My how times have changaed

We have to spy on our adversaries to know what our own president is doing.

President Donald Trump’s insistence on holding a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin hobbled U.S. intelligence agencies that would usually get an intimate look at such a sit-down, but American spies still have extraordinary capabilities to piece together what was discussed.

That’s in large part due to the existence of a top-secret U.S. collection service that specializes in tapping adversaries’ communications on the fly, including those of Putin’s entourage at last week’s summit in Helsinki.

Privately, sources familiar with U.S. intelligence capabilities expressed confidence that the so-called Special Collection Service scooped up not only Putin’s readout of the two-hour meeting, but what the Kremlin’s top spymasters really think about it — and how they’re spinning it to their foreign counterparts.

[...]

But because they likely are missing the one critical piece of intelligence they need the most — a word-by-word account of what Trump and Putin said during the meeting — those officials appear to be flying somewhat blind when it comes to fulfilling their most important mission of helping U.S. policymakers figure out what comes next.

  Politico

Which is why it's so ridiculous that Trump meets with leaders of other countries without any US officials present. And how can the US have any policy if only the president knows what he's agreed to?

If his public statements are to be believed, Dan Coats, Trump’s director of national intelligence, revealed last week that he does not have full visibility into what was discussed, and that there’s a “risk” Putin had secretly recorded the meeting.

Risk? I'd say it's a certainty. Why wouldn't he?

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to directly answer questions on Monday about whether Trump has fully briefed top intelligence officers about his sit-down with Putin, and whether he relied solely on memory, or took notes.

If he's giving away anything to Putin, he's not going to tell anyone.

Meanwhile, Trump himself keeps teasing out his version of the discussion.

“When you hear the Fake News talking negatively about my meeting with President Putin, and all that I gave up, remember, I gave up NOTHING, we merely talked about future benefits for both countries,” Trump tweeted on Monday morning.

The irony of Trump himself being the one obstacle preventing them from confirming his claim conclusively — and getting a full picture of what happened in Helsinki — is not lost on current and former U.S. intelligence officials.

I should hope not.

[F]ormer NSA senior signals intelligence analyst John Schindler says it appears that “the only way they're learning about what was said in that closed-door meeting is through NSA reporting, top-secret code-word reporting, about what the Russians say was said in that meeting. And what the French foreign ministry and, insert other country here, think happened in Helsinki based on what the Russians told them."

Insane.

The ultimate, and most frustrating, irony of all for the intelligence community? “Eventually we are going to wind up with every version of what happened,” Schindler said, “except Trump's.”

You'll get that from his tweets or what he wants to say happened. It won't be the truth.

Given [Trump's] intention to have the meeting remain between him and Putin, he could even claim that any collection done without his permission is therefore illegal.

James Bamford, author of four books on how the NSA operates, said it is indeed illegal for the NSA and CIA to intercept the communications of Americans — domestically or overseas — unless they give their express approval. The agencies also could seek a special intelligence-gathering warrant, usually by demonstrating that the people in question are acting as agents of a foreign power, as was the case with former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Check with Mr. Mueller. He may well have proof - or at least actionable information - that Trump is himself acting as an agent of a foreign power.

“The NSA is a bureaucracy in which people only do what they are ordered to do if it comes from the top down. So there’s not a chance in hell that anyone would have eavesdropped on the president of the United States without express prior authorization.”

Oh, I doubt that. They may not be willing to admit it, or even leak it, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if someone does actually have eavesdropped information. The NSA (and other intel agencies) have long been wary of Don the Con's loyalties. He thinks he's got the upper hand, but he might want to give that some more thought.

Because the summit was finalized just a few weeks beforehand, U.S. intelligence officials had to scramble to get their agents, analysts and technical collectors in position to eavesdrop on an event that had the potential of being one of the most consequential of Trump’s presidency, according to current and former U.S. officials. The Special Collection Service, the ultraclassified team of NSA and CIA interceptors, no doubt began moving into position as soon as the decision was made, they said.

No doubt.

The SCS has operated so deeply in the shadows that even its existence, and its name, were unknown to public for decades. In 2013, explosive details about its operations emerged into public view, when former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked a massive trove of NSA documents to journalists.

And there's no reason to think they haven't instigated some other secret operations details since then. In fact, it's almost certain they have switched things up.

In Helsinki, other elements of the vast U.S. security apparatus also mobilized, and so did the spy agencies of American allies like Britain, neutral countries like Finland itself and adversaries like China, a neighbor of Russia that is also the biggest U.S. trading partner, according to Bamford and some former U.S. intelligence officials. All of them would be intent on vacuuming up whatever they could from the summit, both on the ground and via electronic intercepts and so-called signals intelligence.

[...]

U.S. officials considered it a given that Russia would deploy an unprecedented number of intelligence operatives to Helsinki, a coastal city just 188 miles west of perhaps the Kremlin’s biggest spy hub, St. Petersburg.

But U.S. intelligence agencies were at a disadvantage from the start, some current and former officials said.

Under established protocols, Coats or other intelligence leaders would brief top White House officials, and possibly Trump or national security adviser John Bolton, about what the NSA, CIA and other agencies were capable of doing before, during and after the summit.

I assume Bolton would have already known, but also assume he has been shut out of what they're actually doing since he went to work for Trump.

What actually transpired during that process, including whether Trump and his team specifically shot down the use of any particular collection capabilities, is among the most closely guarded and classified secrets. The NSA, CIA and intelligence directorate all declined comment.

And they wouldn't tell Trump, either, you can bet your life. I doubt there's any president past, present, or future, they'd take into their complete confidence.

Current and former officials agreed with Bamford that those agencies, the NSA in particular, would steer far clear of using their immensely intrusive collection capabilities against American targets, especially Trump and his aides and Marina Gross, who as Trump’s translator, was the only other non-Russian in the room.

That's what they say, anyway. Even after we have Edward Snowden's revelations.

And maybe we need to know mroe about this Marina Gross. Marina is a fairly common Russian name, isn't it?

Afterward, Democrats on Capitol Hill pushed unsuccessfully to compel Gross to testify before Congress about what transpired during the meeting.

[...]

Trump isn’t the first president to go it alone with such a formidable Cold War adversary. President Ronald Reagan did so with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, but he provided detailed and public readouts afterward.

And, what? Reagan was notoriously untrustworthy. It's just that he was a complete Russophobe.

Trump’s overall refusal to criticize Putin, and his praise for Putin’s "incredible offer" to do an interrogation swap of Russian intelligence officers and prominent Americans including former Ambassador Michael McFaul were especially noteworthy.

Now there's a firm grasp of the obvious.

Trump’s own White House has tried to tamp down the significance of the entire event, saying, essentially, that it resulted in no agreements or commitments of any kind.

And in fact, that could be true. They could have simply talked about Trump's personal businesses and, depending upon where Marina Gross' loyalties lie, about his current and continued usefulness to Putin and the Russian mob.

The Russians have gone into overdrive since Helsinki, with TASS and other state-run news organizations pumping out one story after another about how Russia is moving forward on issues for which Trump offered concessions.

For their part, U.S. intelligence officials have been spending more time and energy just trying to figure out whether Trump did, in fact, make concessions, and whether he revealed things he shouldn’t have.

I'd assume that's an absolute given.

“We’ve let the Russians shape, publicly and privately, what was allegedly agreed to in the meeting,” said [Peter Harrell, a senior Obama administration State Department official], “with no coherent ability for the U.S. to push back.”

Would that be considered "collusion"?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.