President Donald Trump’s loose lips aren’t just causing him political trouble anymore. Now they’re putting at risk vital global intelligence sharing with allies whose spies have helped thwart terrorist attacks on the United States.
British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday issued a public rebuke of the Trump administration before meeting with the president, and a senior Democratic lawmaker said the British government may have “every right to be furious.”
The flare-up was over U.S. leaks to the media about the terror network behind the Manchester Arena bombing Monday night that killed 23 people, including the British suicide bomber. Angered by the leaks, British police stopped passing information to U.S. counterparts.
Trump, who had no apparent role in the disclosures, called the leaks “deeply troubling.” But the incident follows others in which Trump personally appeared to reveal secrets, such as an Islamic State plot to blow airliners out of the sky.
The incidents include Trump allegedly telling the leader of the Philippines about the presence of two nuclear submarines off the Korean Peninsula and the disclosure of classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a May 10 meeting in the Oval Office.
“Every government looks at it and says, ‘Whoa! We need to think twice about our sharing with the government when the guy at the top seems to be so careless with information,” said Paul R. Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the CIA who now is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.
In some instances, Trump’s sharing doesn’t appear to have been a calculated move, within his lawful right as president, but a spontaneous disclosure.
He just seems to have blurted this stuff out.
Steven Aftergood, Federation of American Scientists
“He just seems to have blurted this stuff out,” said Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists who follows national security issues.
Trump, traveling in Brussels for a NATO summit, called the leaks out of his administration “a grave threat to our national security.” He pledged a deep inquiry by the Justice Department, and reassured Britain over the importance of security ties.
“There is no relationship we cherish more than the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom,” Trump said.
Intelligence sharing with Britain is critical “to our security and to theirs,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who is ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.
“Any break or deviation from that relationship or the profound trust we have in the British and they have in us, would be a grave loss for both countries. We must take any steps necessary to remedy this problem immediately,” Schiff said in a statement issued by his office.