Intelligence leak exposes U.S. spying on adversaries, allies: Washington Post

Photo taken on Feb. 19, 2020 shows the Pentagon seen from an airplane over Washington D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

The series of detailed briefings and summaries open a rare window on the inner workings of American espionage.

NEW YORK, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Over the weekend, as U.S. officials and their foreign allies scrambled to understand how dozens of classified intelligence documents had ended up on the internet, they were stunned, and occasionally infuriated, at the extraordinary range of detail the files exposed about how the United States spies on friends and foes alike, reported The Washington Post on Saturday.

"The documents, which appear to have come at least in part from the Pentagon and are marked as highly classified, offer tactical information about the war in Ukraine, including the country's combat capabilities," said the report.

Many of the documents seem to have been prepared over the winter for senior military officials, but were also available to other U.S. personnel and contract employees with the requisite security clearances, the report said, citing one defense official.

Other documents include analysis from U.S. intelligence agencies about Russia and several other countries, all based on information gleaned from classified sources, according to the report.

"The series of detailed briefings and summaries open a rare window on the inner workings of American espionage," said the report. Among other secrets, they appear to reveal where the CIA has recruited human agents privy to the closed-door conversations of world leaders; eavesdropping that shows a Russian mercenary outfit tried to acquire weapons from a NATO ally to use against Ukraine; and what kinds of satellite imagery the United States uses to track Russian forces, including an advanced technology that appears barely, if ever, to have been publicly identified.

Senior Pentagon leadership restricted the flow of intelligence on Friday in response to the revelations, the Post quoted U.S. officials as saying, adding that one described the clampdown as unusually strict and said it revealed a high level of panic among Pentagon leadership.