Ex-US intel chief: Trump leaks have a ‘corrosive effect’
US President Donald Trump’s sharing of Israeli intelligence with Russia without prior coordination “has an erosive and corrosive effect” on global data sharing with Washington, a former US intelligence chief told The Jerusalem Post. said in a telephone interview
“I am not surprised that [Israel’s] intelligence officials were appalled by it. There have been similar reactions from other countries as well,” Former Defense Intelligence Agency chief and CIA veteran David Shedd said in a telephone interview after ex Mossad chiefs urged Israel to temporarily freeze intelligence sharing with Washington after the leak.
Shedd gives Trump a range of minuses but also some pluses in intelligence and national security. He noted how England had also recently frozen intelligence-sharing after a US official revealed classified British intelligence. The former defense intelligence chief voiced the concerns of foreign allies, saying they might ask, “Is this a person who can be trusted with sources and methods? Hopefully a little further down that path the answer becomes ‘yes’.
“The currency of the realm is trust… My sense is [allies like Israel] may be more apprehensive about future sharing things that are that sensitive,” since “inadvertently the president or someone else may release [information] about sources” who would then be in “great peril,” Shedd said.
Noting that “these are very difficult sources to acquire,” Shedd added that “losing them is not just potentially fatal to the source, but very serious,” regardless of the fact that Trump did not technically break any US laws.
Moving on to the recent Syria cease-fire deal Trump cut with Russia – which Israel has opposed, based on concerns it could leave a volatile Iran-Hezbollah-Russia mix on the Golan frontier, Shedd said: “I share Israel’s concerns, full stop.”
Shedd said “the cease-fire is an exhibit of something broader than I am very deeply concerned about…a reproach with Russia, which by extension would include Iran.”
He said the deal is “an outcome of the status quo…You are laying the foundational work for the partition of Syria. That the price for peace in our time is an appeasement of a Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah presence...that to me is a terrible and horrible outcome for Syria and for Israel’s security.”
Trump’s current deal would “give Russia a permanent foothold in Syria – a dream come true, which goes back all the way to the days of [former prime minister Yevgeny] Primakov’s interest in the Middle East…Putin is a winner. Iran comes out as a winner…It is a tempting outcome for bringing a so-called peace…but it is a terrible outcome.”
Shedd also shared Israel’s concerns about Trump’s recent misstatements that Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his Sunni bloc are on the frontlines fighting Hezbollah. In fact, Hezbollah is the dominant partner in Hariri’s “unity” government.
Trump’s misstatements about Hezbollah in Lebanon are similar to those he has made about the Colombia-Venezuela relationship and drug-trafficking, Shedd said.
“The absence of details in understanding these kinds of issues and the proclivity to talk before understanding…is a case in point,” he said. “I would be the first to say that the president is not endorsing Hezbollah in any shape, way or form. I don’t think he understood that they are fully in the government. That is how Lebanon holds itself together currently, but