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.”
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In his meeting with Lavrov, Trump seemed to be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat. “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,” the president said, according to an official with knowledge of the exchange.
Trump went on to discuss aspects of the threat that the United States learned only through the espionage capabilities of a key partner. He did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances. Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat.
The Washington Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.
He was bragging about having "inside information," like a child who shows his friends that he has found the keys to his parent's liquor cabinet.
This is why the intelligence community should keep classified information out of Trump's hands.
The White House of course is vehemently denying this story, however Buzzfeed just confirmed it as well and is claiming that the information is even more sensitive than the Washington Post let on.
The New York Post also now has the story.
So we are now left to wonder if Donald Trump is simply too ignorant to understand the complexities of this job, and the importance of keeping classified information confidential, or whether he was selected by Vladimir Putin to provide just this kind of information to Russian operatives when asked to do so.
But remember, Hillary Clinton had a few emails that were later deemed classified on her private server, so clearly SHE was unfit for this job.
Right?
Source http://ift.tt/2qplYza
