The Pentagon pictured on June 25, 2021 (Reuters)

Today, the US Department of Justice opened an investigation to figure out how the recently leaked Pentagon reports on the war in Ukraine occurred in the first place. However, the probed investigation will reportedly take months to finish, according to CNN.

The investigation into the leaks will reportedly involve several federal agencies.

The Department of Defense will reportedly investigate whether any data or methods were compromised.
The Department of Justice will investigate the parties responsible for leaking the documents.
The Office of Intelligence and Security will be heading the investigation process.

The recent #Pentagon leaks could be the most damaging release of US government information since the 2013 publication of thousands of documents on #WikiLeaks. pic.twitter.com/vbABFNubRY
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) April 11, 2023

Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that the leaks of classified US documents obscured US ties with key allies and partners, and also undermined the US' credibility and ability to keep secrets.

Today, a report published by Politico revealed that the US has been facing an avalanche of questions from its frustrated allies over the leak of classified Pentagon documents.

The leak had left relations with allies in a state of crisis as the incident is reported to be the largest since Wikileaks exposed classified files from 2006 to 2021.

According to a source familiar with the matter, members of the Five Eyes — the intelligence consortium of the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand — filed requests for Washington to brief them on the matter. They have yet to receive a response, the source noted.

They further said that inquiries had been sent separately from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, and the FBI.

Today it was reported that the leak which shook Washington and unmasked a new intelligence failure may have started in a chatroom on a social media platform popular with gamers, according to AP.

A debate on Discord that was originally intended to cover a wide range of topics turned to the conflict in Ukraine as it was being held on the Discord platform, which supports live voice, video, and text chats.

One chat participant claimed that an anonymous user published documents that were purportedly categorized as part of discussions on Ukraine, first typing them out with the poster's own thoughts and then, as of a few months ago, starting to post photographs of papers with folds in them.