Good evening we begin tonight with breaking news with a striking bottom line according to the Washington Post and the New York Times the cht of the United States revealed highlily classified beyond top secret information to this countrys chief global adversary russia during a meeting last week in the oval office. This meeting with Russian Ambassador and frmts a day after he fired fbi director james comey obviously leading the investigation to possibly improper contact with russia. Now the post broke the sister their reporting suggest when the president revealed the intelligence reportedly gathered by an ally not to be shared with other countries he was boating to the russians about what he had. As you mate imagine this is touching offer a firestorm in the Intelligence Community on capitol hill and beyond we have our own new reporting on that what the intelligence covered and late reaction from the white house reporting for us we have a keem of correspondents jim acosta, man ewe rauj, jim acosta joins from us the white house jim explain how the white house is reacting because several people in that office put out statements although in om says theyre not really address wlag the actual reporting said. Thats right. I think its save to say the anderson is white house is knocking down the story they are saying false as reported but in a carefully worded statement you could hear the National Security adviser to the president h. R. Mcmaster addressing reporters earlier this evening really tailoring his words to declare this this story is just not accurate. Here is what he had to say. There is nothing the president takes more seriously than the security of the american people. The story that came out tonight as reported is false. The president and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries including threats to civil aviation. At no time at no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed. And the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known. Two other senior officials present including the secretary of state remember the meeting the same which and have said so. Theyre on the record accounts should outweigh knows of aanonymous sources i was in the room it didnt happen. Thanks everybody. Thank you. And that was it anderson. H. R. Mcmaster did not take any questions from reporters. There were reporters asking including myself whether there was a recording of this meeting between the president and knows russian officials. He did not answer that question but we should point out you heard h. R. Mcmaster say the president did not reveal any sources or methods. He did not specifically say that the president did not reveal classified information. Thats a pretty important distinction there. We should note that Sarah Huckabee sanders the Deputy Press Secretary went back into the west wing a few moments ago talked to reporters and said no further statements sfr the white house on this later on tonight. Its also important that the story that is the first appeared in the Washington Post specifically it did not say that the president revealed sources and methods. Thats right. In what he said to the russians for h. R. Mcmaster to be saying the president didnt reveal sources and methods the Washington Post didnt say thats what he did. Thats right. And there are additional statements provided by the white house tonight from the secretary of state Rex Tillerson from a deputy National Security adviser Deanna Powell that sort of dance around the distinction. We can put up a statement from Rex Tillerson the secretary of state that says during President Trumps meeting with frnlts lavrov a broad range of subjects were threat among which threats and common efforts during counterterrorism the nature of specific threats were discussed but did not discuss sources methods or military operations. Then Deanna Powell released a statement through the white house saying the story is fols false. Thement only discussed common threats both countries faced. But anderson no where in the statements released by tillerson, powell or that statement delivered by the National Security adviser is there any any kind of defile that the president released classified information to the russians. Of course thats a dope license active topic in that the president during the campaign went after Hillary Clinton accuseding her of repeatedly leaking classified information releasing classified information through private email server we should note one final thing interesting to pass on. During the briefing today White House PressSecretary Sean Spicer said h. R. Mcmaster would be briefing the reporters on the upcome foreign frim. Ive asked whether ph can kmofrt would be at the conference. If he does not show up briefing naes a pretty telling sign they are trying to circle the wagons. Its not a coincidence most of the statements sound word for word the same and that they are specifically the fact that they dont specifically say he didnt reveal classified information thats not an oversight thats not an accident that the white house put out statements that forgot to address that. Its a lot of spin anderson its not a lot of clarity. This is the sort of denial speak you get from attention dmfrgss when there are serious questions raised obviously up on capitol hill theyre raising some very serious questions tonight and republicans are tearing their hair out wishing they could get through a day in the town white house the white house doing serious damage. Jim acosta we got new reporting what the. Evan perez joins us more with thatment how does this tie in the reporting youve done on the airline laptop ban. Well anderson back on march 31st when we were reporting that story, we worked with the intelligence