The Israeli connection
This result, if true, is part of the danger of the “Trump compromised security” story.
I wonder if the NY Times cares.
Of course, if Trump did in fact leak sensitive information of that degree, Israel needs to know it (and we would need to know it, too). But if he did not, the Times may have done incalculable damage in its zeal to get Trump and publish leaks of sensitive material in order to hurt him.
Either way, trouble.
The NYT cares not in the least.
That leftist rag is no friend to Israel.
In fact, many there would celebrate Israel’s demise.
More BS. We already knew that ISIS wants to blow up a plane with a laptop.
If the EU can give Obama a Nobel Peace Prize just for being elected, they can certainly give Trump a war crimes trial for the same.
From Politico on 3/22/2017: “On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced new restrictions on electronics brought on board certain U.S.-bound flights. Passengers on planes leaving from 10 airports throughout the Middle East and North Africa will no longer be able to carry laptops or similar electronics with them into the cabin of the plane. Cellphones and smaller electronics are unaffected by the measures, but computers will have to be checked in luggage.”
Also: “Subsequent reports from CNN and The Daily Beast indicate that intelligence collected during a U.S. Special Forces raid in Yemen in January led to the restrictions. That is possible.”
Read it all:http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/whats-really-behind-trumps-laptop-ban-214943
So, we might ask where did the Israeli connection come from? The laptop bombs have been common knowledge for some time. Did Trump tell the Russians we got that intel from the Israelis to improve the bona fides of the intel? Or is that something the NYTs cooked up?
Now Putin is offering to provide a transcript of the meeting. Did the Russians get someone with a wire inside the Oval Office? 🙁 This is like spy on spy. No one is trustworthy. Everything is a hall of mirrors. Who do you believe?
This is fake news incarnate. By all accounts, even those in the original WaPo story, the sources and methods of the intelligence were not revealed by Trump or anyone in the meeting with Lavrov and his aides. The only thing the WaPo story added was that Trump told the Russians where ISIS was plotting this. Unless that city was in Israel itself, who is going to infer this came from Israeli intelligence sources?
Here is what I think happened- someone in the CIA or Homeland Security who knew the sources and methods got an account of the White House meeting, and decided to try to create a scandal by leaking something to WaPo. However, the intelligence discussed is exactly the kind of information any rational human being would want shared widely with other governments, even ones that aren’t natural allies- it is in everyone’s interest to not have commercial airliners blown out of the air. Given the nature of the intelligence, the leaker had to make it something nefarious out of it, and decided to lie and claim that Trump let the Russians know who had gathered the intelligence, but it is treacherous to make that exact claim, even anonymously. So what do you do? You try to create a narrative out of some minor detail of the meeting and claim that the source could be inferred from that minor detail. This is basically horseshit unless the city under question is in Israel, and if it were, the Israelis would have already dealt with it, so I am guessing the city is in Syria or Iraq.
Another wrinkle in this I’ve not seen discussed much:
I was in the Intelligence Community for 30 years, the last 10 of which were divided between the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (FBI) and the National Counter-Terrorism Center (DNI).
My judgement: This is a nothing burger story AT BEST !
No sources or methods revealed according to the Americans and the Russians who where in the room.
Moreover, this is exactly the kind of information that our anti-ISIS allied partners need; ( remember the Russian airliner that blew up over the Sinai less than a year ago ?) and which is routinely shared.
Finally, legally the President can and does “declassify” intelligence as needed……. they all do, and all have.
Again………… a nothing story intended to injure the President, and by extension, injure the country.
The NYT and the WAPO stand condemned, and deserve our distain.
Ann, do you seriously believe that the letting the Russians know how ISIS is trying to take down airliners is some sort of intelligence breach? No one, literally no one, has claimed that Trump told the Russians this information came from Israel- only that the revealing where ISIS was planning this could lead one to infer from where it came. However, as I wrote, who would infer the source was Israel unless the city was in Israeli territory? Note that since the leaker to WaPo has revealed it was Israel afterall, they are still withholding the name of the city. Why? I’ll answer my question- because revealing the city now would show how ridiculous the original claim about inference was- the city almost surely in Syria or Iraq.
Sadly, we hear more about this Trump “blunder” than the MSM covered about the Iranian scientist, Amiri, who some claimed was killed because of Hillary’s email server being hacked.
So, no, this is nothing more than more fake news from the liberal media establishment trying to take out the guy who beat their chosen “princess”
The indispensable Andy McCarthy on Dem hypocrisy and hyperventilating:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447682/trump-shared-classified-information-russia-obama-iran-hillary-clinton-email
“Trump’s reported blunder with the Russians is no worse than the record of the Obama administration in such matters. For Democrats, there is nothing like having the media and the intelligence bureaucracy on the team.
