practically a new world. >> par 3 on al jazeera. tom: a major leak of top-secret u.s. intelligence files. they reveal ukrainian military preparations and the pentagon's taking across a range of sensitive international issues. so how serious is this breach for the united states and its allies, and what impact might it have on them and on russia? this is "inside story." ♪

hello and welcome to the program. i am tom mcrae. the pentagon is dealing with the fallout from the worst leak of u.s. national security intelligence in many years. initial media reports said it involved classified u.s. and nato plans to help ukraine in the war against russia. but more information has since come out, with files relating to china, south korea, the middle east, and africa. the scale of the leak is increasing suspicion it came from an american source rather than from an ally. russia has been accused of doctoring some files to create misinformation, and ukrainian and south korean officials have rejected some of what is being reported as false. the pentagon says a hunt has been launched for the source. we will be discussing the implications of all of this with three former intelligence agents shortly. but first, this report on the backgrounds to this leak. reporter: an embarrassing security breach. the contents of classified

united states defense document revealed to news outlets across the country. the leak included insider analysis from the state of the ukraine war, with assessments of performances of ukrainian and russian forces. officials say they do not know the source suspect it may have been a high level one. >> it appears to show documents similar in format to those used to provide daily updates to our senior leaders on ukraine and russia-related operations, as well as other intelligence updates. some of these images appear to have been altered. reporter: the leak also reveals the existence of u.s. spying operations on allied countries like south korea and israel. an embarrassing revelation that sparked rebukes from abroad. >> we strongly regret that the top u.s. intelligence agency has been illegally spying on allies like our country. we strongly demand a thorough investigation and urge that similar incidents did not occur. reporter: u.s. diplomats are

scrambling to repair the damage. >> u.s. officials across the into agency are engaging with allies and partners at high levels over this, including to reassure them of our commitment to safeguarding intelligence and the fidelity of securing our partnerships. reporter: the leaks come at a sensitive time. the state of ukraine's forces has been revealed, just as it is believed to be preparing for a major counteroffensive against russia. and u.s. diplomats are being disrupted after they have spent more than a year working on building up military support for ukraine internationally. until u.s. officials find the source of the leak, they cannot be sure more secrets will not be revealed in the near future. ♪ tom: for more on this i am joined by our guests. in boston is glenn carle, korea cia officer and former deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats. in brussels is annie machon,

former mi5 officer and author of the privacy mission. and colin wallace, psychological warfare specialist and former member of british army intelligence in northern ireland. a warm welcome to all of you, thank you very much for being here. glenn, if i can start with you. as a former cia officer, how embarrassing is this for u.s. intelligence agencies? glenn: it is more than embarrassing. the term in the cia for when an operation goes wrong is a flap, and this is a flap of a major magnitude. it will cuase -- cause, i am sure it already has caused, significant harm. and i expect that some people may well die from it. tom: what do you mean by that? who will die from this? glenn: well, the reports don't say that an individual x is

working for the united states, but it does say we have information of a certain nature on a topic. any counterintelligence service will be hastily and thoroughly now working out who has access to that information in their country, and reducing the number of possible individuals. and it's quite possible that they could identify the sources, and depending on the country, that will damage or destroy their career,r, or get them killed. tom: are you talking about russia specifically here? glenn: yes, yes. tom: so, because of this leak, you think some of the russian sources that have potentially been feeding information to u.s. intelligence services, the consequences they face include potentially being killed? glenn: i think that is very possible. i have, in my career, a number of colleagues, fortunately never

any of the cases that i handled, but a number of my colleagues had sources that they were handling who were killed because of roughly equivalent breaches of our security in previous decades. tom: annie, do you see it as being as serious as that as well? annie: i think it is. there are a number of different strands i would like to draw out of this conversation. first of all, the fact that the u.s. secret services of any description apparently cannot keep their secrets secret. we have about the wikileaks, shadow brokers trying to sell nsa information online about seven years ago. so this is one of just another leak, which i think is interesting because even going back to the snowden leaks in 2013, that was taken as red, that they were authentic.

