Steele said in a witness statement that Trump’s decision to declassify his 2017 testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was “one of the most egregious breaches of intelligence rules and protocol by the US government in recent times”.
The former intelligence officer also said: “Two of the named Russian sources have not been seen or heard of since.”
His witness statement was made public on Tuesday, the day after Trump asked London’s High Court to allow his data protection lawsuit against a British private investigations firm co-founded by Steele to continue.
We have plenty of monuments and remembrances for military personnel who have given their lives for their country. We celebrate our veterans, at least as well as we take care of them.
We don’t have the same opportunities to celebrate, or monumentalize, or even just remember the people in the intelligence community who given their lives for their country. One of the few places we do have for that sort of thing is the CIA’s Memorial Wall. Like all monuments to fallen patriots, it is intended to be a place of quiet reverence and reflection.
On the night of his 2017 inauguration, Trump and his wife stopped by to do a little dance and give a little speech, in which he bragged about himself and insulted the media and his political rivals. It doesn’t sound like much now, after all we’ve been through, but back then it was still shocking.
It was shocking that anyone would act with such disrespect in that place. Moreover, it was profoundly disheartening that the person who was acting with such disrespect would be the same person who was now in charge of all the precious national intelligence that those fallen heroes had given their lives to obtain. Those fallen heroes with their stars hanging on the walls behind Trump, as blathered to the cameras on with one of his rehashed schticks about how smart he is.
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Ex-CIA Boss Brennan, Others Rip Trump Speech in Front of Memorial [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-cia-boss-brennan-others-rip-trump-speech-front-memorial-n710366]
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At CIA headquarters, Trump boasts about himself, denies feud [https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-cia-langley-233971]
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I remember this speech now, reading this article about Steele, because it sounds like Trump got at least two more people killed for the sake of his pathetic narcissism.
By declassifying the Steele report, for no reason except spite, Trump endangered the lives of every agent and every source even tangentially involved with its creation, across the globe. Two more sources in Russia suddenly disappear thanks to Trump, no suprise. And what else disappears? All of those networks of information, which cost thousands of hours of expert work and millions of dollars of taxpayer money to develop.
When we invest in an intelligence project, the information networks we develop are where we put all our money and resources. Those networks are the “principal.” The intelligence we gain from the networks is just the “dividend.”
Yet Trump is anxious to spend the principle, even if only as a gift to a foreign leader he’s trying to impress. As if any of it – principle or dividend – was ever his to spend. (Or to store in an extra bathroom at his house in Florida.)