Loose Lips Sink Ships--and Spies
On This Day In 2019
One reason highly-classified data about a foreign entity is so sensitive is that if you learn the secret info, you can often ascertain who provided it. And if that person’s identity becomes apparent, their life can become endangered.
Remember when Trump gave our classified data to top Russians ministers right there in the Oval Office? Well, the fallout from that disaster seemingly continued to ripple.
OTDI 2019 it was widely reported that the U.S. was forced to extract a high-level intelligence operative from Russia because his identity had been compromised.
The NYT reported the spy had been sending information from Russia for decades. At times, his data was so sensitive that it was kept out of the President’s Daily Brief, for fear that even that ultra-secret document could be leaked. Most recently he had disclosed info about Putin's scheme to boost Trump in the 2016 election.
In its exclusive report, CNN noted: “The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.”
It's not that Trump directly endangered this spy in this case, it's that that meeting indicated Trump is a national security threat and can't be trusted with such critical info. So, the CIA had to extract the spy before more damage could be done. As the NYT reported: “We have a president who, unlike any other president in modern history, is willing to use sensitive, classified intelligence however he sees fit,” said Steven L. Hall, a former C.I.A. official who led the agency’s Russia operations. “He does it in front of our adversaries. He does it by tweet. We are in uncharted waters.”
So the CIA lost a valuable asset, Washington lost its unique insight into the Kremlin, and the U.S. became less secure.
Extract more
Business Insider details the extraction
CNN has more details
The New York Times reported about the operative