The Narrow Circle

Wall Street Journal journalists Byron Tau, Sadie Gurman, and Aruna Viswanatha report on the recent leak of classified documents:

WASHINGTON—The U.S. government is treating the apparent disclosure of classified material surrounding the war in Ukraine as an insider’s leak, people familiar with the matter say, but hasn’t yet homed in on key suspects for a massive intelligence breach that has exposed the challenges of safeguarding sensitive U.S. information and tested ties with some of America’s closest allies.

The bulk of the more than 60 documents, if genuine, appear to originate from the Central Intelligence Agency’s Operations Center and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. Such documents are typically briefed to senior-level decision makers at the Pentagon in an environment protected from electronic surveillance and secured against leaks.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is using clues in the images that have circulated online in recent weeks to aid its criminal investigation, law-enforcement officials said. Some of the documents would be accessible to several hundred people, while others would be restricted to a much smaller group, U.S. officials said. Focusing on the access to the more-restricted documents gives investigators a way to narrow the field of potential leakers, they said.

That’s the point I have been making since the news of the leak broke. Additionally, the number of individuals who have access to all of the most highly classified documents in the cache should cause that number to decline. If that’s not the case it sounds like an even greater security problem to me.

I sincerely hope the Department of Justice is taking this matter seriously. Failing to do so would call executive branch credibility into question.