U.S.National Security Advisor H.R.McMaster holding court in open forum sponsored by the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
U.S.National Security Adviser H.R.McMaster told reporters that information considered classified was actually available via "open-source reporting."
He also claimed Trump had not yet been briefed on that information.
On Wednesday, May 10, 2017, President Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S.Sergey Kislyak.
He discussed highly classified information with them related to U.S.efforts against ISIS, which was a breach of protocol.
Open-source reporting is a term usually used to refer to reporting that's already available through public news outlets, social media, and scholarly reports.
White House officials said, according to a Washington Post report, that President Trump went off script when greeting the Russian diplomats, boasting about how good U.S.intelligence is.
The White House does not deny that, in so doing, he described specifics about an ISIS threat related to laptops used on aircraft.
Trump didn't divulge intel-gathering methods, but The New York Times reported shortly after The Washington Post's article that Trump did reveal Israel as the source and expose the ISIS controlled city in which the intelligence partner detected the threat he discussed.Experts fear exposing Israeli intelligence operations to Russia may harm U.S.-Israel relations.
McMaster said that White House officials, chiefly Homeland Security Adviser, Tom Bossert, immediately contacted the CIA and U.S.National Security Agency in order to organize damage control efforts for the potentially compromised source abroad.
The Washington Post reported on Monday, May 15, 2017, that the information discussed revealed a source of ISIS-related intelligence at risk, and Representative Steny Hoyer, the number-two congressman of the Democratic Party, called Trump's incumbency "dangerous."
Rep.Hoyer said, "I think there is an erosion of confidence among the American people and an erosion of confidence of the international community."
He also referred to Trump's revelation of classified information as the latest of many examples that the Trump Administration is driven by ineptitude, chaos, and conflicts of interest.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo is expected to brief members of the House of Representative's intelligence committee tonight, and most likely, lawmakers will grill him about published reports stating that the president jeopardized a very important source of intelligence.