“Because someone decided to leak this intelligence while we were trying to get to the bottom, that may never be possible now, and that’s a shame,” National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told reporters.
The series of statements did not address the veracity of the reports, which have now been confirmed by numerous media, what the administration was planning as a possible response and what, exactly, the president may have known.
It has become a standard operating procedure for the White House: it redirects media attention when pressured about Trump’s knowledge and response to various threats. When the administration was questioned earlier this year about when Trump first found out about the coronavirus, the White House said it was the press, not Trump, who downplayed the severity of the outbreak. The tactic has had the effect of distracting from the intelligence itself. However, it has also inadvertently revealed how intelligence reaches the president’s desk from the ground.
“It’s a diversion, it’s like yelling squirrel, they don’t address what the underlying substance is, they try to point to the shiny object in the corner,” said Mark Zaid, a national security attorney who represented the whistleblower who initially revealed the details of the controversial call. Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president. “The White House has only worsened because of its diversion because it has turned the whole situation upside down, so the most vulnerable part is exposed.”
The catalyst for the most recent conversation about American intelligence was a New York Times report at the end of last month. He claimed that the White House was aware that the Russian government had paid rewards to Taliban-linked fighters in Afghanistan for the heads of US soldiers.
The news had serious implications for Trump. Additional reports about the rewards program have revealed that high-level officials were aware of the intelligence and that it was included in February in the Presidential Daily Brief, a collection of important and classified material for the commander-in-chief. However, senior officials have supported the president’s claim that he did not receive information about the information, although lawmakers have confirmed that the information was included in the daily written briefing.
Instead, national security leaders across the government, in remarks, have focused on the leaks that are driving these stories.
“The leaks compromise and disrupt critical inter-agency work to collect, assess and attribute guilt,” said CIA Director Gina Haspel. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe made a similar note: “The leaking of any classified information disrupts vital inter-agency work to collect, assess and mitigate threats and endangers our forces.”
The White House called more directly to the media.
“The cover of The New York Times is not the place to discuss classified information,” McEnany said Tuesday. “The White House podium is not the place to discuss classified information. We are here today, having this discussion, due to an irresponsible and anonymous leak to The New York Times. “
Trump, as is often the case, was more direct, accusing the New York Times of completely fabricating the story.
“The Russian Bounty story is just another story made up by Fake News that is told only to harm me and the Republican Party. The secret source probably doesn’t even exist, as does the story itself. If the discredited @New York City Times has a source, reveal it. Just another HOAX!
Trump’s “fake news” claims cut against the simultaneous claims that officials were making for those who leaked the information to be prosecuted.
A senior administration official said it is “deeply disturbing” that enough people feel justified in disclosing such information to major publications. “People would have to rank high and reporters would have to feel that the national security risk is justified.”
The leaks also appear to come from several different corners of the federal government: The stories about the rewards program have been written by teams of reporters covering different topics, suggesting that the origin was not with a single filter.
Speaking to reporters, O’Brien described how raw intelligence was shared with allies, saying an inter-agency process was started to verify and corroborate the information.
“This should be a story about how things work and how things work in government,” O’Brien said. “The reason it is not … is because some filter was in charge of attacking the president or promoting some political agenda, filtering accusations that now make it almost impossible for us to discover what happened.”
Homeland security experts said the administration’s discussion with who leaked who is the real blessing to foreign intelligence services.
“All the discussion that the United States is having publicly now is being devoured by enemies and friends alike not only to assess our intelligence capabilities but also to develop geopolitical strategies for those countries,” Zaid said.
“It reveals serious problems related to the intelligence reporting process at the White House,” said Jason Ross Arnold, a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who specializes in government secrecy, surveillance and whistleblowing. “This is not a frivolous escape. If everything is true, then it gives us an important insight into the president’s decision-making and his perspective on American national security. ”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Blaming the media is a favorite tactic of the Trump White House. The President has accused the media, often without evidence, of any variety of things: Stoking violence in protests over police brutality and racial injustice; driving on the stock market amid fears about the coronavirus and clashes between Saudi Arabia and Russia over oil production; annoying keeping the country closed during the coronavirus in an effort to damage Trump’s reelection bid.
And when talking about the coronavirus, McEnany frequently goes after the media when pressured about Trump’s response to the pandemic. She claims the media underestimated its severity, avoiding questions about how Trump sometimes downplayed the outbreak.
“Does Vox want to remember that they proclaim that the coronavirus would not be a deadly pandemic? Does The Washington Post want to pick up on what they told Americans to “control, the flu is bigger than the coronavirus?” McEnany told reporters in May.
Remarkably, however, McEnany repeatedly excluded Key caveats included in the headlines, stories, or tweets you were highlighting. It also ignored the large number of reports the media was making at the time about the severity of the pandemic at various critical points.