now we are looking at leaks which are being questioned and off he skated by the u.s. administration, saying that must be tempered. there might be hacking or deepfakes or something like that. so it muddies the waters in terms of people's perceptions of where this information might come from, how it might come out, and the impact it will have. there are plenty of issues at play here. it is not just about spies not being able to keep their spyware secret. there is the media manipulation going on here too, which i find fascinating and frightening. tom: hopefully we delve into those throughout the program. colin, do you think this is a u.s. leak, a russian hack, or a disinformation campaign? colin: i think the old saying, perception is reality, is very important in my role. the key thing is it does not matter if this information is

genuine or not, it is the impact it has on sources. accurate sources are the lifeblood of intelligence. if you consider yourself a soldier -- information he and his colleagues may have shared with the americans being compromised, that is a major impact on the level of trust that they have with america. and of course that can affect the flow of information. and i think there is a really serious psychological problem with this, whether that information is genuine or not. tom: what do you mean by a psychological problem? can you explain that other bit for us? colin: when soldiers are in combat, they rely heavily on each other. and they rely also on the information that they are being given and the support they are being given to protect them from harm. if they believe that support

system has been compromised and that one or a group of people inside are failing to protect them by leaking information, therefore endangering them, that has an impact on the way they see one of their major allies, in this case, the united states of america. in terms of morale, i can say that is a major problem. tom: glenn, if we can go back to where you think this leak might have come from a number of these documents are labeled top-secret so presumably it is someone with a very high clearance. how many people would have had access to these types of documents? glenn: well, unfortunately in a couple of ways i think i have some insights on that and it is not encouraging news from my perspective, or an encouraging perspective. yes, top-secret is one of the higher levels of classification, although there are many -- which

will sound strange, but there are many classifications exponentially more secret than top-secret. top-secret, there are hundreds of thousands of documents shared with dozens of thousands of individuals shared in the u.s. that are classified top-secret that is part of the problem. since 9/11, the attacks 22 years ago now, the intelligence community has ballooned and in a particular way it hired many independent contractors. i was a staff officer. i went through years of training prior to being commissioned essentially as an officer and then allowed to field -- to serve in the field, under the supervision of a training officer. with the independent contractors, that is not really the case. they may hire a retired officer like me and bring him or her back, or they will hire someone with linguistic or forensic

abilities, so on and so forth. but frankly, although it is stated that the standards and requirements obligations and controls are the same for them, that is not really true. it is impossible to have the same level of security and devotion to mission when you have dozens of thousands of contractors with access to this kind of information. that is what snowden was, that is what a couple of the other cases in the last 20 years of breaches have been and i suspect that that is what is happening now. obviously i have no first-hand indications, but i recognize the indication -- the information, the kind of documents we are seeing, and how the system functions, and that is how i suspect it happened. and there are also those individuals, specifically the russians, far easier to target and -- tom: i could see you nodding

there. if it was someone from inside the u.s. intelligence agencies, or a contractor associated with them, why do you think someone in that position would maybe want to leaked documents like this? because they seem damaging to so many different countries, including russia as well as the u.s., obviously. annie: and also israel and south korea, and various other countries. i think what we need to look at is the geopolitical tectonic plates. who is really fighting who. and there have been a number of proxy wars. glenn mentioned the post-9/11 issues and the beginning of the war on terror and the modern slide of modern intelligence agencies, that went helter-skelter down the route of torture, kidnapping, effectively, although sorts of things. that did destabilize, i think, a lot of people trust, even on the

inside, and how are -- our intelligence agencies operate. we have to have trust in these sort of organizations. when the pendulum swings too far one way, people begin to distrust. i think that is what happened in the naughties and the beginning of the tens. that is why snowden came out and said what he said. that is why other things that were leaked onto dickie webb or the dark web. i think that might be something similar here. one, there is a generational issue, i would suggest, which is perhaps even going back to my generation. growing up in the 1980's and starting to work in the 1990's. the idea you would have a job for life and work for an organization, progressed through it, and be protected by it. compared to what younger people now face when they are coming up. and they might just be seeing as

to spendable -- as expendable. there is a breakdown of neutral trust in terms what the agencies can do and what the agencies can protect them with, thereby. there is also -- there is also some stuff here. it is not just the interpersonal, it is not just the way we perceive mainstream media or whistleblowing. we perceive leaks. it is just a breakdown of trust i think, which is really sad. and the key question is how can we rebuild those two adhere to societies again, rebuild that trust again tom: -- again. tom: you were just talking about the trust and public agencies. annie: and the media. tom: colin, what about trust between countries? obviously zelenskyy has come out and condemned leaks and saying

