Biden ‘deeply concerned’ about publication of secret Israeli documents

President Biden is “deeply concerned” about the unauthorized release of classified documents about Israel’s preparation for a possible retaliatory attack on Iran, a White House spokesperson said Monday.

The Biden administration still does not know whether the classified information was leaked or hacked, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said. Officials have no indication at this point that “additional documents like this are finding their way into the public domain,” he said.

Kirby added that the Pentagon was investigating. U.S. officials confirmed an investigation by the administration on Saturday.

“We are deeply concerned, and the President remains deeply concerned, about any leak of classified information into the public domain. This is not supposed to happen, and it’s unacceptable when it happens,” Kirby said.

The documents are attributed to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, and note that Israel was still moving military assets to carry out a military strike in response to Iran’s blistering ballistic missile attack on October 1 . “Five Eyes”, an intelligence alliance consisting of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Marked as top secret, the documents first appeared online Friday on the messaging app Telegram and quickly spread across Telegram channels popular with Iranians.

Analysts at SITE Intelligence Group, a consultancy that monitors and analyzes online threats from extremist groups, traced the posting of the documents to a Telegram channel popular with Iran-backed militias. The channel contained messages from an anonymous user with a long history of posting other so-called top-secret content and who claimed to have access to the documents. The user also wrote that he sold some of the equipment and supplied it to the Iranian army.

The Telegram channel presents itself as being based in Tehran, the Iranian capital. He has previously posted memes featuring Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as materials supporting Tehran’s self-proclaimed “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Middle Eastern militant groups armed by the Republic Islamic.

One of the two documents resembled the style of other National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency documents leaked by Jack Teixeira, an Air National Guard member who pleaded guilty in March to leaking highly classified military documents about the war of Russia against Ukraine and other national security secrets.

The release comes at a pivotal moment in the Middle East, as Israel considers its response to the Iranian attack.

The United States urged Israel to take advantage of the elimination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and push for a ceasefire in Gaza and also urgently warned Israel against further expansion military operations in northern Lebanon and the risk of a wider regional war.

However, Israeli leaders have repeatedly emphasized that they will not let the Iranian missile attack go unanswered.

The investigation into the disclosure of the documents could take some time as authorities search for digital or physical clues that could reveal how the information was leaked and what implications it could have on information management and intelligence sharing with U.S. allies, according to Gavin Wilde, senior fellow in the Technology and International Affairs program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“I imagine they’ll get to the bottom of it eventually,” said Wilde, who previously worked at the National Security Council. “The intelligence community has gotten much better at digital chain of custody: who saw a particular document, how many times it was shared, and with whom.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined Monday to comment on changes the government made to better protect top secret information following the Discord leak. She added that Biden had “complete confidence” in the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the intelligence community following the latest unauthorized disclosure.

The nation’s spy agencies have been scrambling to strengthen cybersecurity since the Discord leak and the conviction of former NSA contractor Reality Winner. However, accounting for human behavior can be a more difficult challenge, according to Shawnee Delaney, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and now managing director of the Vaillance Group, a private threat analysis firm.

“Cybersecurity is not just about technology,” Delaney told the Associated Press. “It’s a human problem, and humans are completely unpredictable.”

Spokespeople for the Pentagon and NSA said officials were aware of the incident, but had no further comment.

Madhani and Klepper write for the Associated Press.