U.S. President Donald Trump revealed highly confidential and unimaginably sensitive intelligence information to Russian officials during a White House meeting, The Washington Post reports.
In particular, Trump boasted to Russian officials about having the details on a specific kind of terror attack being planned by
Islamic State, and he even told them from which IS-held city that threat was detected.
There are grave fears that disclosure could directly jeopardise the source of the information, along with broader concerns that the intelligence partner could withhold further details for fear of them being unduly disclosed.
The results of that could be significant: if the United States loses access to that intelligence, its citizens and armed forces could be placed in serious danger.
The paper reports the details that Trump shared with the Russian officials are so confidential that they’ve even been withheld from allies of the United States, and are tightly controlled within the U.S. government.
When pressed on the disclosure, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said “at no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed.” Even if that is true, the actual information that source obtained was still shared.
After the discussion, a White House official tried to have official transcripts of the conversation stripped of the compromising information. One official went on to describe the info as
“code-word information,” to give you an even clearer idea of how big of a deal this is.
FWIW, The Washington Post itself claims to have further details of the discussion, but has taken the stunning move not to publish them “at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.”
This isn’t even delving into the ongoing saga of Trump’s questionable Russian ties. One of the officials he spoke to,
Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, is at the centre of
allegations of collusion between
Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian authorities.
It’s also worth noting that Russian journalists were admitted entry to that meeting, while American media personnel were excluded.
Watch this space.
