You Will Anyway: Trump compromised a CIA Kremlin source

Monday, September 9, 2019

Trump compromised a CIA Kremlin source

In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN.

[...]

At the end of the Obama administration, US intelligence officials had already expressed concerns about the safety of this spy and other Russian assets, given the length of their cooperation with the US, according to a former senior intelligence official.

Those concerns grew in early 2017 after the US intelligence community released its public report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which said Putin himself ordered the operation.

[...]

In the first months of his administration, Trump's handling of classified intelligence further concerned intelligence officials. Ultimately, they decided to launch the difficult operation to remove an asset who had been working for the US for years.

[...]

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.

[...]

The secret removal of the high-level Russian asset has left the US without one of its key sources on the inner workings of the Kremlin and the plans and thinking of the Russian president at a time when tensions between the two nations have been growing. The US intelligence community considers Russia one of the two greatest threats to US national security, along with China.

"The impact would be huge because 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 senior intelligence official told CNN. "You can't reacquire a capability like that overnight."

[...]

The President was informed in advance of the extraction, along with a small number of senior officials. Details of the extraction itself remain secret and the whereabouts of the asset today are unknown to CNN.

CNN

Cue Trump tweet about CNN being full of shit.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: Pushback from Trump AND the CIA. GOP Rep Doug Collins wants CNN investigated.

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.