Former Mossad head: Trump slip would be grave protocol violation,
If Monday night’s report from The Washington Post that US President Donald Trump recently revealed classified information to Russia is true, it was a “grave violation” of intelligence-sharing protocol and “could lead to harm [coming] to the source,” former Mossad director Danny Yatom told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
The Washington Post report said that Trump shared classified information with Russia last Wednesday about a terrorist attack planned by ISIS, which the US received from an ally, potentially one in the Middle East, but without that ally’s permission.
Further, the report said that Trump had revealed to Russia the city from which the information was gathered and a high level of detail about the planned attack.
Trump administration officials have not specifically denied that he discussed information about an ISIS plot to carry out a terrorist attack using a concealed bomb within a laptop on an airplane, but they have denied that he revealed any means or sources of intelligence collection.
Yatom said he did not know if the reports of giving away an ally’s information were true, “and I don’t know from where, I don’t know if it was from Israel... [but] if someone gives the US very sensitive information... it is prohibited to give the information to a third party – for sure not to Russia, which has ties with Iran and Syria.”
“If the information is sensitive, it can harm the security of the intelligence source or lead to other damage,” the former Mossad director added.
“Sometimes damage is caused from the content of the revelation, even if he did not share the methods and sources,” he added.
“The fact that you have very high-quality, sensitive intelligence can lead to revealing the source. Very few people in ISIS may know about this information. Once it is publicized, ISIS can do an investigation and find the source... or Russia could find the source,” said Yatom, which could lead to Russia preventing the source from giving further information on potential Russia-Syria operations.
This would be of concern to all US allies, including Israel, regarding intelligence sharing with the Trump administration.
An element of the story that the White House has not denied is that its staff members immediately warned US intelligence agencies after the revelation, which seems to indicate that Trump had not cleared the revelation with them or departed from agreed-upon limits of what to reveal. Not everyone agrees with Yatom. Multiple former officials, including former deputy military intelligence chief and INSS expert Brig.-Gen. (res.) Dr. Meir Elran said that the story is “not very significant [for Israel] unless the information was received from Israel, and there is no indication of that.”
Further, he said that intelligence sharing between the US and Israel “is too important, even if there are... glitches,” wherein Trump or others in the United States break some of the unwritten rules of the game.
Elran said that Israeli intelligence “always takes into account that this could happen,” but that at the end of the day “intelligence assets are national assets” and they do not get to decide how the political echelon uses their information.
Intelligence agency “gatekeepers aren’t the only ones with authority,” he said. Even if intelligence agents don’t like or agree with a decision to share intelligence, their job is to explain how sensitive the information is, they don’t have the final say, Elran stated.