US federal police seized documents marked “top secret” during their search of former President Donald Trump’s home on Monday, according to court documents released Friday. Previous episodes remind us that the Republican billionaire sometimes handled or used sensitive information with some flippancy when he was in power.
His powers as president allowed him to decide alone on the declassification of certain confidential information. But some of his choices have baffled the intelligence community, to say the least.
The photo of an Iranian launch pad.
On August 30, 2019, Donald Trump tweeted an image of what appeared to be a high-resolution photograph of a rocket or missile launch pad in Iran. The problem is that this photo appeared to have been taken by an American spy satellite, later identified by netizens. “We had a photo. I published it, which I have every right to do,” Trump said.
“If the president simply tweets an image of a classified document that requires our most advanced aerial intelligence gathering capabilities, that is certainly good news for our adversaries,” former CIA analyst Patrick Eddington, who specializes in satellite imagery, told Reuters. .
Deliver information from Israel
On May 10, 2017, the President received Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak at the White House. He reveals to them detailed information from a third country in the Middle East about the Daesh terrorist organization’s attack capabilities.
But these highly protected elements actually came from Israel, deeply irritated to see their information handed over to the Russians.
The location of nuclear submarines.
In an April 2017 phone conversation, Donald Trump told his Philippine counterpart, Rodrigo Duterte, that two US nuclear submarines were sailing off the coast of North Korea, carrying with them “a huge strike force,” according to the Philippine presidency. .
However, the location of the nuclear submarines, central elements of the US nuclear deterrent, is a closely guarded secret by the Pentagon.
secret nuclear weapons
In an interview with US star journalist Bob Woodward in 2019, Donald Trump mentioned the existence of a secret US nuclear tool. “I built a weapons system, a nuclear thing, that no one has ever had before in this country,” he said. “We have something that Putin or Xi have never heard of.”
Many details about the raid against Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Revealing the death in a US raid of the leader of the Daesh terrorist organization, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019, the US president gave a series of details – number of helicopters involved, entry of commandos into the building, previous espionage via terrorists’ phones and internet, usually kept secret by the Pentagon.
This information can allow US adversaries to better understand how their military proceeds, former special forces commander Michael Nagata told the Politico site.
Leaving their intelligence chiefs in the dark
Finally, Donald Trump did not seem to tell his spy chiefs everything. In July 2018, intelligence chief Dan Coats seemed surprised when, at a conference, he was told that the White House would invite Vladimir Putin, with whom Trump had just spoken in Helsinki, to Washington. “I am sorry?” he he said he.
Dan Coats had also admitted that he was left in the dark about the content of the heads of state meeting in Finland. “I don’t know what happened during that meeting,” he said, three days after the interview.
Source: BFM TV
