American officials say they are still trying to determine whether classified documents about Israel’s plan to strike back at Iran were obtained through a hack or someone leaking them. 

National security council spokesman, John Kirby, told reporters on Monday that President Biden is “deeply concerned” about the leak of the documents, and officials are “keenly focused on what happened here, learning how it happened, and preventing it from happening again.”

“And, in the course of that investigative work, we are certainly going to keep our antenna up and our eyes open for any potential future disclosures,” he added.

While Mr. Kirby said officials had yet to determine whether the documents were leaked from someone in the Biden administration, he added they do not have “any indication at this point that there’s an expectation that there’ll be additional documents like this finding their way into the public domain.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on whether the documents were authentic during a press briefing on Monday. 

Over the weekend, documents marked top secret that appeared to come from the Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency about the movement of Israeli assets in preparation for a retaliatory strike on Iran for its October 1 ballistic missile attack were shared on the popular messaging app Telegram. The Telegram channel that shared the document says it is based at Tehran. 

While American officials probe the security breach, some critics of the administration are questioning whether an American official leaked the documents to undermine Israel.

The legislative director for Senator Cruz, Omri Ceren, posted on X, “It’s odd how leaks from the Biden-Harris admin — ostensibly unauthorized background quotes, classified info given to journalists, classified info published by the Iranian regime, etc. — consistently undermine Israeli freedom of action and boost Iran. Maybe there’s a clue there!”

Former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said on Fox Business that she believes there is a “limited number of individuals” who would have access to the documents and suggested that someone in the Biden administration leaked the information to try to force Israel to change its plans. 

A political consultant, Noah Pollack, wrote, “Biden-Harris admin is stacked to the rafters with pro-Iran Democrats who’ve made careers in anti-Israel activism. But I’m sure they had nothing to do with the leak of classified intel on Israel to an Iranian Telegram channel.”

A former investigator for Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Jerry Dunleavy, wrote, “We don’t yet know how this info was leaked or who did it. But what we do know is that there are Iran sympathizers inside the Biden-Harris Admin who would like nothing more than to stymie Israeli efforts to strike the Iranian regime.”

Meanwhile, others have resurfaced concerns about Iran gaining access to highly sensitive State Department emails or administration officials leaking information to Tehran. In September 2023, a group of Congressional Republicans sent a letter to the White House raising concerns about sensitive information winding up in newspapers in Iran and said the leaks could be coming from a “significant security breach” or officials leaking the information.

Two days after that letter was sent, Semafor published a lengthy exposé on Tehran’s Iran Experts Initiative, which the outlet described as an effort to cultivate connections with academics or researchers in America to influence policy decisions. Semafor notes at least two individuals on the IEI list became top advisers in the Biden administration.