Trump Revealed Classified Information to Russian Foreign Minister - WashPo

[Felya]

Lol..Do you guys even listen to yourself. You guys have made a career out of "conspiracy theories". For past 8 years, nuttiest theories one could imagine. I bet your "gang of like minded ones" is discussing one right now wherever you live.

Yes, he does. The reason all the news is fake and why Trump is just being attacked by opposition party, is becaus they have been waiting for shit like Obama's FEMA camps and his birth certificate for 8 years. In their disappointment, they believe that now it's just the other side doing what they have been. The reason this is fake, is the same reason he spread and defended all the conspiracy against even John Kerry... in 2016... The problem they are ignoring, even Ann Coultor has been saying her support for Trump is nearly gone...

Ann Coulter is now just another liberal sour over Hillary's loss, just like McCain and all of the conservative publications that refused to endorse Trump. It's as if Trump being one of the worst two candidates in history, wasn't something they were agreeing with before the election. But, now that he won the seat to be the worst candidate in history to win the presidency, we are to ignore the very thing that made him so bad, as a machination of his opponents. Even though both his support and opponents agreed before the election that the winner between the two worst candidates, would be the worst candidate to ever be president... this is why...

[javen]

You're right in that he tends to speak of everything and hide nothing. That was one of the reasons he was elected though, he's not a politician who masks true intent behind the slithering rhetoric of a snake. So yes, in this instance, that may be a weakness. I would say it'd be prudent for his staff around him to better control that information coming out. However, I would feel more safe if our government officials was alerting the public to such threats instead of hiding that information.

No, he hides a LOT, about himself. The information he shares is regarding things he has no understanding of, so he is unable to discern the potential consequences of sharing that information. But regarding things he DOES understand, such as what would happen were he to share his tax returns, he is much less forthcoming.

[Breccia]

I thought China was our #1 adversary. Or was that NK? It keeps changing all the time.

Yeah, it was that Mexican gang PG-13 that one time.

[Skroe]

http://www.newsweek.com/us-officials...l-trump-609782

"U.S. intelligence officials reportedly warned their Israeli counterparts to exert caution in sharing top secret information with Donald Trump’s administration for fear of it being passed to Russia and then to Moscow’s ally and Israel’s arch-enemy, Iran."

Our president, ladies and gentlemen.

Not surprising. It's worth sharing this story again from February.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/spies-k...ump-1487209351

US Intelligence agencies are operating under the assumption that whatever lands in the White House staff's hands will end up in Russia's hands.

[Rukh]

Russia is much more aggressive internationally right now than China, and China doesn't have a nuclear parity with the US. Russia has numerically one.

China's a larger problem over the course of the century - really after 2030. Russia is a more short term, but more dangerous issue in the now.

- - - Updated - - -



Russia today, China 15-20 years from now.

I think we'll see that adversary take a much different form than 20th century proxy war. China does of course, like any sane country, build their military defense, but they also seem much more interested in winning the game of economic politics and building a network of allies through Africa and even South America that will allow them to compete with US interests on economic grounds instead. So far, we might even find that our goals are not totally out of alignment and we don't actually end up adversaries at all. But if we do, we might find them very hard to dislodge. Not because of a tough military, but because other countries will have their economic interests and political interests in mind.

[Uzkin]

You do know that we have an enemy without a nation, that excuse US to go anywhere we want? Why does US need Russia to spend the defense budget in, when we have terrorism to blame everything on. While Trump is scaring everyone with terrorism, you think Russia is needed to justify a military budget? WTF? You do realize that Trump's budget included a segnificant boost to military, without him agreeing that Russia is a threat? Your conspiracy theory makes 0 sense...

Aww, how sweet. However, the stealth fighters, stealth bombers, stealth destroyers, missile shields, digital launchers, laser missile-defense systems, early-warning systems, railguns, and all that sh*t aren't being developed and deployed in order to fight some middle-east terrorists and their assault rifles. Ask Skroe if you don't believe me. In order to justify this, the army needs a more advanced enemy (even if an imaginary one).

