President’s loose lips drive allies to reassess intel pacts
WASHINGTON— President Donald Trump’s loose lips aren’t just causing him political trouble anymore. Now they’re putting at risk vital global intelligence sharing with allies whose spies have helped thwart terrorist attacks on the United States.
British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday issued a public rebuke of the Trump administration before meeting with him, and a senior Democratic lawmaker said the British government may have “every right to be furious.”
The flare-up was over U.S. leaks to the media about the terror network behind the deadly Manchester Arena bombing Monday night. Angered by the leaks, British police stopped passing information to U.S. counterparts.
‘Need to think twice’
Trump, who had no apparent role in the disclosures, called the leaks “deeply troubling.” But the incident follows others in which he appeared to reveal secrets, such as an Islamic State plot to blow airliners out of the sky.
The incidents include Trump allegedly telling the leader of the Philippines about the presence of two nuclear submarines off the Korean Peninsula and the disclosure of classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a May 10 meeting in the Oval Office.
“Every government looks at it and says, ‘Whoa! We need to think twice about our sharing with the government when the guy at the top seems to be so careless with information,’” said Paul R. Pillar, a 28-year CIA veteran, who is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.
‘Blurted this stuff out’
In some instances, Trump’s sharing doesn’t appear to have been a calculated move, within his right as president, but a spontaneous disclosure.
“He just seems to have blurted this stuff out,” said Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists who follows national security issues.
Trump, in Brussels for a NATO summit, called the leaks “a grave threat to our national security.
“There is no relationship we cherish more than the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom,” Trump said.
Intelligence sharing with Britain is critical “to our security and to theirs,” said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who is ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Another nation affected by Trump’s disclosures is Israel, which said it had changed its intelligencesharing protocols with the U.S. The move followed Trump’s disclosure to Lavrov that a human source in ISIS had revealed a plan to use bombs hidden in laptop computers to take down airliners. Although Trump didn’t say so, the source apparently was recruited by Israel.
Trump denied he’d mentioned Israel to Lavrov.
“Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel’ during that conversation. They were all saying I did, so you had another story wrong,” Trump told the media.