The New York Times first page article today was entitled “Israel Said to be Source of Secret Intelligence Trump Disclosed to Russians.” From Washington, the article says that “classified intelligence that President Trump disclosed in a meeting last week with Russian officials at the White House was provided by Israel.”
I am not too familiar with the relationships between Russia, Israel, and the United States, but the article put this into a perspective that was easy to understand. The US and Israel are critical allies, and the article claims Israel is “a major intelligence collector in the Middle East.” This information disclosed by Trump could be relied to Iran, which would spark intensities between these countries, in which Iran and Russia are close allies and Iran and Israel are threats to each other.
NYT mentions the Democratic position on this issue. Countries that share intelligence with each other are immediately put at risk, as they “could decide it can’t trust the United States with information, or worse, that it can’t trust the president of the United States with information,” quoted by Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, who is involved with the House Intelligence Committee.
NBC News released an article on a similar topic as this. But instead of describing the Democratic perspective on the situation, the article described the same perspective but from a Republican politician. Republican Vermont Senator Susan Collins says “the disclosure of highly classified information has the potential to jeopardize sources and to discourage our allies from sharing future information vital to our security.”
From these two articles, it seems to be a bipartisan stance that the jeopardization of our country’s secret intelligence is a critical issue. It is not outrightly said throughout both of these articles, but the release of intelligence is widely unpopular.
Thoughts on News From Mackenzie 