Now Reading
NY Times Just Revealed Which Ally Trump Compromised By Sharing Intel With Russia

NY Times Just Revealed Which Ally Trump Compromised By Sharing Intel With Russia

The sensitive security information about a mole in the inner circle of Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) that President Trump inappropriately shared with the Russian foreign minister and the ambassador has the potential to severely damage one of the U.S.’s most important intelligence-gathering relationships.

The source of the information was Israel, according to the New York Times, which is known to have one of the best intelligence gathering operations in the world and one of our closest allies.

Since 2008, the U.S. and Israel have had an intelligence gathering agreement which includes sharing the names of sources and how intelligence was gathered.

“The revelation that Mr. Trump boasted about some of Israel’s most sensitive information to the Russians could damage the relationship between the two countries,” reported the New York Times. “It also raises the possibility that the information could be passed on to Iran, Russia’s close ally and Israel’s main threat in the Middle East,”

The fear is what Russia may do with the information. Since Russia has its own extensive intelligence gathering system, even a small bit of information, when married to what they already know, can have huge consequences.

There has been a concern by Israel about Trump since last year when Israeli intelligence told its U.S. counterpart it had credible evidence Russia was interfering with the American presidential election in January.

When Trump was inaugurated, Obama administration officials went out of their way to warn our allies – particularly Israel – that Trump could not be trusted with top secret intelligence because of his close relationship with the Russians and his penchant for blurting things out.

“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.

[US] Officials said he divulged sensitive information about an Islamic State militant group (ISIS) plot relating to aviation security that a key ally had secured,” reports Newsweek, “without the consent of that ally.”

Quoting the Israeli publication Yedioth, Newsweek adds: “Israeli intelligence officials feared that its famous Mossad secret service would have its most sensitive methods and operations breached, potentially falling into the hands of the Iranian regime.”

On January 14, 2017, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported: “American intelligence officials expressed despair at the election of Trump during a recent meeting with their Isreali counterparts, {investigative journalist Ronen] Bergman reported. They said that they believe that Putin had ‘leverages of pressure’ over Trump.”

While Israel and the U.S. downplayed the incident in public, there are reasons to believe it is having a great impact behind the scenes.

It’s going to impact trust issues that have already been negatively affected by Trump,” Miriam Goldman, an analyst at the Middle East-based security consultancy LeBec International told Newsweek. “I think there’s going to be a lot of internal questioning about whether or not sharing information with the U.S. can continue.”

There is also great concern in Congress. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that after this incident other countries “could decide it can’t trust the United States with information, or worse, that it can’t trust the president of the United States with information.”

Trump may think he can do what he wants, say what he wants, and get away with it, but his willful betrayal of our allies raises grave issues for the United States at a time when our country needs all the friends and solid intelligence it can get to counter an ever-growing number of threats on the ground, around the world and in cyberspace.

Our so-called President seems to be doing everything he can to dig the United States into a deeper hole.

 

 

 

 

Benjamin Locke

© 2022 Occupy Democrats. All Rights Reserved.

Scroll To Top