Donald Trump insists he has 'absolute right' to give Russian Federation secrets

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White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Trump's actions were "wholly appropriate".

Last week, Trump held a closed-door meeting with the Russian foreign minister and Moscow's ambassador to the United States and allegedly revealed an Islamic State plot - the biggest plot to take down a passenger plane since 9/11 - to attack commercial airlines by hiding bombs in laptops. The threat related to laptops carried on airplanes, according to a senior USA official.

The information appears to be related to the basis for a US and British decision in March to bar laptops and tablets from being carried on board worldwide flights from cities in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries. Members of the "Five Eyes" community (the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) share almost everything, and America also works closely with countries like France, Germany, Japan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

On Tuesday, the White House reiterated that they felt "real issue", in information sharing was that national security was being compromised by leaks - a complaint the Trump White House has often voiced.

That means secrets are governed by the president and not by laws passed by Congress. The President, as he or she should, has very broad powers of declassification. The disclosure apparently came as Trump boasted about his access to classified intelligence. These include the Espionage Act and Identities Protection Act.

The conflicted information has made it harder for aides to effectively advocate for the president.

Another concern about sharing intelligence is that Russian Federation could pass the information to its collaborators in Syria - Iran and Hezbollah, which are Israel's adversaries in the region.

A breach of trust raises the possibility that US friends might curtail such intelligence partnerships out of concern their secrets - and their sources and methods - could end up in the wrong hands.

The fact that the secrets went to Russian Federation, an adversary of the US and many of its allies, was especially alarming.

US intelligence-sharing agreements include the Five Eyes program with Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand.

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Yet, Israel and Russian Federation already share information regarding Syria, so any risk could be small, said Paul Scham, executive director of the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland.

The country's security can rest heavily on the level of trust between the president and the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Director of National Intelligence.

"If he did this with malicious intent, then that is a different story, which borders on treason and espionage", he wrote in Maariv. Even sharing limited amounts of intelligence about terrorist targets with Russian Federation, in Syria for example, has been the source of major controversy in the past. "We need to talk today - and we will".

"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", Israeli ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, said in a statement to The New York Times.

Douglas Smith, a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security, said Trump appeared to put at risk the "holy grail" of the spy world the means and methods of intelligence collection.

Trump reportedly shared the information during last week's White House meeting and even boasted about the intelligence he had. The processes in place to ready the president for interactions with foreign leaders are shockingly attenuated: A lot of the spade work is done by his inexperienced son-in-law, Jared Kushner, while key positions at the National Security Council and State Department remain unfilled.

As the Washington Post first reported, Trump shared details about an ISIS terror threat related to the use of laptop computers on planes. The day ended with even more questions about the ability of the President and his advisers to rise above another cloud. When the USA this week released details about prisoner killings in Syria, it didn't outline exactly how it knew what it claimed to know.

Mr McMaster also indicated that Mr Trump could not have revealed sensitive sources or methods.

But intelligence experts say it's not that simple.

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