H. R. McMaster
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H. R. McMaster was National Security Adviser to Donald Trump in May 2017, when reports that the president had disclosed sensitive intelligence to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in the Oval Office produced a public defence from him: that the disclosure was wholly appropriate, and that "the president wasn't even aware of where this information came from, he wasn't briefed on the source or method of the information either."

The fork

John Kiriakou, asked about that defence the following day, called the statement "something very important" and then turned it around. Neither branch of it leaves McMaster undamaged.

If the claim is true and the president genuinely did not know the provenance of what he was repeating, "then shame on General McMaster, because that's his job, to make sure that the president is informed."

If instead McMaster did brief the president on the information and either withheld the source or failed to convey what Kiriakou calls "the clandestinity of this source," then "maybe we should be talking today about General McMaster resigning."

The underlying complaint is not about the president's authority to declassify, which Kiriakou concedes, but about the absence of the procedure that exists for exactly this purpose.

See also

- Donald Trump
- Declassifying for a foreign government
- Central Intelligence Agency