…
When Osama bin Laden was killed, President Obama was not content to explain that fact to the American people. His administration gratuitously disclosed that the raid on the al-Qaeda emir’s compound in Pakistan produced a “trove” of actionable intelligence. From a national-security standpoint, this political grandstanding was a foolish: It gave al-Qaeda operatives a heads-up that their cells and activities had likely been exposed, providing them the opportunity to disappear before our forces could roll them up.
And then there is the Obama administration’s leak disclosing (to the Washington Post) General Michael Flynn’s conversations with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. This was done with obvious malevolence to hurt Flynn and Trump (who had named Flynn national-security adviser). The beneficiary, however, was Russia. It received valuable information that its ambassador was under surveillance and that whatever countermeasures the Kremlin’s intelligence services had been taking had failed. This is apt to make Russian operatives more difficult to monitor in the future.
…
And what of the to-and-fro over Obama’s coveted Iran nuclear deal? Is it necessary to remind Democrats that Obama entered secret side deals with the “death to America” regime that were withheld from Congress and the American people? That was not an instance of what Trump was apparently doing – sharing some intel with a hostile government in the (probably naé¯ve) hope of getting cooperation from that government against a common enemy. Obama was actually partnering with a hostile regime through arrangements that were against American interests and that promoted Iranian interests.
…
How about Secretary “Extremely Careless” herself, Hillary Clinton? If she had done the same thing Trump did, the media wouldn’t be saying she was grossly negligent in handling top-secret information. We’d be hearing, instead, that what she did was fine because it was communicated in a high-level diplomatic exchange – and that it’s not like she handed the Russians a document that was “marked classified.” Or more likely, we would be hearing nothing at all about her conversation with the Russians, because “current and former intelligence officials” would not be leaking to the Washington Post. You should read the FBI reports of interviews with Mrs. Clinton’s former State Department staffers sometime. In explaining their actions, in the context of an investigation about the mishandling – the serial mishandling – of classified information, one of the themes that comes through is: Statecraft involves a lot of exchanges of sensitive information with foreign governments; sometimes tough calls about transmitting information have to be made in the heat of the moment, and it’s not always practical to weigh carefully the need to safeguard information against the imperative of getting it into the right hands promptly.
…
When Democrats mishandle classified information, they are earnest progressives who understandably suffer the occasional lapse while struggling to make the international community a better place. When Republicans do it, they are incompetent morons. I’m not suggesting that Trump be cut slack. This seems like it could be a serious error, and one that was easily avoidable. But after a couple of years of hearing the Iran deal and Mrs. Clinton’s homebrew server explained away, I’m just wondering when the media suddenly got so interested again in harmful White House dealings with hostile powers and the proper safeguarding of classified information.”
* * *
When McCarthy gets worried about Trump, then I’ll get worried about Trump.
Seriously, I’ve sometimes wondered if there aren’t foreign spies in the Deep State Cellars that are deliberately taking advantages of the openings given to them to get information to their handlers IN THE OPEN through the MSM’s credulity (if not complicity).
AesopFan
Well, I don’t recall anyone speculating that Trump was a national security risk when he said this:
So I think Mr. McCarthy’s outrage is fake. Trump putting an Israeli spy’s life at risk is a serious blunder. Shame on him for minimizing it.
We don’t know that it was the Obama Admin, do we?
Alan Dershowitz weighs in:
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/op-ed/articles/2017-05-16/leakers-made-donald-trumps-transgression-with-russia-worse?src=usn_tw
“There can be little doubt, therefore, that the leak and publication of the Trump disclosures to the Russians may have caused more damage to our national security than the Trump disclosures alone had they remained secret. This reality raises fundamental questions about the costs and benefits of leaking and publishing leaks.
There is , of course, a major difference between leaking and publishing. The people who leaked the story to the Washington Post committed a serious crime. They may regard what they did as civil disobedience for a higher purpose, but leaking classified or secret information is a crime. Publishing it is not, because the First Amendment protects the publication of leaked material even it is classified.
That doesn’t mean the Post was right in publishing it. Reasonable people might disagree about that. The benefits to democracy from disclosing the malfeasance of our president must be balanced against the additional damage to our national security from telling the world about that malfeasance.”
Always worth it to RTWT from Mr. D.
Manju Says:
May 17th, 2017 at 10:22 pm
No one knew it was an Israeli spy – possibly, even the Russians — until the media published that little tidbit.
* that’s a reply to Manju, not a quote.
Did the Russians get someone with a wire inside the Oval Office? 🙠This is like spy on spy. No one is trustworthy. Everything is a hall of mirrors. Who do you believe?
Funny.. When it’s not on the table it’s ignored to the point it didn’t exist, then suddenly, it’s real and it’s too close to home, and because it’s now on the table no one knows or can easily incorporate into things what’s actually been going on for ages. Not hard to get that once they dropped the cold war, monkey, technology, and more flooded out to them. And overall spying, and interference generally increased to levels higher than the cold war… Heck, during this period the anti communist laws removed, and now new law allowing communists to hold office.
