Fred Weir: “[Re NYT ‘Potential Clash Over Secrets Looms Between Justice Dept. and C.I.A.’]” – facebook/fred.weir

May 30, 2019 JRL Russia List Media, Internet, Social Media, Television, Spies, Spy Allegations, United States, U.S.-Russian Relations

File Photo of Kremlin Tower, St. Basil's, Red Square at Night

(Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor Correspondent – Facebook post – May 30, 2019 – facebook.com/fred.weir/posts/10218476254873823)

“Here is one of those stories, in this case a huge NYT exclusive, that make my jaw drop with disbelief. I don’t know much about the intelligence biz — it’s not really my beat — but I do know that there is virtually no chance of getting the simplest answer out of any of those people on any given day, because they will always tell you that even the slightest hint about anything they are getting up to might endanger their ‘sources and methods.’ Most of what they do remains classified for decades, if not eternity. Then, one day, you open the NYT and read — in a story that clearly has political motivations — a virtual biography of a top CIA asset who is ‘close to Putin’ and presumably still alive and active. Do we not imagine that Russian counter-intelligence is sitting in the room with us, reading this too? So, either the NYT and its official leakers have just burned this person, or the whole story is BS. Just saying.

‘The most prominent of the C.I.A.’s sources of intelligence on Russia’s election interference was a person close to Mr. Putin who provided information about his involvement, former officials have said. The source turned over evidence for one of the last major intelligence conclusions that President Barack Obama made public before leaving office: that Mr. Putin himself was behind the Russia hack.

‘Long nurtured by the C.I.A., the source rose to a position that enabled the informant to provide key information in 2016 about the Russian leadership’s role in the interference campaign, the officials said.’

NYTIMES.COM: “Potential Clash Over Secrets Looms Between Justice Dept. and C.I.A.” nytimes.com/2019/05/24/us/politics/trump-barr-declassify-intelligence.html?searchResultPosition=1 …”