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link to www.breitbart.com]
JERUSALEM – The rampant leaks concerning President Trump continued full speed ahead on Tuesday, with the New York Times quoting a “current and a former American official” saying it was Israel that provided classified intelligence purportedly disclosed by Trump during a White House meeting last week with Russian officials.
The report comes six days before Trump is due here in Israel for a visit and could potentially impact the U.S. relationship with Israel. Indeed, the second sentence of the Times report states that the information about Israel reportedly serving as the source “adds a potential diplomatic complication to the episode.”
The Times failed to note its own report, if accurate, could endanger Israel’s antiterrorism intelligence collection operations.
Continues the newspaper in the second paragraph of the article:
Israel is one of the United States’ most important allies and a major intelligence collector in the Middle East. The revelation that Mr. Trump boasted about some of Israel’s most sensitive information to the Russians could damage the relationship between the two countries. It also raises the possibility that the information could be passed to Iran, Russia’s close ally and Israel’s main threat in the Middle East.
However, toward the bottom of the piece, the Times cites Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, as telling reporters that Trump was not aware of the source of the information.
Israeli officials reached by the Times would not confirm that Israel provided the intelligence, which reportedly concerns the inner workings of the Islamic State.
Israel’s U.S. ambassador, Ron Dermer, affirmed his trust in the U.S.-Israel intelligence sharing relationship. “Israel has full confidence in our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and looks forward to deepening that relationship in the years ahead under President Trump,” Dermer told the Times by email.
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