Collateral damage caused by Trump's extreme declassifications

Monday evening, The White House has issued an order directing the Department of Justice and the Office of the National Intelligence Director to declassify excerpts from a set of documents related to the investigation of Special Advisor Robert Mueller on the issue. Russian interference. He has all the legal rights to do it. But national security analysts and former intelligence officials say that such a demand is not just unprecedented. it's potentially dangerous.

The Trump Administration said Monday that the disclosure was "for reasons of transparency" and that it was "at the request of several congressional committees". The documents involved include some pages of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application relating to Trump 's former foreign policy advisor, Carter Page, and a number of FBI – related interviews about him. FISA Page application and a larger survey in Russia. President Trump was incarcerated for more than a year after proving that a wiretap of Page – after his departure from the Trump campaign – was part of a partisan effort to undermine his candidacy.

In addition, Monday's White House order includes the public and unredacted publication of a series of text messages "related to the investigation in Russia" sent by and between the former director of the FBI, the former director of the FBI, the former FBI, the former director of the FBI. Lawyer Lisa Page and current Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. A more recent fixation of President Trump, Ohr's wife worked as a Russian analyst and entrepreneur for the same intelligence firm that commissioned the famous Steele dossier.

Although the White House has required specific pages of the FISA Page Application, its other requests could constitute a sufficiently large net to potentially expose the sources and methods of law enforcement.

"I do not remember anything like this in the past," said Jeffrey Ringel, director of The Soufan Group's intelligence consulting firm, who spent 21 years as a national security specialist at the FBI. "The lawyers and lawyers have already appealed the emails and SMS from the investigators, but that would be much broader and public.If the law enforcement forces ensured that my identity would be kept secret in the context an agreement, this bond would be broken, people lose confidence in the system.The damage that will be caused will continue for several years. "

The White House Monday's order took the form of a press release rather than a formal directive, potentially leaving room for maneuver at the DoJ and ODNI for the Interpret as a discretionary request for reconsideration rather than a non-negotiable order. This could help limit the fallout, if any.

"When the president issues such an order, he initiates a declassification review process conducted by various intelligence community agencies, in consultation with the White House legal counsel, to ensure the security of interests. word of justice said in a statement. "The Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are already working with the national intelligence director to comply with the order of the president."

Taken literally, the request concerns former intelligence agents. "It really depends on the way it's done," says David Kennedy, CEO of TrustedSec and founder of the threat tracking firm Binary Defense, who previously worked at the NSA and the Canadian Forces Signal Intelligence Unit. Marine Corps. "If there is the possibility of detonating sources of information, to see how information is collected or anything that could damage the intelligence community, it is really serious." It's the collection methods and the evidence is there, but if it's just communications that do not reveal too much, then it might not be too damaging. "

However, even if personal communications could potentially be revealed without a major impact on national security, so many random decommissions could still have collateral impacts on privacy.

To complicate the interpretation of the White House order, the question of whether the Trump Administration has only requested specific pages of the FISA application to protect the sources and methods of law enforcement or to exclude selectively information validating wiretapping Carter Page. Given how Trump's partner, Devon Nunes, misled the public on key aspects of the FISA application, hopes are not high.

"There are obvious reasons for confidentiality and investigation for which you might legitimately not want to publish certain pages," says Julian Sanchez, national security researcher at the Cato Institute. "But the problem with the incomplete way in which the information was disseminated is that it could also confirm the usefulness of surveillance.This is a matter of selective disclosure and the possibility of supporting a story by omission. "

Which is a shame, because it can be argued that the FISA process is really too secretive. The selective downgrading of the information concerned, however, does not achieve this objective. "On the one hand, I would very much like the process of FISA to be more transparent," Sanchez says. "But it's clearly a terrible precedent for the White House choosing and choosing specific investigations that personally affect the president.There are reasons why the White House is not in a position to weigh the actions impartially or expertly. "

Democrat Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chairman of the Senate's Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Tuesday that he had already seen a more complete version of the FISA page, and that he was also concerned about selective disclosure ramifications of this move from the White House. "I do not just worry about the precedents that this creates for this investigation, but I also worry about the men and women in our intelligence community who think they have a future. president may decide to disclose contacts, information ". I said. This could also, in turn, make the allies less willing to work with the United States, as they thought their own classified efforts might be exposed on a whim.

The extent of the situation will not be clear until ODNI and the DoJ determine what to actually disclose according to the White House's request. But demand alone is a precedent for at least attempting the same tactic in the future, and perhaps doubling if the results are not to their liking.

"The president of the United States should not be involved at this level in an ongoing investigation," said Ringel, of the Soufan group. "This may be good for President Trump this week, but in the long run it will have detrimental effects as confidence in the system has been weakened."

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