The White House on Tuesday rebuked CNN for a widely challenged report claiming the CIA had pulled a high-level spy out of Russia after President Trump “mishandled” classified material – saying the report is wrong and could put lives at risk.
"CNN's reporting is not only incorrect, it has the potential to put lives in danger,” Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
CNN is standing by its reporting that the U.S. pulled its source from Russia in 2017, in part out of concern that the Trump administration had "repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy."
But both the White House and the CIA slammed the reporting, with the latter calling the reporting "misguided" and "simply false."
The New York Times also published a piece late in the evening, which largely contradicted CNN's story. According to the Times,
CIA officials "made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia" — weeks before Trump took office."Former intelligence officials said there was no public evidence that Mr. Trump directly endangered the source, and other current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency’s sources alone was the impetus for the extraction," the Times wrote.
The purported spy refused the 2016 offer of extraction, the Times reported, citing family concerns. But the CIA "pressed again months later after more media inquiries" threatened the source, and he relented, according to the paper. Fox News has confirmed the 2017 extraction.
The whirlwind developments continued into the night on Monday, when NBC News reported that a possible Russia spy was now living under apparent U.S. protection in the Washington, D.C., area — and that his life could be in danger. Sources told NBC News that the Russian was the same individual who was referenced in the reporting by CNN and the Times.
But the CIA called the original backstory, as reported by CNN, wrong.
"CNN's narrative that the Central Intelligence Agency makes life-or-death decisions based on anything other than objective analysis and sound collection is simply false," CIA Director for Public Affairs Brittany Bramell said in the agency's statement.Bramwell continued: "Misguided speculation that the President's handling of our nation's most sensitive intelligence — which he has access to each and every day — drove an alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate."https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-blasts-cnn-report-on-spys-extraction-warns-lives-could-be-in-danger
