New info on the classified image Trump tweeted

Three years ago, Donald Trump tweeted an image that left intelligence experts gobsmacked.

The picture was of a rocket that had exploded on a launch pad deep inside of Iran.

  NPR

Fucking arrogant, needy idiot.

[A]erospace experts quickly determined it was photographed using one of America's most prized intelligence assets: a classified spacecraft called USA 224 that is widely believed to be a multibillion-dollar KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.

Now, three years after Trump's tweet, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has formally declassified the original image. The declassification, which came as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by NPR, followed a grueling Pentagon-wide review to determine whether the briefing slide it came from could be shared with the public.

Many details on the original image remain redacted – a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the U.S. government's most prized intelligence on social media, says Steven Aftergood, specialist in secrecy and classification at the Federation of American Scientists.

"He was getting literally a bird's eye view of some of the most sensitive US intelligence on Iran," he says. "And the first thing he seemed to want to do was to blurt it out over Twitter."

[...]

It's not uncommon for those people to want to declassify what they see, says Robert Cardillo, who served as director of the NGA from 2014 to 2019. Often, he says, he would suggest that the government release a lower-resolution image from a commercial satellite instead. "That was done from time-to-time as a way to protect that source, but then also get the information out," Cardillo says.

He says he cannot ever recall seeing the authorized release of an image such as the one tweeted by President Trump.

It wasn't authorized by anyone but himself.

In the most complete account of what happened next, published last year by Yahoo! News, President Trump asked to keep a copy of the photo, which was from a KH-11 series satellite. An hour later, he sent it out to more than 60 million followers on Twitter.

[...]

NPR has not independently verified that reporting, but what is clear is that the image in the tweet was a photograph of a sheet of physical paper, Lewis says. Visible at the center of Trump's tweet is the shine of overhead lights or a flash, and a shadow, possibly from Trump or an aid, photographing the image with a camera.

This is the man many want back in the White House.

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