The US secretly extricated a top spy from Russia shortly after Donald Trump hosted the Russian foreign minister and ambassador to the US in the Oval Office, according to reports.
The extraction in 2017 is said to have occurred over fears that President Trump’s attitude towards classified information could pose a risk to the agent, CNN reported.
White House spokesperson Stephanie Grisham denied the claims, saying: “CNN’s reporting is not only incorrect, it has the potential to put lives in danger.”
The spy was reportedly in a position to give insight and information on Vladimir Putin’s thinking. The CNN report indicates that the agent was removed at least in part over concerns that Mr Trump had mishandled classified information during an Oval Office meeting with then-Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
The information Mr Trump disclosed to the Russians was related to intelligence about Isis in Syria, and had been provided by Israel.
While that intelligence was not directly related to the spy in the Russian government, the disclosure is nevertheless thought to have sparked a discussion among intelligence officials about potential exposure.
“CNN’s narrative that the Central Intelligence Agency makes life-or-death decisions based on anything other than objective analysis and sound collection is simply false,” a CIA spokesperson told the news outlet when contacted. “Misguided speculation that the president’s handling of our nation’s most sensitive intelligence – which he has access to each and every day – drove an alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate.”
The reported removal of the American asset came at a time when the US intelligence community was especially concerned with Mr Trump’s handling of classified information, and that concern was only heightened after the president met the two Russians.
The extraction came just weeks before Mr Trump met Russian president Vladimir Putin in Hamburg in private during the G20 summit. Mr Trump confiscated notes taken by an interpreter at the end of that meeting – an unusual action for a president, and one that suggests an added layer of secrecy.
There had been mounting concern over the safety of the asset, beginning at least at the end of the Obama administration when officials became concerned about the length of time the agent spent co-operating with the US.
Those concerns were exacerbated in 2017 when the US intelligence community released a public report accusing the Russian government of meddling in the 2016 election at Mr Putin’s behest.
The president’s handling of classified information during his first few months in office then added more concern, leading to the difficult removal of the agent.
Mr Trump was notified beforehand, alongside a handful of other American officials.
