Editor’s Note: This is a developing story
(JTA) — Israel was the source of the highly classified intelligence that President Donald Trump disclosed to Russian officials, according to a report by The New York Times.
The Washington Post reported Monday that Trump revealed the intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.N. Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in an Oval Office meeting last week. The intelligence concerned a terror plot by the Islamic State involving the use of laptops on aircraft.
The Times reported that, according to a current and a former American official, it was information that Israel relayed to the United States. The intelligence was deemed too classified to share with other U.S. allies, let alone a rival state like Russia, the Washington Post’s sources said. Russia is the main supporter of Syrian President Bashar Assad and an ally of Iran, one of Israel’s principal adversaries.
Meanwhile, ABC News reported on Wednesday morning that an Israeli agent undercover inside the Islamic State has been put at risk by Trump’s disclosure of classified information to Russia.
The spy had provided Israel with intelligence about an Islamic State plan to cause the crash of a passenger jet on the way to the United States. Israel had shared the intelligence with the U.S. on the condition that it not be identified as the source of the information, ABC reported citing unnamed current and former U.S. officials.
According to the intelligence, the undetectable bomb was to be hidden in a laptop, which has led to the U.S. considering banning all laptops on flights from Europe to the U.S. The U.S. already bans laptops on flights from 10 airports in the Middle East.
On Wednesday, Israel’s Yediot Acharonot newspaper cited an unnamed Israeli intelligence source as saying that Israel will have to reassess what information it shares with the United States, and not hand over the most sensitive of it.
Israel and the United States are close allies whose leaders often refer to the countries’ “special relationship.” The United States provides Israel with some $4 billion of defense assistance annually, and the countries share intelligence and participate in joint military exercises.
Trump will be visiting Israel next week on his first foreign trip as president.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer did not comment on the Times article. “We appreciate the relationship we have with Israel and appreciate the exchange of information we have with them,” Spicer said in a news briefing Tuesday.
Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, also did not comment directly on the report.
“Israel has full confidence in our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and looks forward to deepening that relationship in the years ahead under President Trump,” Dermer said in a statement.
In January, an Israeli newspaper reported that American intelligence officials warned their Israeli counterparts not to share sensitive information with the Trump administration because of the threat that it could be leaked to Russia.
At a news briefing Tuesday, H.R. McMaster, the president’s top security adviser, discussed the meeting between Trump and the Russian diplomats, in which he took part.
“In the context of that discussion, what the president discussed with the foreign minister was wholly appropriate to that conversation and is consistent with the routine sharing of information between the president and any leaders with whom he’s engaged,” McMaster said.
Israeli media also reported that during a 20-minute phone conversation late on Tuesday afternoon, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke about the American leader’s upcoming visit to the Jewish state but did not discuss the controversy over the disclosure of classified information. Trump is scheduled to arrive in Israel on May 22 and leave the following day.
In related news, Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that the Western Wall — Judaism’s holiest site — belongs to Israel and Israel’s capital should be in Jerusalem.
Haley made the comments in the wake of reports that a Trump administration official — responding to a request that Israeli officials accompany the president when he visits the Western Wall — replied that the Western Wall “is not your territory, it’s part of the West Bank.” A White House spokesman later told JTA that the staffer’s remarks “do not represent the position of the United States and certainly not of the president.”
“I don’t know what the policy of the administration is, but I believe the Western Wall is part of Israel and I think that that is how we’ve always seen it and that’s how we should pursue it,” Haley said in a video clip posted on the CBN website. “We’ve always thought the Western Wall was part of Israel.”
Trump’s visit to the Western Wall, which reportedly will include his Jewish daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, has been billed as a private visit.
Top photo: President Donald Trump is flanked by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office of the White House, May 10, 2017. (Russia Foreign Minister Press Office/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
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