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President Donald Trump disclosed highly classified information to Russia's foreign minister about a planned Islamic State operation, two U.S. officials said on Monday, plunging the White House into another controversy just months into Trump's short tenure in office.
The intelligence, shared at a meeting last week with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, was supplied by a U.S. ally in the fight against the militant group, both officials with knowledge of the situation said.
The White House declared the allegations, first reported by the Washington Post, incorrect.
[...] One of the officials said the intelligence discussed by Trump in his meeting with Lavrov was classified "Top Secret" and held in a secure "compartment" to which only a handful of intelligence officials have access.
After Trump's disclosure of the information, which one of the officials described as spontaneous, officials immediately called the CIA and the National Security Agency, both of which have agreements with a number of allied intelligence services around the world, and informed them what had happened.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-idUSKCN18B2MX
Also at The Washington Post and The New York Times.
[Update.] According to Ars Technica, President Trump then proceeded to Tweet information about this meeting:
Statements from President Trump on Twitter and from White House National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster did not directly contradict details initially reported by the Washington Post late on Monday. McMaster said that no sources or methods were exposed in the conversation. However, the unnamed officials cited in the Post report were concerned that Trump's citing of the exact location "in the Islamic State’s territory where the US intelligence partner detected the threat" could expose the source. Tuesday morning, Trump tweeted:
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....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017
...to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017
Trump also lashed out at the intelligence community for leaking about his actions:
I have been asking Director Comey & others, from the beginning of my administration, to find the LEAKERS in the intelligence community.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017
(Score: 3, Insightful) by garrulus on Wednesday May 17 2017, @11:51AM (22 children)
He basically has immunity and can single handedly declassify info on the fly.
But it's irrelevant since he never leaked anything according to witnesses.
(Score: 5, Touché) by c0lo on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:04PM (2 children)
So little trust in your President!
When it comes to disclosing confidential info to the Russians, who should you trust: the witnesses (who said he didn't) or the President himself (who admitted on Twitter he did)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:26PM (1 child)
on Twitter
The stuff he says on twitter is smoke he's blowing up the media's ass. Same deal with the press briefings. He's taking them on a wild ride and they are too dumb and docile to care or realize.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Demose on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:54PM
He tried to blackmail a witness on twitter as well. Is being charged with witness tampering just another part of his masterful plan for 238d Super-Mega-Jenga? It's unfortunate then that he's playing politics instead, the strategies don't really translate all that well.
(Score: 3, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:55PM (8 children)
Close to the real story.
First of all we spy on each other so what we know, the Chinese and Russians probably know because they're spying. I suspect nobody learned anything.
The second truth is I've been involved in joint military things (nothing exciting) but I can assure you if some visiting Central American soldier wants to know when we break for lunch, it never went up to his prez, to our prez and back down again. We just did it, just kinda talked it over. I am willing to guess this isn't the first time in the last two decades that someone in the USA talked to someone in Russia about ISIS, LOL.
The above implies the real story isn't that we told the Russians something about ISIS, its that in public, every heavily manipulated lefty journalist is screaming at the top of their lungs that at the highest levels the USA and Russia are working together against ISIS, which is an interesting signal to send to ISIS and Israel. Obviously Israel is freaking out about that and they don't like it, but F them, America first, Israel second (or even later?).
Remember that Trump controls the lefty press post-election almost as well as Hillary and the DNC controlled the press before the election. When Trump wants to send a public message to ISIS and Israel, he doesn't issue a press release that gets ignored like an old fashioned neo-cuck republican from the old days, Trump uses his mind control powers to get ten thousand insane legacy media journalists to absolutely scream and bellow whatever message he wants to send. Its kinda like using a cannon to swat a mosquito but whatever.
Oh you didn't get the memo about the new TPS report headers? Let me get ten thousand angry left wing journalists to scream at the top of their lungs for days about the TPS report header changes, just so you'll notice, ha know.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:06PM (3 children)
I'm not quite following you. USA and Russia working together sends a strong signal to ISIS, but why Israel? Israel doesn't like Assad, but they don't like ISIS either. An Islamic State on their border is as bad or worse than an Assad-controlled Syria.
Unless you're implying Trump is using it to gain leverage over Israel in peace talks with the Palestinians?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday May 17 2017, @02:46PM (2 children)
A destabilized Syria is a Syria not interested in re-enacting the events of '67 or '73. Or however unlikely it was before destabilization, the less likely after, in addition to more time.
