Loose lips sink ships. Or, in the case of Donald Trump, an American spy.
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CNN is reporting that the US was forced to extract one of its highest-level covert operatives from inside the Russian government during a 2017 secret mission. The reason? US officials feared that Donald Trump had mishandled classified intelligence and would (if he had not already) foolishly expose the operative as a spy.
During a May 2017 Oval Office meeting, Trump foolishly revealed highly classified intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak. Later, during the G20 summit in Hamburg, Trump kicked all of his foreign policy experts out of the room and decided to meet one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the end of that meeting, he inexplicably confiscated the interpreter’s notes, prompting intelligence officials to believe that Trump had improperly discussed classified intelligence with Putin.
Allowing Russian officials inside the Oval Office at all was Trump’s first mistake. Kicking career intelligence officials out of the room then blabbing classified intelligence to Putin in order to bolster his own self-importance was the last straw. Fortunately, intelligence officials were quick to conclude that the potential risk of exposure to the spy and the covert operation had been compromised by Trump and that his/her immediate extraction was a matter of life or death.
In a surprise admission by an unnamed Oval Office insider, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo warned other senior administration officials that Trump had revealed too much information about the covert source, who was known as a vital asset. His/her “exfiltration” (as such an operation is referred to by intelligence officials) was considered an extraordinary but extremely necessary step by US intelligence officials who believed the spy was in imminent danger.
According to CNN, the spy was regarded as the highest level source for the US inside the Kremlin and high up in the national security infrastructure. In fact, the spy had even worked his/her way up to direct access to Putin and was able to provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.
In the words of one White House source, there was “no equal alternative” inside the Russian government, providing both insight and information on Putin.
“It is so hard to develop sources like that in any denied area, particularly Russia, because the surveillance and security there is so stringent,” a former Trump senior intelligence official said. “You can’t reacquire a capability like that overnight.”
And so, thanks to Donald Trump and his braggadocious and pompous personality, the time, the money, and the effort it took to work the covert operative deep inside the Russian government has been ruined.
Oh well… back to square one.
Politico Reader:
Two separate cluster flunks in democratic countries; Boris in UK and Dump in good-ol USA. After the Bush Great Recession we implemented stress tests for BIG Wall Street banks. Think of this critical time in history as a stress test for democracy. […]