His off-the-cuff remarks to reporters in Jerusalem before a meeting Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to confirm Israel as the source. And it took Trump off script on a trip in which the president for the first few days had maintained an uncharacteristic discipline in his public comments, according to Bloomberg.
Trump blurted out a defense of his conduct in the May 10 meeting with the diplomats when a U.S. reporter asked Netanyahu at a photo session whether the Israeli prime minister was concerned about sharing sensitive intelligence with the U.S.
Netanyahu said U.S.-Israeli “intelligence cooperation is terrific and it’s never been better.”
As reporters were preparing to leave, Trump interjected.
“I never mentioned the word or the name Israel, never mentioned during that conversation. They’re all saying I did,” Trump said. “So you have another story wrong. Never mentioned the word Israel.”
Neither the questioner nor either of the leaders mentioned Russia in the exchange but both men were responding to reports that Trump passed classified intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.
The New York Times later reported that the ally that provided the intelligence to the U.S. was Israel. Neither government has confirmed the report.
H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, has defended Trump’s handling of the intelligence in the meeting as “wholly appropriate.” Administration officials have said Trump didn’t identify the source of the information in the meeting.
George Little, an Obama administration CIA and Defense Department spokesman, said in an email that intelligence relationships can be put at risk without specifically identifying who provided the information.
“It’s a simple fact in the world of intelligence that you don’t have to specifically name another country to put its sources at risk,” Little said. “Sharing just a tiny ounce of highly classified information can potentially jeopardize those sources and the sensitive intelligence collection operations of our overseas partners.”