Page 5 - Code Word Information News Today

Information is a term of art that turns up in this "washington post" bombshell tonight on president trump reportedly revealing highly classified information to the russian foreign minister and the russian ambassador when they popped up in the oval office last week the day after president trump fired the fbi director. one u.s. official telling "the washington post," quote, this is code word information. the president, quote, revealed more information to the russian ambassador than we have shared ...

Good evening to all of you gentleman. what are you hearing from your sources? >> from myself and jake tapper, two former officials knowledgeable say that president did share classified information with the russian foreign minister, the russian ambassador. intelligence officials tell cnn there is concern russia will be able to figure out that highly sensitive source. there is some disagreement as to how far the president went. this intelligence relates to what is known as special access programs ...

Defense? >> well, i dont know what its called, but its wrong. and heres why. theres a lot of classified information that does not have the original sourcing information in it. in fact, if you looked a to the pdb, the presidents daily brief, that book given to the president every morning, theres a lot of information there that doesnt have the sources. you would not give that over to the russians. >> can i ask you both a question? what is code? theres something in the fbi reporting about code word...

Somethings shared with the russians. and i cant explain that. its a cap -- at best its a casualness about his own job and about his responsibilities as president that its just -- its hard to be able to explain it anymore. if i just give the president the best of intentions, its just this is a serious job that he wanted. >> code word information, julia. thats what "the washington post" says on the islamic state. what is this and how secretive is it? >> its one of the highest if not the highest so...

Agencies or with the defense department or homeland security. that information would then go to of course the national security advisor especially if it was an imminent investigation. and then for some reason that information, probably part of the daily brief, gets to trump. and that may include, look, we know that country x has an asset in isis. and that asset is highly vulnerable but willing to share information with us. and something as casually as that said to the russians then will release ...

Goes awry, they want to make it known this isnt because of theyre own incompetence. its because the president of the united states gave up the goods to the russians. the other part i found compelling is this information is so sensitive we did not share it with our allies. now theres some information the allies have they do not trust completely why? because those intelligence agencies have been penetrated by maybe france, germany. >> so could our allies stop sharing intelligence with us because o...

Group of people working on one small operation, one small cell, that theyre not going to share that information with a larger isis group or with the defense intelligence agencies or the defense department or homeland security. that information would go to the national security advisor, especially if it was an imminent investigation and if for some reason that investigation gets to trump. and that may include -- we know that country x has an asset in isis. and that asset is highly vulinablenerabl...

Russians. i mean, this is just ludicrous and of course the law will allow the president to do this legally just like he doesnt have the financial conflict of interest statute that applies to him that applies to the rest of the entire executive branch and he can run around saying hes above the law and he can do this, that and the other thing and he can give out classified information to the russians but at some point people are going to get tired of it and this is putting our countrys national se...

Presidential intelligence briefings. nice to see you again. thank you for being here. >> hi, rachel. >> im in fair consume of spy novels and i know absolutely nothing in terms of what the real work is of an intelligence agency other than what i glean from people like you and fiction. when an official says this is code word information that was given to russia, stuff we wouldnt even give to our allies, can you explain o us in lehmans terms exactly what that means? >> sure. there are levels of cla...

Shared it in the oval office -- and remember identified as a top intelligence spy master enwashington d.c. this is no light matter. i mean youre giving the keys of the kingdom to moscow center here. >> and one thing on the intelligence side, we are a country that is actually good at intelligence gathering. we share with other countries not as sophisticated. so theyre only as strong as we are. so the weaker we become in terms of capacity to get intelligence from any of our allies, those other cou...