A deliberate leak to reinforce a hawkish foreign policy stance, for one thing, doesn't come out of a staff command. For another, it doesn't get disavowed by DoD

A deliberate leak to reinforce a hawkish foreign policy stance, for one thing, doesn't come out of a staff command. For another, it doesn't get disavowed by DoD in the military's official news outlet. There's a significant difference between "deniable" and "denied".