President Joe Biden said Thursday that while he was concerned about the leak of confidential government documents, “to my knowledge, there is nothing contemporary in them that is of great importance.”
It was Biden’s first public statement about the publication on various social networks of documents from the Pentagon. They appear to contain details about US and NATO aid to Ukraine and intelligence assessments from allies that could cause tension with those countries. He Justice Department has launched an investigation.
“I am concerned that it happened, but as far as I know there is nothing contemporary about them that is of great importance,” said Biden, who was visiting Irish leaders in Dublin Thursday.
Biden said that intelligence and the Justice Department have launched an investigation “in order” and that “we are getting close … but I do not have an answer.”
It is not clear how many are the leaked documents. The Associated Press has seen fifty, but some estimate hundreds.
Some of the documents appear to have been altered or used as part of a disinformation campaign, some officials said. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called for caution, “since we know that, at least in some cases, the information was altered.”
No one knows for sure where the leak came from, not even the head of the Pentagon.
“They were somewhere on the network, and where exactly, and who had access there, we don’t know. We just don’t know,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at a news conference Tuesday. “We will continue to investigate and lift each stone until we find the source and the magnitude of this.”
Possibly, the leak originated from a site called Discord.
Discord (discord) is a popular social network among people who play online. It has real-time voice, video and text chats with groups and is described as a place “where you can belong to a school club, a group of players or a global arts community”.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the presidency urges social media companies to “avoid facilitating the circulation of material detrimental to public safety and national security.”
“We believe that social media companies have a responsibility to users and the country to manage the private sector infrastructure they create and operate.”
