Following President Donald Trump’s controversial leak of classified information to Russia, top Israeli intelligence officials are reassessing their current policies on sharing sensitive information with America.
According to the Times of Israel, two ex-leaders of Mossad, the top intelligence agency in Israel, said that the president of the United States can’t be trusted and criticized his decision to give classified information to ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
Shabtai Shavit, who lead Mossad during the 1990’s, said that if he was still director he would hesitate sharing intelligence with the U.S. government, who he feels is compromised by the president’s uncomfortably close relationship with Moscow and his inability of controlling his mouth.
“If tomorrow I were asked to pass information to the CIA, I would do everything I could to not pass it to them. Or I would first protect myself and only then give it, and what I’d give would be totally neutered,” Shavit said. “If some smart guy decides that he’s allowed to leak information, then your partners in cooperation will be fewer or just won’t be at all.”
“The country supplying the intelligence to the U.S. was identified in the Post story only as ‘an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State,’” wrote the Times’ Judah Ari Gross, “but sources told The New York Times on Tuesday that the ally was Israel.”
“Describing the US president as a ‘bull in a china shop’ — or as the Hebrew version of the expression goes, an ‘elephant in a china shop’ — Shavit accused Trump of entering situations without first being properly briefed, and then unwittingly violating the unwritten codes of conduct of intelligence,” wrote Gross.
“Before he makes any decision, he posts on Twitter. He tweets and then checks the responses in order to make his decision. Is that how you run a country?” Shavit said. “That’s not how you run a corner store.”