A new wave of leaks targeting the Trump administration has actively endangered ongoing intelligence and military operations being conducted by the United States and its allies, sparking anger and concern inside and outside the White House, according to multiple conversations with senior U.S. officials intimately familiar with the situation.
The classified leaks, which are being handed to sympathetic journalists by former Obama administration officials who left the government and by holdovers still serving in the Trump administration, have damaged a number of ongoing operations, ranging from American efforts to prevent Russian infiltration of the United States to Israeli efforts against ISIS, sources said.
A recent Washington Post story disclosed classified secrets as part of a larger story about Obama administration cyber efforts against Russia. It was published days after a New York Times story, which revealed details of a secret Israeli cyber operation that Trump is said to have leaked to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The sensitivity of the material being leaked has heightened criticism both of the former Obama officials who are suspected of unveiling these secrets and of the Trump administration for its seeming inability to stem the disclosures, according to these officials.
Anger is running so high that multiple current U.S. officials have named some of the former Obama officials they believe are behind the unauthorized disclosures, which Trump officials say are aimed at kneecapping the current administration and also rewriting the record of the Obama years.
"They [former Obama officials] offer ridiculous explanations about why Obama couldn't act more forcefully, and then they apparently leak even more information about certain U.S. measures they claim have been taken against Russia," said one senior U.S. official who deals closely with the matter. "The publication of this information, if it's true, could do some damage to our national security, but the sources don't seem to mind doing that if it helps advance their political narrative."
The sources leaking this information appear to be the same former Obama administration allies and holdovers behind a months-long series of damaging leaks. READ FULL ARTICLE
