Russian’s photos surprise White House
NEW YORK — The White House is facing criticism for a possible security breach after it allowed a Russian newsservice photographer into the Oval Office on Wednesday to snap photos of President Donald Trump and a pair of top Russian officials.
While the administration downplayed the threat, a senior administration official acknowledged that the White House had been misled about the role of the photographer, who actually was employed by the state-run Russian news agency Tass. The official requested anonymity.
The photographer who stood feet from Trump as he talked with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, had told the White House that he was Lavrov’s official photographer, the official said.
But he did not say that he also works for Tass. And White House officials were surprised when photos depicting an apparently jovial moment between Trump and the two Russian officials appeared online a short time after Wednesday’s meeting, the official said. There had been no plans to immediately broadcast images.
The chummy photos left some observers agog, particularly coming a day after the president fired FBI Director James Comey, who had been running the investigation into whether the Trump presidential campaign coordinated with Russian officials.
The American media never caught a glimpse of either Russian inside the White House. The domestic press pool wasn’t allowed into the Oval Office until the meeting’s conclusion, and by then both Lavrov and Kislyak were gone and, in a surprise, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was with Trump instead.
The White House defended the decision not to allow any independent press into the meeting. “We had an official photographer in the room, as did they,” spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday.
Officials dismissed any security concerns, saying that Lavrov’s entourage was screened and that the White House is routinely swept for listening devices. But experts said that the risk was real, if remote.
“Was it a good idea to let a Russian gov photographer & all their equipment into the Oval Office?” Colin Kahl, who served as former Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, tweeted.
“No, it was not,” David S. Cohen, the former deputy director of the CIA, replied.
The Kremlin has hidden bugs in sensitive U.S. facilities. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, a listening device was discovered in a conference room at the State Department.