I seem to recollect mentioning Jesus angletons smoke and mirrors and what defectors said, etc…
When you fall off the boat, learning how to swim before you hit the water doesn’t work well.
All kind of things that should have remained hidden seen to be appearing…
AesopFan,
I understand this.
Trump put an Israeli spy at risk by virtue of what he revealed to the Russians. The NYTime (maybe WaPo) compounded that problem by revealing it to everyone else.
I wasn’t addressing this issue. I was addressing you and Andy McCarthy minimizing the seriousness of putting an Israeli spy at risk.
Manju:
One problem with what you’re saying is that every single person who was present at that meeting with the Russians says that Trump revealed nothing of the sort, and that the report saying he did is incorrect.
The war on Trump risks a lot more than revealing intelligence assets. Obama and Biden did that with the Pakistani doctor who is still in prison in Pakistan. The war on Trump risks complete chaos in the American government. It even appears that this is the intent.
Pardon me for laughing as the party of Alger Hiss and almost every Stalin apologist, and national defense indifferent milquetoast of the last 70 years, get all indignantly patriotic.
Yeah, the party of David Bonior friend of the Sandanistas, of Jimmy national malaise Carter, he of globetrotting post presidency diplomacy meddling infamy, of Ted “Dear Mr. Andopov” Kennedy, and of one barely closeted Maoist after another … begins to squeal out the Star Spangled Banner in unison.
What Trump did or did not do, he did or did not do.
What the Democrats have done is to undermine the interests of freedom at home and abroad for 70 years or more now. And as a result they … just … have … no … moral credibility … at all.
neo-neocon Says:
May 18th, 2017 at 7:53 am
Manju:
One problem with what you’re saying is that every single person who was present at that meeting with the Russians says that Trump revealed nothing of the sort, and that the report saying he did is incorrect.
* *
That’s my impression as well, hence my response to Manju.
DNW nails it, I think.
“What the Democrats have done is to undermine the interests of freedom at home and abroad for 70 years or more now. And as a result they … just … have … no … moral credibility … at all.”
Speaking of Demo hypocrisy and chickens roosting at home. We have all by now seen news and comments on this Seattle law passed during the Reagan years; which disallowed nuclear preparedness evacuation drills as Seattle’s special way of expressing their displeasure with a Republican administration in DC.
The good news then (or if that is too morally shocking, substitute “ironic”) is that if it turns out that the Norks actually can hit an American city, it is probably Seattle.
The better news – or more sharply ironic if you prefer – is that Seattle has that wonderful law still on the books preventing nuclear disaster drills.
Perhaps Michael Moore, the man who legitimized the kind of fraternal sport in which I am engaging in now, could be persuaded to move there.
Dulce et decorum est mori propter somnia, Michael!
The laptop bomb story has been in the open press for many weeks, now.
Sheesh.
Trump’s “leak” to Russia
Just my two cent’s worth: General McMaster is a most impressive man so his swingeing rejection of the “leak” story is persuasive. The theologians of Leftism say that he did not answer the exact allegations but that is a stretch. He was pretty comprehensive in what he said.
Be that as it may, the coverup is brilliant. Saying the information came from Israel is both believable and harmless. Everybody knows that Israeli intelligence is brilliant and that Israel shares intelligence with the USA, so the whole thing has become: “Move along. Nothing to see here”.
And Trump can’t win over Russia. If he is hostile to Russia, he is a warmonger and if he is friendly to prominent Russians, he is “in cahoots” with Vlad the impaler. And I have long ago lost count of the number of times the media have declared Trump “finished” over some minor matter.
UPDATE: More media madness. The Media Research Center’s recent all-day study of CNN’s coverage found that they spent a whopping 13 hours and 27 minutes in just one day covering President Trump. Furthermore, a full 92% of the coverage was negative.
arfldgr Says:
May 18th, 2017 at 2:14 pm
“UPDATE: More media madness. The Media Research Center’s recent all-day study of CNN’s coverage found that they spent a whopping 13 hours and 27 minutes in just one day covering President Trump. Furthermore, a full 92% of the coverage was negative.”
* * *
That sounds like more than they spent on ALL of Obama’s misdeeds in 8 years.
Just out of curiosity, do you think that (a) the Left is actually concerned about the danger Trump is to America;
or (b) the Left is, for once, really feeling threatened?
The World Jewish Daily story is almost certainly false (what sources could they possibly have). Furthermore the latest is that the information came from a Jordanian asset. So here is another version of a story that cannot be confirmed being passed off as gospel.
A while ago a former Soviet citizen said the media assault on Trump reminded him of the unreliability of the Soviet press. He noted that now, like the Soviet Union, we no longer have a trustworthy press.
Prediction, the whole Trump is worse than Satan and all his imps theme is so ridiculous it will backfire on the Dems (caveat: my predictions are almost always wrong).