[javen]

It gives information about location of the plot, not the source of this information (which can be quite removed from actual plot location).

Suddenly remembers multiple scandals about CIA agents and informants being exposed due to blunders and leaks in previous administrations.
People who deal with intelligence services have to live with that threat.

In this particular case identity wasn't revealed. Any claims that revealing city reveals identity are conjecture. As do claims that Russians are interested in identifying and destroying this source.

And there were many previous scandals where identity was revealed directly. It happens. Live goes on.

It's information that our enemies didn't know we had. Now they do. That in itself is a misstep - never let the enemy know what you know. If you get a good poker hand, do you immediately tell everyone how great those two aces you just got are and how much you're going to win now that you have them? Trump apparently does.

If they know the US has the information, they know that someone must have given it to them. There's also a good chance they know who would have had that information on their side.

[Felya]

Nobody cares about your red herring.

Two people responded to that post, which is more than my average reply rate. You need a more objective definition of nobody cares... your definition seems to be stuck right before self awareness.

[Skroe]

I think we'll see that adversary take a much different form than 20th century proxy war. China does of course, like any sane country, build their military defense, but they also seem much more interested in winning the game of economic politics and building a network of allies through Africa and even South America that will allow them to compete with US interests on economic grounds instead. So far, we might even find that our goals are not totally out of alignment and we don't actually end up adversaries at all. But if we do, we might find them very hard to dislodge.

The best way at looking at the Cold War is it took the period from early 1962-1991 to roll back what the USSR had accomplished from 1945- late 1961. After 1961, the Soviet advance around the world was basically halted (though not completely) in comparison to what had happened immediately after World War II in the 1950s. The 1950s are arguably the worst period for American national security in our history except for the 1930s. Had nuclear weapons not been a thing, World War III could have easily happened in the 1960s or early 1970s. All the rationales were there.

I think with China something similar will happen. This whole Trump business and then the Russia business in the 2020s as they decline will lead to China having comparatively free-reign. And then we'll spend the next 30-40 years undoing 10-15 years of their advance.

[GennGreymane]

Seems some of bringing up the "but her emails" but with a twist

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7738651.html

[Felya]

Aww, how sweet. However, the stealth fighters, stealth bombers, stealth destroyers, missile shields, digital launchers, laser missile-defense systems, early-warning systems, railguns, and all that sh*t aren't being developed and deployed in order to fight some middle-east terrorists and their assault rifles. Ask Skroe if you don't believe me. In order to justify this, the army needs a more advanced enemy (even if an imaginary one).

US kicked out Russian spies and had a prisoner exchange in 2010. US sanctions, not military, has been successful in hurting Russian interest. The justification Trump used in increasing spending on military, was terrirism. As it has been for 16 years... you can pretend something is true all you like. But, US has done just fine in military spending, without Russia being the justification.

[Skroe]

Aww, how sweet. However, the stealth fighters, stealth bombers, stealth destroyers, missile shields, digital launchers, laser missile-defense systems, early-warning systems, railguns, and all that sh*t aren't being developed and deployed in order to fight some middle-east terrorists and their assault rifles. Ask Skroe if you don't believe me. In order to justify this, the army needs a more advanced enemy (even if an imaginary one).

We have China if we need an advanced enemy. In fact, China is driving MOST of our procurement as I stated. We don't need warships to fight Russia. But what is at the centerpiece of the coming Americans arms build-up? A Navy with 75 more warships, the biggest item on US procurement.

And what has been the US been buying since 2012? Long range anti-ship missiles of all sorts. The kind of thing we wouldn't need to take Russia to the shed.

Russia is our chief adversary today. But they are also a distraction against the more significant longer term threat. Your thesis is dead wrong for a host of reasons, but were there any inkling of truth to the basis of it, Russia wouldn't be a factor since China is the target of our most expensive spending.

All of our most advanced aircraft, weapons and ships are headed to the Pacific.

[Deleted]

Why was having a delusional celebrity as president a good idea again?

Looks like entitled Johnny and his band of lab chimps have outdone themselves this time.

