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Israel Reportedly Source Of Classified Information Leaked By Trump To Russians. Here’s Why This Severely Undermines U.S. National Security.

   DailyWire.com

The New York Times is reporting that Israel provided the United States with the classified intelligence that was allegedly leaked to the Russians during President Trump’s White House meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak last week.

“Israeli officials would not confirm that they were the source of the information that Mr. Trump shared,” notes The Times. “In a statement emailed to The New York Times, Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, reaffirmed that the two countries would maintain a close counterterrorism relationship.”

“Israel has full confidence in our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and looks forward to deepening that relationship in the years ahead under President Trump,” Mr. Dermer told The Times.

If true, Trump’s reckless disclosure may have serious implications for U.S.-Israeli intelligence sharing programs, despite what public officials and diplomats eager to save face may tell the press. It’s worth noting that the story has been independently released by CNN and The Wall Street Journal. While The Times first broke the story, The Journal said it knew that Israel was the source of the classified intel on Monday but opted not to publish the story after administration officials warned against it, presumably out of concerns for national security.

It’s still unclear what exactly Trump revealed to the Russians. At a White House press briefing, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said Tuesday, “What the president discussed with the foreign minister was wholly appropriate…”

An assembly line of administration officials came out of the woodwork, some more reluctantly than others, to discredit the original Washington Post story alleging that Trump leaked “highly classified information” to the Russians. Indeed, both Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Powell and McMaster dismissed the story as “false.”

However, not a single official has denied key details in the Post’s story, specifically the claim that Trump disclosed the city where allied spies had obtained information about ISIS’ plot to use laptops as explosive devices to carry out attacks on civil aviation.

Revealing the location of the ISIS plot-center may seem inconsequential at first, but when you consider the fact that allied spies (presumably Israeli) and intelligence units on the ground have embedded themselves within dangerous, terrorist-held territories in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere, cultivating relationships and creating networks between local peoples and regional military assets, then you start to see why Russia may have a geopolitical interest in disrupting the West’s clandestine operations, particularly in Syria where Russian client and paranoid dictator Bashar al-Assad is keen on maintaining totalitarian control of his country.

Moreover, Russian fighter pilots have been bombing U.S. allied anti-Assad and anti-ISIS forces non-stop since Vladimir Putin decided to cross former President Obama’s red-line and turn Syria into his personal playground. To make matters worse, a handful of vetted Syrian militias are marching alongside U.S. military advisors and U.S. Special Forces as well as CIA personnel.

Leaking information about the location of U.S. or allied units to the Russians (of all countries) may put the lives of Americans, Arab and Israeli allies, and other anti-terror partners at risk.

The consequences of sharing intelligence obtained by an ally, most of all Israel, to the Russians cannot be understated.

“Israel is one of the United States’ most important allies and a major intelligence collector in the Middle East. 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,” explains the Times. “It also raises the possibility that the information could be passed to Iran, Russia’s close ally and Israel’s main threat in the Middle East.”

Accordingly, if the president of the United States, the leader of the free world with the highest level of security clearance, is revealing information inappropriately, other U.S. allies may think twice about sharing intelligence out of fear that it may fall into the wrong hands. The fact is, sharing Israeli intelligence won’t just deter Mossad or Shin Bet from working closely with the American counterparts, it sets a bad precedent, period.

This will undoubtedly prompt Germany’s BND, the U.K’s MI6, France’s DGSE, and NATO’s intelligence division to reconsider intelligence-sharing programs with the United States.

And that’s just in Europe.

The U.S. relies heavily on Jordan’s omniscient mukhabarat to provide intelligence about Islamic terrorist organizations, from Al Qaeda to ISIS.

A significant portion of the CIA’s file on chief Al Qaeda operatives (many of whom have been killed by U.S. drone strikes), including the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, comes courtesy of the mukhabarat.

Finally, Israel, America’s primary ally in the Middle East, has done more to assist U.S. intelligence and anti-terror efforts than perhaps any other country in the world. From sharing military technology to directly relaying information meticulously gathered in real-time by Mossad operatives stationed in nearly every terror safe-haven and Islamist country in the region, Israel has tirelessly worked to strengthen its security cooperation with the United States. And of course, the favor has been returned many times over.

But ultimately, it comes down to trust. If Israel, Jordan, NATO, and other vital U.S. allies cannot trust Trump to speak carefully and refrain from divulging classified information to hostile anti-Western countries, then we may see a complete breakdown in intelligence-sharing programs and a loss of trust that would severely undermine U.S. national security interests.

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