President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said that Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.
The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.
The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump’s decision to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and National Security Agency.
“This is code-word information,†said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.â€
Let’s see him tweet his way out of this one.
Update: More from the article.
U.S. officials said that the National Security Council continues to prepare multi-page briefings for Trump to guide him through conversations with foreign leaders but that he has insisted that the guidance be distilled to a single page of bullet points, and often ignores those.
“He seems to get in the room or on the phone and just goes with it – and that has big downsides,” the second former official said. “Does he understand what’s classified and what’s not? That’s what worries me.”
It really is entirely possible he just blabbed something out loud that was in his head without understanding that it was classified.
Welcome to the New Amateur Hour of the United States of America. Where is Ted Mack or Major Bowes when you need them.
More like Gong Show.
Some days – like today, fer shoor! – I feel like an alien scout here on Earth doing research. One who came from an advanced civilization in a different solar system far, far away, who is masquerading as an American, to report on how advanced we humans are.
And after watching TV news, and interacting with Americans for the last couple of months, here would be my report:
“It does not compute. ZOINKS! Nothing here is logical. ARGLE-BARGLE-GARBLE! These creatures are stupid, ignorant, and intolerant of others – sometimes because of the shade of their external layer of fleshy skin. Sometimes because of gender. Sometimes on sexual orientation. And sometimrs, based on religion. DON’T ASK WHAT RELIGION IS! The ‘THE STOOOOOOOPID!’ MAKE IT STOP!! IT BURNS LIKE LIKE THE HEAT OF A BILLION DEATH STAR’S LASERS! And… And, because of political… MAKE IT STOP!… political positions! Like religion, don’t ask for me to explain!
WAIT!
TRUMP DID WHAT!?!?!
Even I know better than to do that!!!!
Base, I can’t wait for the recovery ship. I am self-destructing immediately.
3… 2… WTF! 1!.
ZAP! CRACKLE!! POP!!!
SPROING!!!!!
With t-RUMP, I don’t know how much longer I can keep what’s left of my sanity, after Reagan and Dumbaya got through slicin-‘n-dicin’ my brain through their Conserve-O-Matic brain-blender.
Is any more information needed to get a special prosecutor appointed and investigating Russian connections? The distinct possibility exists that Russia may have significant leverage over the Trump administration and enough influence to get the president to act as a mole for their intelligence apparatus. Sure it could just be naiveté and incompetence, but the other scenario is quite possible. Inaction when the Comey dismissal and this behavior both point to an alternative case of distinct threat to national security. Not to act promptly seems an obvious error for any elected representative and a failure to put the interest of the country ahead of partisan politics. Â
Bingo! This is exactly why Putin wanted Trump president. Trump is easily manipulated and he is no match for a sly fox like Putin. Plus he is just plain stupid. If he doesn’t know he should not reveal classified info, he has no business being president. How long can this go on before everything explodes?
Trump is an unmitigated disaster as President. I’m afraid something really bad is going to happen and removing him will be the best we can do after the fact. And it will be on the head of the GOP, who had plenty of evidence, like this latest bumble f**k, that Trump is unfit and needs to be removed.
Don’t you see? It is the Deep State smearing Trump! When he is driven from office, Breitbart will blame the CIA and FBI, and this will be the narrative that keeps the Trumpsters from ever having to say they are sorry.
I’d bet significant money that the “slip” was a case of Trump bragging about a “really great, you wouldn’t believe how great it is, source I have to fight ISIS…”
This puts the whole Hillary email “scandal” in perspective – Hillary doing dumb things with her own email server versus Trump doing really dumb things with secret information.
Pingback: Media frenzy re Trump obscures frightening national security implications
And, not to put too fine a point on it, the Fed email system has been hacked numerous times, but there is no good evidence Hillary’s ever was…
And what did the Republicans do when they got her archived materials: publish it all!
Trump should get a pass on this one. Presidents have to make difficult calls.
Suppose ISIS is threatening airplanes with laptops somehow, we keep quiet,
and ISIS destroys a Russian passenger plane. It then leaks out that we knew
of the threat.
There’s plenty to blame Trump for without this stuff. And how did this briefing to
the Russians leak?
Nick — Nobody is saying the Trump Administration shouldn’t have acted on intelligence about laptops on airplanes. Indeed, it banned laptops on airplanes flying from some countries a few weeks ago. The issue is that the intelligence Trump blabbed to the Russians (because he got rolled by Putin into giving the Russian foreign minister a photo op) came from a source (reportedly Israel) that didn’t want it shared; note also that we don’t know all of what was blabbed. The issue is, will other sources stop sharing intel with the U. S. because we can’t be trusted with it?
Usually this sort of info sharing is not done without pulling a lot of smart people together to go over the pros and cons of sharing it. There might be a good reason why some parts of the information needed to be kept from Putin; we don’t know. Trump blabbed on the spur of the moment. It’s not clear if he even realized the information was classified. This is seriously bad. He shouldn’t get a pass on it.
Trump should get a pass on this one
Not hardly…You’ve got to remember..Trump has the best words, he knows more about anything than anybody. He’s the only one who can fix our situation and is going to make us cry uncle to stop all the winning we are going to experience..
Point is: when you’ve reached the level of arrogance and delusion that Trump operates in, there is no giving of a pass..If he boasts of his excellence and superior abilities than he is bound by that same standard.
If he would humble himself and confess with his tongue that he is just the lowly big bag of shit that he is than a pass might be in order.
First of all, I don’t for a moment believe the source of the intelligence was Israel. Saudi Arabia is the chief funder of both Al Qaeda (currently using the name Jabhat Fateh al Shams in Syria) and the Islamic State.Surely both those organizations report regularly to their paymaster what they are doing. KSA wants them to concentrate on Syria and Iran, because they hope to get Trump to put U.S. boots on the ground in Iran, which will be a hundred times worse than Iraq ever was.
Anyway, this is one of the rare cases where it is true that it’s not illegal when the president does it. He’s the supreme classification authority. He is the ultimate authority to declassify any material any time he wants to. America and Russia have been cooperating (maybe reluctantly) for years in trying to prevent terrorist incidents. We are alse cooperating (maybe reluctantly) in fighting the Islamic State in Syria, although I’m not sure how enthusiastic the U.S. is about actually opposing them. The CIA certainly is sending money and weapons to clients in Syria who rather quickly pass them on to the IS. The Pentagon seems to be supporting groups who actually oppose both AQ and IS, but they seem to be more interested in establishing good relations with the Kurds. Anyway, I saw public reports months ago (March?) that we had gotten the information about bombs in laptops from a source inside IS. How is the orange shitgibbon revealing anything which our own press did not report openly already?
“First of all, I don’t for a moment believe the source of the intelligence was Israel. Saudi Arabia is the chief funder of both Al Qaeda (currently using the name Jabhat Fateh al Shams in Syria) and the Islamic State.”
Even if true, you still have a lot of missing dots there to connect why Trump was eager to share anti-Islamic State intelligence with Putin.
“Anyway, this is one of the rare cases where it is true that it’s not illegal when the president does it. He’s the supreme classification authority.”
Which is entirely beside the point. You’re missing the big picture here. The issue of Trump’s blabbing is not about its legality but what it says about Trump’s competence to be in office and the degree to which he might be compromised by stuff going on between him and Putin we don’t know about.
“How is the orange shitgibbon revealing anything which our own press did not report openly already?”
We don’t know everything that was blabbed, genius. News media have only reported on the stuff that already was public knowledge and chose to sit on the rest.