Top-secret U.S. military and intelligence documents leaked to Internet, including reports on Jordanian issues

الرابط المختصر

A leaked document shows an American assessment of the situation in the West Bank around the Aqaba Conference on February 26, which coincided with a Palestinian operation in Hawara, followed by a massive settler attack on civilians.

Another document describes a February 25 meeting between Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi and Foreign Ministry Secretary General Lina Al-Hadid discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conference in Aqaba, which was scheduled for the next day. According to the document, al-Safadi told al-Hadid that the Jordanian government “took a lot of heat” domestically for arranging the Aqaba Conference in the midst of Israeli military operations in the West Bank, but Jordan had “no other choice” to prevent further escalation and the potential collapse of the Palestinian Authority.

The document said that Safadi warned Jordanian intervention must occur before the start of Ramadan, and that Israel “sought to avoid” a collapse of the Palestinian Authority, “as Israel would then have to take over responsibility for governing the Palestinian territories and ensuring operation of essential services like schools and hospitals.”

It is not clear how U.S. intelligence learned of the meeting. The document, which featured several Middle Eastern news items, was tagged “FISA,” a reference to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law that regulates wiretaps on U.S. soil. The passage about al-Safadi and al-Hadid is marked “Five Eyes,” referring to a surveillance network run by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

One of the documents also shows “Chinese pressure” related to the deployment of the 5G network in Jordan, and Jordanian assurances to the United States after granting the 5G contract to the Chinese company Huawei.

وثائق

According to the investigative journalism website Bellingcat, dozens of U.S. intelligence documents about Europe, Asia, and the Middle East were leaked last month to Discord, a popular website for video game enthusiasts.

The documents spread across social media in early April. U.S. officials told the New York Times that the documents are real reports from the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Department of Defense, but that some versions circulated on social media have been altered. The FBI has launched an investigation into the source of the leak. According to the Times, the documents show that the U.S. government surveils not only enemies and rivals but also allies such as South Korea, Ukraine, and Israel.