agencies for a couple of days. Specifically to remove any references of the type that the president is allegedly allegedly discussed with these top two russian officials there in the oval office. They specifically did not want us to mention the city and they said that specifically if you mention these types of things the terrorist groups will be able to figure out that we we have certain collection methods our allies have certain collection methods. This could lead to lives being put in danger not only sources or methods are being put in danger but perhaps people who are inside these Islamic State people inside isis might be put at risk as a result of this reporting. So we worked with the intelligence agencies over a couple of days we removed the things that really we didnt have any interest in trying to put peoples lives in danger. Sure. We wanted to make sure the public understood the grave danger that this laptop bomb that intelligence showed but we didnt really want to put anybodys lives in danger. And so we worked with the intelligence agencies to remove this. Evan. From the stories. Evan let me can you when mcmaster says in the statement the president didnt reveal talk about sources and methods from your report whag it sounds like if there had been any level of detail discusswood the russians just as if there had been a level of detail in the story you first reported weeks ago that that could have allowed adverses our enemies in isis and elsewhere to figure out what sources or methods perhaps were being used. Right. It wasnt a question of whether the president actually said, this is how this was collected by just telling the details its possible the information the russians in in case could figure out what the sources and methods were. Right they could they could reverse engineering the information to figure out how it was collected and how the u. S. Obtained if. Here is the other part, the broader context here is that you know the president i think still regards russia as not the adversary here. He really believes that the United States and russia should be able to partner in the fight against ice. That obviously is not a controversial issue. The issue is that the russians have other motives as well. Other agendas there. They want to prop up the regime of Bashar Al Assad in damascus and if they figure out how the United States is collecting information there then that could put the source us of information at risk. We dont know where that information can go. And that was what was really emphasized to us reporting the story back in march. Evan thanks very much pch weshlgd know we invited anyone from the white house to join us but have told they have done for the not our information stands throughout the floirt Team National and steve hall with retired lieutenant jerlg umark hurten John Kirby Jim skrut p. O. And harvard law professor allen dershowitz. Jim i know your communication devices have been blown up with people youve been talking to whats the reaction youre getting. The reaction is exasperation and dep deep concern. On a number of levels. One here because its classified information. Thats obvious. Two, that the russians were the ones to receive the classified information. A prime adversary in the view of the u. S. Intelligence community today. Three, that it appears to relate to a sensitive intelligence sharing relationship which is very difficult to build over time there are countries you share bell with as a matter of i inss uk, france, et cetera thats natural. There are others that you dont want public because of the nature of those relationships. That country doesnt want it public that its sharing this Sensitive Information with the u. S. Those three things make this particularly serious. A former senior u. S. Intelligence official described it to me this which. I have never before seen a senior Government Official so carelessly share information that endangers a sensitive relationship. Unprecedented. In the view. In an allies of ours gathers or sharing intelligence with us believes gnat president cannot be quiet about that information in front of the russians and others theyre less likely to share intelligence. Absolutely its not the first time weve heard that concern from other allies can be o, dernd what they share with the president what comes out. I would add to something evan said. This relates to the laptop threat, the idea of getting a bomb hidden in a personal electronic on to airplane. There is a debate going on today about extending the laptop ban from thoets eight muslim majority countries to europe, possibly even to the u. S. This is something being talked about right now because this threat is considered right now the greatest most immediate clear and present terror danger to the u. S. Here in beyond the obvious sensitive territory youre in with the nature of the information the nature of the relationship, the nature of the threat makes it about the most sensitive territory you can get into professor dershowitz i heard what you say if what the Washington Post and. New york times report. This is the most serious ac zapgs ever made against the u. S. President if its true. I cant think of any other president who has ever put in danger the National Security, if its true. Remember that russia gives information to iran that gives it to hezbollah, gives it to syria. Were talking about agencies like jordan, israel, england that may have worked five years to get somebody into isis at a leadership level. He is going to be killed if its electronic theyre going to disclose this information. This is so serious. And now we have to unit. We have to put aside all the stuff comey all the stuff about whether the campaign coordinated. We have to focus on this issue