it is just part of the misinformation campaign. what about the trust between the u.s. and ukraine at this point? what does it do to that relationship? colin: i think this is a major problem, because a conflict such as ukraine is not just a war about gaining territory, it is a war about the mind. it is about the minds of people throughout the world and how they perceive this conflict. at the moment, the fact that you and i and endless other media outlets are talking and writing about this story shows that it's significant. the only people at the moment who must be feeling relatively happy about this are probably our friends in soviet intelligence. because this is almost the person -- the perfect deception operation. what we now have is trust, you are right. if people's lives and well-being are on the line and they

suddenly feel that people around them, particularly their superiors, are somehow incompetent or not caring about their well-being, then that is a major source for discontent and all sorts of difficult things spring from that. tom: glenn, i want to talk about the -- annie: sorry, i just want to say it is not just a lack of trust, it is all about disillusionment and perceiving so-called superiors and power, who do not actually really care about the interests of most people. they are more interested in self-serving. i am not saying that as a generalization, but i think that is a perception that most people are beginning to see, and that is why we are seeing an increase of populist movements in disenfranchisement, and the rise that has been happening throughout europe. that is just the western perspective, let alone the rest of the world.

i think we need to take that bigger picture as well. how people begin to feel manipulated and feel a lack of trust, and that spells into our digital lives online, and how we can protect those too, which goes back to the media stuff, colin, which i totally agree with. tom: glenn, from an american point of view, obviously misinformation and disinformation and fake news has been widely discussed over the last five or six years in the u.s. how is this leak being viewed there, and has that affected trust between the public and u.s. intelligence agencies, and the media that are trying to provide correct and factual information? glenn: yes, on this point, which is a very important one, i think i differ a bit from our colleagues. i'm not surprised, i think, that there have been statements

issued trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the documents. because when something bad has happened, allone -- all one can do really is wave a shiny object somewhere else or blow smoke or fog to try and muddy the perceptions, in some vain hope that the information might not be taken as accurate or acted upon immediately. so that does not disturb me, although the implication on the public's perceptions are grave, or potentially certainly grave. what this does to the perceptions of the u.s., i do not think that is too much of an issue, really. the issue is a loss, perhaps, in faith -- that's too strong a word maybe, but in trust about the confidence of the american

service -- services and government. in my lifetime, sadly, the presumption of government services has gone from where it would do right to cynicism. the reasons go far beyond the intelligence world, but they affect the intelligence world. so that is really what would happen from the respective of perception. the issue for me is more practical. this is an unfolding disaster for american intelligence and potential policy. as these flaps are, i think to give some perspective on how serious the cia, and my colleagues in other intelligence agencies take this, the single most important element of our trianing -- training, and literally my training lasted for years before i could go onto the field -- is to protect your

asset. whether it's our technical source, but always in my specialization, human sources. that is what you have to devote your life to protecting. because if they lose their trust in you, then they will not work with you. and if you make a mistake, they will die. it's taken extremely seriously. the slightest error, one 1000th, one 100,000th less severe than this breach. it is like being the captain of your ship. it doesn't matter if you are the agent of going against the rocks. you are responsible. and so your career will be destroyed. it is the ultimate responsibility. so this is a serious issue. and that kind of devotion to mission, almost obsessive focus

on responsibility, frankly, is not shared, inculcated, and cannot really exist with people who come for a couple of years to get a credential, or think they are doing something exciting. as opposed to the nearly convent-like devotion, monk-like devotion of traditional intelligence officers. and i know that is the case in my british colleagues. i worked with them. and with my french and other services. it's essential, and it is a problem when it does not exist. tom: colin, you spent your career working with british army intelligence as a psychological warfare specialist. as glenn mentioned at the beginning of this program, people's lives are now at risk because of this leak, with sources potentially within russia that have been leaking potentially to the u.s. intelligence agencies and the cia.

