# Declassifying for a foreign government

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Declassifying for a foreign government," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/declassifying-for-a-foreign-government/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The CIA procedure John Kiriakou describes for passing classified intelligence to a foreign service — the originating office extracts the substance onto a fresh sheet marked releasable to that country, so that no source or method travels with it — set out in 2017 as the thing Donald Trump did not do when he spoke to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in the Oval Office.*

- **Who does it:** The originating office at the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia), not the holder of the briefing
- **The mechanism:** The substance is retyped onto a new blank sheet
- **The marking:** Secret, releasable to the named country
- **What it protects:** Sources and methods
- **What it builds:** A liaison relationship
- **Occasion described:** May 2017

**Declassifying for a foreign government** is the procedure [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) set out in May 2017, when asked to compare a president's release of classified material with his own prosecution for releasing unclassified material.[1]

His starting concession is that the authority is not in question. A president may declassify. What he disputes is that the authority dispenses with the method: *"there's a process that you go through to declassify that information. You can't just blurt it out to the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador."*[1]

## The procedure

The report goes back to the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia), to the office that originated it. That office pulls the relevant information out of the report, puts it on a new blank sheet of paper, and types at the top *"Secret, releasable to Russia."*[2]

Kiriakou lists three things the extra step buys, and they are not procedural niceties but the entire point of it: *"that way nobody gets in trouble, no sources and methods are revealed, everybody's happy, and we can establish something of a liaison relationship to the Russians."* The intelligence still reaches the foreign service; what does not reach it is any trace of who collected the intelligence or how. His verdict on the Oval Office meeting follows in one sentence: *"that's not what the president did."*[2]

The question of who should have prevented it he treats separately, and puts on the National Security Adviser — see [H. R. McMaster](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/hr-mcmaster).[3]

## See also

- [Hr Mcmaster](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/hr-mcmaster)
- [Donald Trump](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/donald-trump)
- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)
- [Over-classification](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/over-classification)
- [Sergey Lavrov](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/sergey-lavrov)

## Sources

1. Blowing the Whistle / Why Trump Worries Him (2017-05-17), at 02:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAmdo2MzzhE&t=128s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-17-democracy-now-blowing-the-whistle-why-trump-worries-him/
2. Blowing the Whistle / Why Trump Worries Him (2017-05-17), at 02:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAmdo2MzzhE&t=159s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-17-democracy-now-blowing-the-whistle-why-trump-worries-him/
3. Blowing the Whistle / Why Trump Worries Him (2017-05-17), at 03:11. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAmdo2MzzhE&t=191s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-17-democracy-now-blowing-the-whistle-why-trump-worries-him/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/declassifying-for-a-foreign-government/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt