First off, hanger, your vox article is good. I recommend everyone read it in its entirety. I’ll list some interesting snippets at the end of this post.
Second, allow me to point out that the NYT article comes off favorably for the President. The NYT gives credit where due.
Isn’t it weird though, that people here are now suddenly trusting the NYT and WAPO reporting? It's funny how that works when you think an article supports your own view. I don't have access to WAPO but I did read the NYT article and the sources referenced do support the idea that the President's irresponsible sharing of intelligence with Russia did not directly cause the loss of the asset. I trust the NYT, so I will defer to their reporting and concede that much.
One caveat is that this President has been caught before asking his officials to lie for him and punishing those who tell the truth about him. It’s not unlikely the officials referenced in the NYT were likewise doing his bidding. It’s easy to see that the NYT article does not exactly extinguish the reporting that Trump’s cavelier intelligence attitude factored into the decision to exfiltrate, when you also consider the fact that the NYT and CNN sources disagreed on that very assertion.
So there is no direct relationship between the events. There may still be a peripheral one. But let’s say there is none whatsoever. Can you not see that this is still terrible? Why in the hell would our President stupidly slip highly classified intelligence to our adversary? During one of the 2016 debates Trump hypocritically warned how Hillary would make this very same f-ck-up. It turns out he was just projecting.
I am sure you can imagine how this killed off the source of the intelligence in the first place, if not literally, then information-wise. It may not be as epic a loss as a Kremlin source, but lives depend on maintaining intelligence sources. Not only that, this sort of misconduct leads to other allies reassessing their intelligence sharing relationship with the US. At least one: “
A top European intelligence official said that sharing of intelligence with the United States would cease if the country confirms that Trump did indeed share classified information with Russia, because sharing intel with Americans while Trump is president could put their sources at risk.[41]” --
wikipedia
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Since we are now seemingly so eager to accept NYT reporting, I think we can all agree that other assertions from that article should get fair hearing:
Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.
“The Moscow informant was instrumental to the C.I.A.’s most explosive conclusion about Russia’s interference campaign: that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered and orchestrated it himself. [... The] source was also key to the C.I.A.’s assessment that he affirmatively favored Donald J. Trump’s election and personally ordered the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”
The President’s cavalier attitude towards intelligence security makes life difficult for the IC.
“Some former intelligence officials said the president’s closed-door meetings with Mr. Putin and other Russian officials, along with Twitter posts about delicate intelligence matters, have sown concern among overseas sources.
“We have a president who, unlike any other president in modern history, is willing to use sensitive, classified intelligence however he sees fit,” said Steven L. Hall, a former C.I.A. official who led the agency’s Russia operations. “He does it in front of our adversaries. He does it by tweet. We are in uncharted waters.”
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Also from the vox article you quoted:
“In a stunning Monday morning report, CNN’s Jim Sciutto detailed how US intelligence officials were so worried that Trump might accidentally expose the covert asset’s identity that they launched a secret mission to extract him from Russia in 2017.”
“It’s still unclear how much Trump’s own Moscow-friendly conduct contributed to the urgency [to extract the asset].”
“Trump’s presidency has been marked by his personal desire to improve relations with Russia. As a result, he’s taken some actions that experts say have weakened US intelligence and strengthened Moscow’s hand.”
“At the time, there was genuine concern that Israel’s covert source might’ve been burned by Trump’s revelation.Two months later, Trump met with Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. It’s still unclear what exactly they talked about because Trump took away the interpreter’s notes. "
“In one case Trump openly gave classified information, and in the other case, it’s completely possible he told state secrets behind closed doors to an adversary.”
“And so a mixture of what the US spy revealed and Trump’s behavior may explain why some felt the asset had to be removed. But how much each of those issues weighed on the decision is unknown.”