[Skroe]

Seems some of bringing up the "but her emails" but with a twist

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7738651.html

I love Ana Navaro. If you want to see a principled conservative who didn't compromise their integrity and values to stand with a monster, she's one. She's a saint in this regard.

[alexw]

So these individuals were in the room?

After the incident in question happened, those in the room with Trump reported what had happened in detail to the intelligence agencies, so that they could try and contain the damage Trump had just done. Hence the leak doesn't need to come from those in the room. The number of people who know all the details goes way beyond that small number.

[Brubear]

To everyone who kept saying this was fake news and McMasters and Tillerson confirmed it that the story was false.

How 'bout them apples?

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/16/...ampaign=buffer

It never stops. It. Never. Stops. In the latest installment of the daily scandal machine that is the Trump administration, the Washington Post dropped a stunning story late Monday reporting that President Trump disclosed highly classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during their visit to the Oval Office last week.

The story was confirmed later in the evening by Reuters and the New York Times.

And it wasn’t just any classified information. This was what is known as “code-word information,” one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. The information the president reportedly passed on about a plot being hatched by the Islamic State was shared with Washington by an ally who did not authorize its distribution to anyone but a small circle in Washington. Or as one administration official said, Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

Pushback. Top administration is denying the reports. Or at least is denying something. National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster delivered a quick statement Monday saying, “I was in the room — it didn’t happen.” He added, “at no time — at no time — were intelligence sources or methods discussed, and the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a similar statement. Problem is, none of the stories claimed that sources and methods were exposed.

And then on Tuesday morning, Trump dive-bombed McMaster’s statement that “it didn’t happen,” when he took to Twitter to confirm that in fact he did share classified information with the Russians via Twitter. Trump said he has the “absolute right” to share with top Russian officials information about an Islamic State threat. McMaster is slated to brief the press in the White House Briefing Room this afternoon.

As the New York Times said, “according to the officials, Mr. Trump discussed the contents of the intelligence, not the sources and methods used to collect it. The concern is that knowledge of the information about the Islamic State plot could allow the Russians to figure out the sources and methods.” One current administration official told the paper that Trump “shared granular details of the intelligence with the Russians. Among the details the president shared was the city in Syria where the ally picked up information about the plot, though Mr. Trump is not believed to have disclosed that the intelligence came from a Middle Eastern ally or precisely how it was gathered.”

Quite a run. Over the past week, the president has stunned his own staff by abruptly firing FBI director James Comey, blown up the carefully constructed story his administration crafted to explain it by admitting he fired Comey over his work investigating possible ties between his campaign and Russia, threatened Comey while suggesting the president secretly taped their conversations, and disclosed classified information to the Russians. “It never stops,” one White House official told Politico Monday night. “Basically chaos at all times.”

According to Politico, one adviser said the Oval Office conversation was likely unstructured, and the president “doesn’t really know any boundaries. He doesn’t think in those terms,” this adviser said. “He doesn’t sometimes realize the implications of what he’s saying. I don’t think it was his intention in any way to share any classified information. He wouldn’t want to do that.”

Add this! The president leaves later this week for a swing through Saudi Arabia, Italy, and a stop in Brussels for a NATO meeting. And FP’s Robbie Gramer has exclusive details about how NATO allies are planning to deal with the unpredictable American leader.

“NATO is scrambling to tailor its upcoming meeting to avoid taxing President Donald Trump’s notoriously short attention span. The alliance is telling heads of state to limit talks to two to four minutes at a time during the discussion.” One source briefed extensively on the meeting’s preparations told FP, “it’s kind of ridiculous how they are preparing to deal with Trump,” adding, “it’s like they’re preparing to deal with a child — someone with a short attention span and mood who has no knowledge of NATO, no interest in in-depth policy issues, nothing…they’re freaking out.”

Syrian atrocities. The regime of Bashar al Assad is using a crematorium at its notoriously brutal Sednaya military prison near Damascus to secretly dispose of the bodies of thousands of prisoners it continues to execute, U.S.officials said Monday.

