the two Discord servers. None of the documents seen by Bellingcat had been scanned, but instead had been photographed.
Discord claims to have around 150 million monthly users and its popularity has surged during the coronavirus pandemic that confined people to their homes for months.
The New York Times first reported the existence of the documents after several Russian Telegram channels shared five photographed files related to the invasion of Ukraine on April 5, with at least one of them found by Bellingcat to be crudely edited. .
With information from The Washington Post, CNN, Bellingcat and The New York Times
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Source: La Opinion
