“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”
— Plato
Our recent update about the leak of top-secret classified U.S. intelligence reports is now being covered by several mainstream media outlets. A note of caution: a highly classified document that contains mostly “low” to “medium” confidence assessments is still considered a “weak” intelligence report.
Let’s go back to connect the dots:
1. Market Ex-Post | Why Spies Defect to Become Double Agents (May 10, 2024)
The intelligence community consists of ordinary citizens who expect their government and superiors to uphold the values and ideals they swore to protect. When the gap between the will of the people and political elites grows too wide, conditions become ripe for defections for reasons beyond personal gain.
2. Open Source | Are CIA or MI6 Agents Smarter? (Oct 10, 2024)
To put it bluntly, overall, British intelligence agents often demonstrate higher levels of raw intelligence and thoughtfulness than their American counterparts. There are significant advantages to working with open-source intelligence compared to classified information gathered by clandestine means. The two methods of analysis are kept distinctly separate. Those on the other side of the intelligence world’s equivalent of a “Chinese wall” are prohibited from viewing classified information, even if it becomes publicly available.
3. Iran-Israel | U.S. Intel Agency ‘Leaked’ Attack Plan (Oct 18, 2024)
We reported a potential leak of an NGA intelligence report detailing Israel’s preparations to retaliate against Iran. At first glance, the leaked reports seemed authentic, though not particularly substantive. Classified documents should not be shared or redistributed, even when released in the public domain, as this creates issues for those with restricted access to classified materials. Besides, some of us wish to keep our TSA precheck and Global Entry privileges.
The more disgruntled the employees (on all sides), the more porous the Chinese walls. And the more data that is put out there, the more demanding the task of curating and analyzing the sources becomes.
Updates
An important point of clarification: We are not the source of the recently US intelligence leaks, nor did we break protocol by redistributing the documents concerned.
To borrow a market analogy: imagine you hold a large position in a single stock and receive unsolicited non-public information, which—most of the time—turns out to be not very useful. If you follow the formal procedures, it triggers a lot of paperwork, compliance investigations, and the potential inconvenience of trading restrictions. It might seem counterintuitive, but it's similar to getting “wall-crossed” on public information. In the case of intelligence work, there is only downside for not following official procedures.
Currently, we see intelligence ‘leaks' falling broadly into three categories:
i) Journalists at supposedly reputable media outlets citing fictitious “unnamed sources” to please their paymasters.
ii) Declassified “leaks” by the intelligence community, often aimed at raising public awareness, conducting psyops, or controlling the narrative.
iii) The unauthorized release of classified information by insiders or hackers. i.e. genuine leaks.
It can be confusing, and the blame is always placed on others for sowing chaos and public mistrust. Our best educated guess is that this leak falls into the third category.