ISLAMABAD: The news that US president Donald Trump’s national security team accidently shared Yemen strike plans with the Atlantic journalist has stirred a controversy.
However, it is just the latest in a long line of legendary leaks. Here are some of the most notorious leaks in US history.
The Pentagon Papers
In June 1971, The New York Times published sections of a top-secret Department of Defence report on the country’s involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.
It was leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, an antiwar activist and a former Defence Department analyst working for the RAND Corp.
The report detailed how the Johnson administration and others repeatedly misled Congress and the public about the causes and progress of the Vietnam War, according to NBC News.
The Pentagon Papers’ publication fuelled the antiwar movement and sparked a debate over the freedom of the press to divulge “classified” information and the public’s right to know about government affairs.
The Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal erupted during Richard Nixon’s presidency.
It perfectly nailed the lid on Nixon’s coffin as he was forced to resign in 1974 after a series of Senate hearings.
The controversy unfolded in June 1972 when five men were arrested for breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel complex in Washington and installing illegal wiretaps.
The men were linked to a fundraising group for Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign, according to NBC News, but the Nixon administration denied any involvement.
Later in 1972, Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward exposed the administration’s role in the scandal and cover-up.
Their key source was an informant nicknamed “Deep Throat,” who was later revealed to be former FBI agent W Mark Felt.
Nixon was the first president in US history to resign after a controversy.
The Iraq War Logs and WikiLeaks
In October 2010, WikiLeaks published US Army field reports from 2004 to 2009 that listed the number of civilian deaths as 66,081 out of 109,000 total recorded deaths.
The bombshell expose was perhaps the biggest leak in US history.
According to the BBC News, the leaked logs confirmed some partially reported events. For instance, some American troops had been classifying civilian deaths as enemy deaths.
Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks
In 2013, the leaks from Edward Snowden, an intelligence community insider, revealed bombshell details about the US government’s actions in covertly surveilling millions of Americans.
The surveillance programme came in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, with government officials seeing a need to beef up security programs and surveillance operations to scope out potential criminal and terrorist threats.
The leaks from Snowden, however, revealed that the government was collecting information from regular citizens, not just potential terrorist threats, according to The Hill.
Signal Group Chat Leak
The Signal group chat leak is the latest in a series of high-profile leaks involving classified information.
The Atlantic Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg stunned the world when he reported that Trump officials texted him Yemen war plans.
An inadvertent invitation to a group chat thrust The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg into the center of an explosive national security breach that’s put the White House on the defensive, according to Axios.
Goldberg’s decision to disclose the discussion of planned strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen and publish the group chat’s contents has embroiled top Trump officials in scandal and exposed them to potential legal jeopardy.
