simple to us, but to half a dozen current and former intelligence officials that i ran it by, that this exfiltration decision was driven purely by speculation in the media. so the way we approached the story was lay it out as it was told to us. the exfiltration took place, multiple people involved told us. a person involved in the discussion said that the president's mishandling of intelligence contributed. and by the way, the final decision to do this took place immediately after that famous oval office meeting, in which the president shared and discussed other sensitive intelligence with russian officials. you'll remember, in may 2017. so the timing also indicative. and then we played the cia's disputes, laid it out there for the world to sea, but then tested its dispute against other information that we had. >> and how do you handle a situation where in this case, the white house press secretary, says that you could be endangering people's lives by reporting this story? >> it's something that factored into our editorial discussions