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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: 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.