Of course a destabilized enough state leads to terror attacks in Europe and USA so what benefits Israel does not benefit the west in that sense.
Also historically "everyone" in the freaking middle east has played the cold war game of playing the Americans off against the Russians for decades, so shaking hands and working together on ISIS is super-destabilizing.
Its interesting to think Saudi Arabia is pretty close to falling due to the end of oil production, and after that happens other than politics there is no longer a strategic US interest in the middle east. It'll be Iran as a regional power and its Shia buddies in Syria vs the rest of the middle east plus or minus Russia. Then if it does turn out to be Russia vs Iran, our strategic ally for whatever interference we're still involved in, will be Iran and that'll be strange bedfellows. Won't that be interesting to watch unfold.
This is why the neocons are pounding for attacking Syria and preferably Iran, because either we beat them today and Israel rules them and tell us what to do as we oppose Russia, or we ally with Iran and Syria against Russia and Israel can pound sand until they send us some oil. Essentially we have to have a war with Syria and Iran like yesterday if possible or else the middlemen are about to get squeezed out of the picture, and since they totally control the media and banking industries this will be messy.
Then there's the bigger picture puzzle of we have a worldwide naval dominance trading empire (Today we're kinda like England in about 1914) and we had to oppose the land-locked empire on the other side of the planet because "they formenting communist rebellion" but US vs Russia is really an Athens vs Sparta thing. But they gave up on communism decades ago and the only commies left are now in charge of USA media and academia in general. So we're pretty close to washing our hands of the whole thing and "have fun with your land empire on the other side of the planet". Once the oil's gone, once China does its impression of their own great depression, the middle east and the other side of the planet is only as important as something like the Crimea so "eh".
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @09:03PM (1 child)
OK, so bad for Israel in the sense that they could lose control of their all-important client state, the US? Maybe. But didn't they already blow all their chits on the Saddam takedown? I don't think they can drag America into Iran at this point, as much as it seems they have been successful in preventing the take-down the much more deserving Kim Jong-Un. That guy is testing nuclear weapons and ICBMs both.
Academia is the last redoubt of the red diaper babies, but it's strange to hear the media called commies. They're all owned by giant media conglomerates, and surely they have no interest in collectivization.
I wonder that, too. Will empires still be needed when we all produce our energy locally and decide we all have enough plastic crap from China to last us several lifetimes?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:56AM
The media houses are owned by conglomerates, and the conglomerates only look at their Excel sheet. Academia drives the indoctrination and many of the young, gullible and not-very-intelligent kind of people end up doing journalism.
Power is not a necessity for most people, it is a goal in itself. Never underestimate the lengths of politics a person is willing to do, to gather more power.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:32PM
It would be gratifying to see that substantiated. But I'm not hopeful. I kept waiting for proof of the 10-dimensional chess fellow progressives kept promising Obama was playing, the rope-a-dope he was putting the Republicans through, and it turned out he was yet another Deep State toady; the real rope-a-dope had been run on America. Again.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 17 2017, @02:33PM (1 child)
So, exactly what message does accidentally telling the Russians state secrets send?
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday May 17 2017, @03:34PM
Only accidental in a journalist fake news sense.
Historically everyone in the middle east has been playing the Russians and USA off against each other for generations. Now at the very highest levels in the most public way imaginable, admittedly completely symbolically, we're working together. That's new and pretty interesting.
You have to realize that it was only a generation ago we were making Rambo movies about actual CIA activities of arming Afghanis to attack the Russian invaders. Thats one of those movies that was like "eh" for its first decades of existence and got really trippy after the turn of the century. I'm told by boomers that likewise I'll never understand Dr Strangelove movie because I was too young when the cold war "officially" ended. There was a time when that weird Rambo movie was just late night filler on independent syndication TV channels, I donno late 80s or so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @06:07PM
The above implies the real story isn't that we told the Russians something about ISIS, its that in public, every heavily manipulated lefty journalist is screaming at the top of their lungs that at the highest levels the USA and Russia are working together against ISIS
Nice straw man you put up there to attack.
You don't know what information that President Trump told, and I don't either. It could be something as banal as "ISIS wants to attack the US." If this is the case, it very much would be the case of the media making a mountain out of a molehill.