that they are not risk. what ill -- what will the kremlin be doing at this point in time to try and stamp down on those leaks, on those people who may have been leaking to the u.s. or their allies? colin: i think the last speaker summed it up beautifully. source is the main weapon of intelligence agencies. it is about reliable, consistent information that we have regular access to. once anything happens that changes that relationship, or the perception of that relationship, damages the flow of information. and since i was in northern ireland, the world order has almost changed. we have seen the rise of china, the movement of russia, new alliances being formed. and we're also in a world that communicates much faster. and i think in days gone by where a lot of the contact was done face-to-face with people,

now that is, to some extent, diminishing as the volume increases. we can handle vast quantities of information compared with days gone by, but at the end of the day, intelligence, i believe, is a relationship between an individual and his or her handler. and once we lose sight of that, i think then lots of these problems that we are talking about begin to creep in, because we have lost our sense of value about what that world is about. it is not the world of james bond. it is about sometimes very frightened people who are under pressure, and they have to trust you. they are trusting you with their life. and once we suddenly seem to regard them as no longer important, i think we have a major problem on our hands. tom: annie, i want to talk a little about criticism of the russian intelligence services, meaning military -- services. many military express have said

the document suggests that u.s. intelligence has been able to obtain daily real-time warnings on the timing of moscow's strikes, and even some of their specific targets. what do you make of russian intelligence at this point in time, and i guess, from the beginning of the war until now? annie: well, i will enter this but i do want to pick up on what colin said, because i agree. this is something i have been talking about for years, that the human intelligence, where you have people that you can task and to report back and you build up that relationship with trust, is the crown jewels of intelligence work. and you cannot put them at risk. that would just be bad on every level as a human being. so, yeah, i think this is something that does need to be nurtured, and i think it is something that wikileaks and other whistleblower websites have tried to protect, despite the disinformation that have come out about obfuscating the

identities of these people. in terms of the russians, there has been a suggestion of resurgence for at least 15 years from the new version of the spr, blah blah blah, the former kgb. they seem to be, should we say, slightly less good at a few skating their -0 -- at odd few skating their tracks. that is not to say that the western agencies are not as ruthless and do not hold panoptic surveillance structures. north america, new zealand, australia and the u.k.. every country spies on every country. they do what they think is in

their best interest. some of it is misguided. some of it is intrusive. some of it is ethically appalling is what we saw in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror for most of the west. we need to kick that perspective open. every country has its own national interest, every country has these tools and organizations to do these things to protect their national interests. we might not agree with it, they might not agree with what we are trying to do. but we should not stigmatize whole populations because of what their governments and secret intelligence agencies do. they are the innocence and they are the ones victimized and they are the ones, if they are very unfortunate, that get caught in the crossfire's between particularly east and west, like ukraine, like syria, afghanistan, iraq, and many countries across africa. we need to think about that bigger picture and pullouts. it is not just us, spy versus spy.

it has real genuine impacts on millions of people and on all of our data globally. and that is the sort of perspective we should try to remember when thinking about the smaller issues that we are talking about today. tom: just very quickly before we go, glenn, what is going to be the long-term follow-up of this leak in particular? is it the people, the sources that annie has been talking about? glenn: i'm glad you asked that question because it is an important one. in a fervor -- in a perverser way, it's not a silver lining, but a relative perspective to have. just very quickly to touch on what does this imply about the russian services, the worse the society, the worse the system, the worse the government, the more opportunities there are for oter intelligence services. so it is nothing new that one can penetrate the russians, if

one can gain access to them. a totalitarian system makes it harder. it is a rotten system where there is a lot of corruption. and for all of the flaps and problems that the cia has paraded in the media over the years, the cia is very, very good, and the u.s. intelligence community, as are other countries too, doing their job. so that is no surprise. tom: what is the long-term fallout of this leak? glenn: relatively, flaps occur unfortunately relatively regularly with all services. so this will blow over. the south koreans will make a lot of noise because it is embarrassing, an ally spying on them, but national interests will dominate and we will return to people spying and working with each other simultaneously. tom: ok, we have to leave it there. thank you so much to all of our guests. glenn carle, annie machon, and colin wallace. thank you so much for being on "inside story."

you can see the program any time by visiting our website, aljazeera.com. and for further discussion go to our facebook page, facebook.com/ajinsidestory. you can also join the conversation on twitter, our handle is @ajinsidestory. from me, tom mcrae, and the whole team here, bye for now. ♪ ññññ

oç [thunderclap] [piano music] - good evening, durham public school family. durham public schools will be closed in response to covid-19. - the longer i am without social interaction, like, outside of the house, the lessocial i'm going to be when quarantine ends, and i feel like not being able to talk to anybody or, like, without friends. - (singing) happy birthday-- - to realize how quickly a life that you are living can come to an end, it was really like-- [snaps] - good morning. - [yawns] - [laughs]