Ukraine Leaks a Major Headache for Biden Administration

Ukraine leaks give Biden big headaches at a bad time

President Joe Biden embarks on a tour of Ireland on Tuesday, but problems elsewhere may weigh heavily on his mind during the trip.

Reports emerged late last week that classified U.S. documents about the war in Ukraine had leaked on social media. Though some of the documents appear to be altered, they included maps and charts of Ukraine, where troops are concentrated, and what weapons are available to them.

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“The American people need to know, and deserve to know, that we’re taking this very seriously,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday. “There is no excuse for these kinds of documents to be in the public domain. … We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

But the documents were first posted online as early as January and moved to a larger group in March before being widely circulated by a Russian propaganda account on Telegram last Wednesday, leading to questions about the White House’s level of attention to detail.

“Is the White House concerned about the period of time that elapsed from when [the leaks] were posted to when they started to gain traction?” Washington Examiner reporter Naomi Lim asked Kirby.

“We’re worried that the documents are out there,” he answered. “They shouldn’t be out there, period. That’s the big worry.”

Questions about the leak dominated Monday’s press briefing and represent a major crisis for the Biden administration just as the president leaves for a politically sensitive foreign trip.

The leaks circulated on the internet Thursday and Friday, prompting a criminal leak investigation from the Department of Justice and causing a scramble within the White House to contain the damage to relations with U.S. allies.

Among the revelations, if they are accurate, are that the United States may have had the capacity to eavesdrop on private conversations conducted in the South Korean presidential office and that the U.S. may have a spy in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, which could result in a “mole hunt” in Moscow that endangers the life of the source.

It’s unknown if the administration has contained the leak, though Kirby was adamant that Biden has been briefed about the situation and is taking action.

The revelations have prompted widespread concerns among U.S. intelligence officials as they continue to monitor the war in Ukraine. The documents don’t explicitly detail how the U.S. has penetrated Russian intelligence, and it’s not yet clear whether the Kremlin can cut off their information sources.

Biden will now have to work to massage relations with foreign leaders, especially those who are involved with backing Ukraine against Russia.

“The larger issue is being able to maintain trust with foreign partners and allies and letting them know that we can protect sources and methods,” Rutgers University professor Wojtek Wolfe said. “There’s been an uptick in these types of errors for the Biden administration, and it’s definitely problematic.”

Wolfe focuses on foreign relations and argues that the problem of leaked documents has grown significantly in recent years. Given that, Biden may have difficulty convincing allies that the situation is truly under control.

“Biden definitely has some issues with presenting himself as a strong leader,” Wolfe said. “I don’t know if people have as much confidence in him negotiating this through multiple hot spots of tension, one with Russia, two with China, and three, hypothetically, with Iran. His has not been a terrific track record.”

The long timeline between when the leaks emerged and when they were discovered is problematic, according to Heritage Foundation research fellow Victoria Coates, in that it seems to fold into a larger pattern of slow action from the White House. She sees parallels with the classified documents scandal that emerged last November but was not publicly known until January and the Chinese spy balloon that was not discovered until it was flying over the mountains of Montana.

“I’d like to know what the administration has been doing for the last two months about this [leak],” she said. “It was disheartening to watch them struggle to get this material taken down.”

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An interesting wrinkle in the story is that the leaks first emerged on the Discord messaging platform, which is typically popular with video gamers. If there’s a silver lining for Biden in all this, it’s that it may help his administration focus more on those kinds of platforms as potential leak sources.

“If enough folks inside the administration wake up to that and start taking action,” Coates said, “we could maybe prevent a much worse problem down the road.”