True? False? Or Maybe Both. The Big Intelligence Leak Is an Enigma.

The United States is struggling with the largest and potentially most damaging intelligence leak since the Wikileaks dump of thousands of sensitive government documents in 2013.

The basic details of this leak are described here. A 21-year-old Air National Guardsman has been arrested for posting highly classified military documents about the War in Ukraine on the web. Some of these documents have the highest classification ratings possible, including TOP SECRET and the further designation NOFORN (which means no foreign intelligence service or officials, however friendly, may see them. Such information is so sensitive we won’t even share it with the UK or Canada or other members of the allied “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing group of countries).

I’ve personally handled such documents during my time at the CIA. They’re hard to access (it’s not enough to have a high-security clearance; you also need to demonstrate a “need to know” to a security officer and may have to be “read in” to a particular program before you are granted access). There are burn bags scattered around the offices: burning paper documents to ash is more secure than shredding, and you can be sure that while you’re looking at the documents, someone is watching you.

The idea of just walking out of a secure location (called a “SCIF”) with such documents is almost inconceivable unless security standards have collapsed since my time. The leak is so rare that it raises the question of whether the documents themselves are fakes and whether the leak is a staged misinformation effort by the U.S. intelligence community to mislead Russians about the actual state of the military in Ukraine.

A real leak of fake documents designed to make the documents look real is possible in what counterintelligence professionals call the wilderness of mirrors. Still, based on the best available information, it does appear the documents are genuine, and the damage from these leaks to the U.S. is enormous.

The documents paint a dire picture of Ukrainian combat strength and suggest that the much-touted Ukrainian spring offensive will be grossly understrength and possibly doomed to fail. Here’s a summary of some of what’s in the documents from a reliable analyst using the nom de guerre Big Serge:

“All told, the combat power build calls for these [Ukrainian] brigades to field a total of 253 tanks, 381 Infantry Fighting Vehicles, 480 Armored Personnel Carriers, and 147 artillery pieces. This implies that these will be brigades in name only, and will in fact be far understrength. Parceling these systems out across nine brigades will give an average strength of a mere 28 tanks per brigade, along with some 95 IFVs/APCs and 16 artillery tubes. Compare this to a US Army Armored Brigade Combat Team, which would have almost 90 tanks and almost 200 IFVs/APCs. An American Stryker Brigade (a lighter, rapidly deployable formation) would have about 300 Strykers – the Ukrainian 82nd Brigade is listed to receive only 90. In combat power terms, therefore, these new brigades are going to be far understrength. Their tank strength, far from being full brigade level, amounts to less than an American armored battalion. … Meanwhile, the material situation in Ukraine is degrading rapidly. Their artillery arm is running on fumes, with a minuscule shell ration and no reserve stocks to speak of, fed by a trickle of deliveries from the USA. Air defense is similarly worn thin, and the plan to repair this crucial umbrella threatens to quickly become vampiric and drain NATO interceptor stocks. The entire strategic logic of Ukraine has reversed. Rather than becoming a cheap way to drain the Russian military, NATO finds itself drawing down its own stocks to prop up the hemorrhaging Ukrainian state, with no clear endgame in sight. The proxy has become a parasite.”

This is not just a disaster for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It’s a disaster for the U.S. because we have put so much money, effort, and weaponry into Ukraine with so little to show. In fact, the best read of these leaked documents is that Ukraine is well on its way to losing the war. What comes next is anybody’s guess.

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