Acting assistant secretary of state Stuart Jones told reporters, “what we’re assessing is that if you have that level of production of mass murder, then *using the crematorium would . . . allow the regime to manage that number of corpses . . . without evidence,” and “we believe that the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of mass murders taking place in Sednaya prison.”

Welcome to SitRep. Send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

Whodunnit. Who’s behind the global ransomware pandemic that hit Windows machines this weekend? No one knows, but so far investigators are finding preliminary clues that suggest the possibility that North Korea could have had a role in the attacks. The New York Times reports that researchers at Symantec have found that the WannaCry ransomware uses tools with similar code to tools used in attacks previously attributed to North Korea, including the breach of Sony’s networks, the theft of $81 million from a Bangladesh bank. However, experts caution that the link is far from conclusive and not enough to attribute the ransomware to Pyongyang.

Espionage for hire. A cybersecurity firm trying to keep Iranian hackers out of a defense contractor’s network may have stumbled onto a Russian connection. Officials from the cybersecurity TrapX tell the New York Times that the hackers moving through an unnamed defense contractor’s network used a unique set of tools developed by a Russian hacker-for-hire. The tools were available in the cybercrime underworld, meaning that it’s possible the Iranian intruders could’ve simply downloaded and adapted them. But the hackers’ use of a server previously used in the hack of a Ukrainian power grid led defenders to believe that the Iranian hackers may have partnered with a Russian mercenary.

PsyOp texts. On the frontlines of Ukraine’s war against Russian-backed rebels, someone is bombarding the cellphones of pro-government troops with taunting and threatening text messages. The AP got a look at a number of the messages, some of the spoofed to appear as though they came from retreating fellow soldiers while others merely threatened recipients that “they’ll find your bodies when the snow melts” as artillery rained down. The messages are targeted and sent via cell site simulators, hardware designed to imitate a cell tower and trick phones in range into connecting to it.

Knockoffs. American special operators are used to training and fighting with partner forces that use Russian-made arms rather than American gear. So rather than navigate the sometimes shady international arms market to equip allies, Special Operations Command now wants to build their own kit. According to the National Interest, the command is now looking to make a copy of the Russian PKM machine gun. Interested contractors will have to secure their own drawings to see if they can reverse engineer a copy of the weapon fit for the command’s use.

Feuds. Germany and Turkey’s ongoing political feuds have escalated into a threatened German withdrawal of its forces stationed at Incirlik Air Base. Germany’s announcement that its troops participating in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State could leave Turkey follows legislation from the Turkish parliament banning a German parliamentary delegation from visiting soldiers at the base. German officials are considering a range of alternate locations for their troops, including Cyprus, Jordan, and Kuwait.

New phone, who dis? Schiller, don’t you lose that number. If you want to dial up Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis on his personal cell phone, turns out all you need to do is look closely at pictures of President Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller. An attentive reader phoned up the Washington Post to let them know that a picture the paper ran showed a yellow sticky note with a phone number and the words “Jim, Mad Dog, Mattis” attached to papers carried by Schiller. When a Post report called the number, the voicemail confirmed that it did indeed belong to Mattis.

[Beazy]

Seems some of bringing up the "but her emails" but with a twist

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7738651.html

What kind of twist? "BUT BUT HER AMAZON PRIME ACCOUNT!" twist?

[Felya]

Why was having a delusional celebrity as president a good idea again?

Looks like entitled Johnny and his band of lab chimps have outdone themselves this time.

Because the choice was between the two worst candidate choices in history. What I don't understand, is why the winner who became the worst candidate to ever win, is being defended with him expressing exactly what made him the worst, as fake news.

[Skroe]

Why was having a delusional celebrity as president a good idea again?

Looks like entitled Johnny and his band of lab chimps have outdone themselves this time.

Because a bunch of hunting-camo wearing knuckledragging losers allowed their outrage SJWs or "liberals" to override their common sense and patriotism.

One day they'll wake up and realize what they did and get their common sense back (most of them anyway). Their patriotism though? Like losing your virginity, there's no take-backs. They compromised their integrity and American values. That sticks with them the rest of their lives.

Make America Great Again My Ass.

[Nathreim]

Its fake Trump didn't share classified info.