Trump fed Russia intel from Israel
The Israeli government gave the United States the classified intelligence that President Trump shared with two Russian officials in a meeting last week, multiple reports said Tuesday.
Two Israeli intelligence officials said sharing sensitive information with the Russians about an ISIS terror plot to smuggle explosive laptops onto planes was a serious cause for concern.
“To know that this intelligence is shared with others, without our prior knowledge? That is, for us, our worst fears confirmed,” one intelligence officer told Buzzfeed, speaking of the revelation that Trump had passed along the info to Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador.
The life of an Israeli spy working undercover inside ISIS is now in jeopardy, current and former US officials told ABC News.
The spy’s information was viewed as so reliable that the US is now considering banning laptops on flights from Europe to America.
US media were the first to identify Israel as the source of the classified intelligence.
In a statement to The New York Times, Israel’s US Ambassador Ron Dermer said the incident would not damage the two countries’ relationship.
“Israel has full confidence in our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and looks forward to deepening that relationship in the years ahead under President Trump,” Dermer said, without confirming that Israel was the source.
After calling the story “false” the previous night, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster defended the disclosure Tuesday, saying nothing inappropriate had been revealed.
“In the context of that discussion, what the president discussed with the foreign minister was wholly appropriate to that conversation and is consistent with the routine sharing of information between the president and any leaders with whom he’s engaged,” said McMaster, who was at the Oval Office meeting.
Trump didn’t even know where the information about the ISIS threat came from or how it was obtained, McMaster said. He would not say whether the information was classified or not.
The White House alerted the NSA and CIA about the disclosure only “out of an overabundance of caution,” McMaster added.
Trump defended himself on Twitter, saying, “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.”