because republicans and democrats alike will not be able to defend the president against this if its true. Now we have to find out if its true. The first step is damage control. The second step is doing something to protect us. Do we have to ban the laments tomorrow or this week . We have to focus on in do not politicize this issue. Thats the greatest risk we face now. Testify steve hall you certainly know about classified information of that certainly know about russia the white house is saying president didnt share sources or methods poefz is reporting he shared classified information with specifics about a looming tleet thats not the same as sources or methods as the white house characterized but to evans point can you reverse engineer if you get some information and figure out what the sources and methods are that that might endanger who ever gathered that . Well, anderson if anybody can reverse engineer something its certainly the russians. My greater concern here is this is going to have a widespread Chilling Effect on all of the intelligence rice lake was allies the. The Ripple Effect are incredible regardless whether or not its true. Having run the relationships myself a number of times years overseas our allies pass in information with the expect assigning that we are going to keep it to ourselves ohs and not share with others certainly not the russians without talking to them first. And we we dont do that and if its true that the president spread this without the without the approval of the leasen service gave it to him theyre more conservative going to stop sharing information and that puts the United States of america at significantly greater risk at what we share most with the leasen relationship was than a and that being counterterrorism attentive. Thatistic risk was created by the Washington Post. The Washington Post published this material i dont blame them somebody leaked it we now learn from he had something the editor of Washington Post reporter told us that the leak had to come from within the United States. Process it wasnt from russia how do we know this because the reporter said the leaker the source didnt want to compound the problem. Russia would want to compound the problem. So we now know that an american intelligence source leaked this information 37 its the leaking of the information that creates the compounding problem of Intelligence Services. It would have been bad enough if this had happened. But nobody knew about it. But now which have two problems one sources and nods now can be found by the russians and two our allies know that this was disclosed. Although you could make i would assume phil that you could make jim sciutto that you could make the argument that the United States would have have to inform allies Intelligence Services that this information had been disclosed process. Thats right. That would be part of the daniel control were not talking about message damage control here were talking about risk damage control which is obviously far more important. General hertling, the information the the information president president revealed not talking about confidential secret not talking about this is code word information. Can you explain what that is what kind of dots can you connect with that. Code word is ultimate in security clearances, anderson. It means that the programs are so significant that sources and methods are so critically important that any discrimination or any leaks of information about that might give away damage that the pogram cases. Ive been read in on code word programs before both in combat and peace time. And youre not only read in youre also read off when you leave the program which means you say i will never disclose that i know anything about in program that i will give any information about it or even say what the code word is that describes the program. And its because it is so dangerous. And any kind of information that comes out on a code word program could affect the fight for an adversary for that intelligence. When youre trying to connect the dots, any specific item mib might be able to lead you to the source and the methods even though the sources and methods on the military operations as general mcmaster said were not given, if anything was given up that might lead a very wise intelligence service, the Russian Intelligence Service to find out more things and connect dots, it could destroy the program, ruin the relationship with the other country, generate a lack of trust with all other nations because whatever country this came from others are going to see it as well. Its not just going to affect the oneonone relationship its going to affect everybody that shares intelligence with our Intelligence Community because theyre afraid to give it to them because they want to give it the president oh might give it the russia. Phil you worked with both the fbi and cia. What do you make of the fact that this was a statement according to the Washington Post and New York Times made by the of the United States to two russian officials who one of them at the center of the ongoing investigations and who were lourd into the oval office the day after the fbi director is fired. I mean you would think of all the times somebody would careful about what they said and how they said it it would have been that meeting right there photos of which were being provided by the russians because u. S. Reporters not lou reporters not allowed in the room at the time. Anderson i have a mistake. Rm self wasnt what the president said in october 2015 the russians lost 220 people in attack by isis on aircraft over the sinai. 220 plus if the president had not warned them about threats to russian aircraft what would we say would we say t