On the other hand, it could be something like, "ISIS is planning on bombing Flight UA1234 on May 16 at 2:25PM using an Lenovo Laptop" which only 3 people know about... 1 of whom was an informer to the UK/Israel/France/Argentina/wherever, and whose life will suddenly become very uncomfortable. Even worse, everybody will see how that person disappeared and think twice about approaching foreign intelligence services when the next plot of "bomb the Vatican and kill hundreds of innocents" would otherwise have caused them to have second thoughts.
There is a reason why intelligence professionals are very careful about what they disclose and how. For a President to cavalierly disclose classified information is irresponsible in the extreme. What happens in schools is equally true here: those who can't keep a secret quickly find out that their classmates stop telling them secrets.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:57PM (1 child)
But it's irrelevant since he never leaked anything according to witnesses.
Are you kidding?
The head of the National Security Council, General McMaster, who was in the room when it happened, literally said:
"The president wasn’t even aware of where this information came from. He wasn’t briefed on the source."
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/333611-mcmaster-trumps-conversations-with-russians-wholly-appropriate [thehill.com]
That is a straight-up admission that the information was classified.
Yeah, he's the president so he can arbitrarily declassifiy anything he wants.
That doesn't make it legitimate. He still has an oath of office to up hold and being a blabbermouth fails the part about "faithfully executing the Office of President of the United States"
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:11AM
Yeah, he's the president so he can arbitrarily declassifiy anything he wants.
That doesn't make it legitimate. He still has an oath of office to up hold and being a blabbermouth fails the part about "faithfully executing the Office of President of the United States"
This. He has that authority because he's presumed to know what the hell he's doing. You could replace "declassifying information" with "pardoning the Unabomber" without changing the meaning.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:37PM (1 child)
Use of the Spam mod here is not correct.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 17 2017, @03:15PM
Handled.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday May 17 2017, @02:46PM (5 children)
Trump can leak whatever he wants. What could possibly go wrong?
Trump can even pardon himself, his family, friends, etc. Donald Trump claimed [snopes.com] he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and not "lose any voters."
BANG !!! Oops. Pardon me. I pardon myself.
BANG BANG !!! Oh, pardon myself again!
BANG !! Oh my, pardon me.
I wonder if that would be any worse than Nixon or Trump impeding an investigation by firing the person in charge of the investigation. And pretending the investigation does not exist three times. (the magical number of times to charm it into being so) Or asking the director of the FBI to make another investigation go away so it doesn't splash back on the administration.
It would be so much simpler to have a dear leader with absolute power. That would make all this inconvenient controversy just go away. Everyone would worship the dear leader. These late night comedy shows would be silenced. As God intended.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:45PM (1 child)
The one person Trump cannot pardon is himself.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 17 2017, @05:08PM
It may be illegal for Trump to pardon himself.
But he can pardon himself for pardoning himself.
Or try this: suppose the exception handler could re-throw an exception -- but from the context of being within the block that it catches exceptions from. This could work as a looping construct if recursion were to become a problem.
Trump isn't trying to obstruct justice. He's just trying to put a stop to it. And who can blame him.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday May 17 2017, @07:26PM (2 children)
> It would be so much simpler to have a dear leader with absolute power.
"As long as he is MY guy! With absolute power, he could finally protect my freedoms and my agenda against those evil other guys!"
- Both halves of the US
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 17 2017, @09:10PM
The polar extremes are probably the enemy of us all.
We all basically want a lot of the same things.
We shouldn't have too much regulation, but nor should we have too little. I want a corporation to be able to make money and jobs, but I don't want them legally able to sneak into my house in the night and harvest my organs because "we can't regulate corporate behavior". That thinking got use Enron. Worldcom.
We must have taxes in order to have government services we all want. But how much should we reasonably tax, and where should government end?
But then we get into thorny issues like states trying to put creation into the science curriculum. Or whether someone who is going to get an abortion no matter what, should be able to get one that is safe and legal. Or whether gay people should be discriminated against. We're probably not going to get all people to come to some reasonable agreement, sadly.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:09AM
You're reminding me of Tom and Ray Magliozzi who would speak of the third half of the show. [google.com]
In the last election, the numbers were very interesting. [heavy.com]
Eligible to vote - 231,556,622
Didn’t Vote - 96,421,324 (41.6 percent)
So, "None of the above" outdrew everybody on the ballot.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]