Israel Was Source Of Intelligence That Trump Gave To Russians: Report
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu after their September 25 meeting in New York Image by Donald J. Trump Campaign
By Aiden Pink May 16, 2017
The highly classified information about an ISIS terror plot that President Trump shared with Russian officials in the White House last week was originally provided by Israel, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
A current and a former American official, who both requested to remain anonymous, told the Times that Israel had previously urged the U.S. to be careful with the intelligence that Trump shared with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The Israeli news website Ynet also reported in January that Israeli intelligence officials had issued warnings to be careful when sharing information with the Trump administration, lest it end up in the hands of Russia and then Iran, the Kremlin’s major ally in the Middle East.
Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer told the Times in a statement that his country “has full confidence in our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and looks forward to deepening that relationship in the years ahead under President Trump.”
National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said that Trump’s disclosure of the information was appropriate.
Tensions between Jerusalem and Washington have gone increasingly public as the two countries prepare for Trump’s visit to Israel next week. A meeting to coordinate Trump’s photo ops ended in a screaming match when an American official said that the Western Wall is “not your territory. It’s part of the West Bank.”
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink.
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