White House restricted access to Trump's calls with Putin and Saudi crown prince
White House
efforts to limit access to President Donald Trump's conversations with foreign
leaders extended to phone calls with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and
Russian leader Vladimir Putin, according to people familiar with the matter.
Those calls
-- both with leaders who maintain controversial relationships with Trump --
were among the presidential conversations that aides took remarkable steps to
keep from becoming public.
In the case
of Trump's call with Prince Mohammed, officials who ordinarily would have been
given access to a rough transcript of the conversation never saw one, according
to one of the sources. Instead, a transcript was never circulated at all, which
the source said was highly unusual, particularly after a high-profile conversation.
The call -
which the person said contained no especially sensitive national security
secrets -- came as the White House was confronting the murder of journalist
Jamal Khashoggi, which US intelligence assessments said came at the hand of the
Saudi government.
With Putin,
access to the transcript of at least one of Trump's conversations was also
tightly restricted, according to a former Trump administration official.
It's not
clear if aides took the additional step of placing Saudi Arabia and Russia
phone calls in the same highly secured electronic system that held a
now-infamous phone call with Ukraine's president and which helped spark a
whistleblower complaint made public this week, though officials confirmed calls
aside from the Ukraine conversation were placed there.
But the
attempts to conceal information about Trump's discussions with Prince Mohammed
and Putin further illustrate the extraordinary efforts taken by Trump's aides
to strictly limit the number of people with access to his conversations with
foreign leaders.
The White
House did not comment about the limiting of access to calls with the Russian
and Saudi leaders.
Officials
said the practice began more than a year ago after embarrassing leaks revealed
information about Trump's phone conversations with the leaders of Australia and
Mexico. While it includes the highly secure system for particularly sensitive
matters, it has also extended to limiting the number of individuals who are
provided a transcript or are able to listen to the call.
Those efforts
have come under scrutiny after the intelligence whistleblower alleged that
White House officials took unusual steps to conceal Trump's phone call with
Ukraine's new president.
The complaint
alleged the handling of the Ukraine call was "not the first time"
that such steps had been taken "solely for the purpose of protecting
political sensitive — rather than national security-sensitive — information."
Administration
officials say, John Eisenberg, the White House deputy counsel for national
security affairs and a national security legal adviser directed Ukraine
transcript call be moved to the separate highly classified system, as detailed
in the whistleblower complaint.
That system
is normally reserved for "code word" documents that are extremely
sensitive, such as covert operations.
Eisenberg
also played a role in the early Justice Department handling of the
whistleblower complain. Eisenberg was on an August 14 call with the general the counsel of the intelligence agency where the complainant worked, and John
Demers, the assistant attorney general for the Justice national security
division, a US official briefed on the matter.
During that
call, the general counsel informed Eisenberg and Demers that there were
concerns being raised about one of Trump's phone calls with a foreign leader.
Eisenberg invited Demers and the intelligence agency's general counsel to
review the transcript of the call, and Demers traveled to the White House the
following day to review it. The general counsel of the intelligence agency
declined to review the call, according to the official.
The White
House acknowledged earlier Friday that administration officials directed the
Ukraine call transcript be filed in a highly classified system, confirming
allegations contained in the whistleblower complaint.
In a statement provided to CNN, a senior White House official said the move to a place
the transcript in the system came at the direction of National Security Council
attorneys.
"NSC
lawyers directed that the classified document be handled appropriately,"
the senior White House official said.
But the statement did not explain whether anyone else in the White House was part of
the decision to put the Ukraine transcript in the more restrictive system. Nor
did it delve into an accusation in the complaint that other phone call
transcripts were handled in a similar fashion.
Like the call
with Saudi's crown prince, the Ukraine transcript did not contain highly
classified information to require such a move, raising questions about why the order was made.
The White
House has not explained why it selectively put certain head of state calls into
the codeword system, even when the content wasn't highly classified, such as
the Ukraine call.
Officials
from the past two administrations said it was unusual to transfer a transcript
that doesn't contain sensitive information into the code word computer system.
"In my
experience you would never move a transcript to the code word system if it does
not have any code word terms. If the president is classifying and declassifying the stuff he doesn't want to get out, that is an abuse of power and abuse of the system," said Sam Vinograd, a CNN national security analyst who served on
President Barack Obama's National Security Council and at the Treasury
Department under President George W. Bush.
Three other
former National Security Council officials said they were unaware of calls that
did not contain highly sensitive national security materials being moved into
another location.
While the practice of limiting access to foreign leader calls began in earnest last year
after the leaks of Mexico and Australian calls, it's not clear precisely when
the initial steps were taken begin that effort.
The White
House was also embarrassed when it was reported Trump had congratulated Putin
on a phone call shortly after a Russian election widely seen as illegitimate.
White House staff had written a memo specifically recommending Trump "do
not congratulate" Putin in the call.
John Bolton,
Trump's former national security adviser who departed from his post earlier
this month, was known for keeping a tight hold on all information generally
speaking, according to sources who worked with him at the NSC. He did not reply
when asked for a request for comment through his spokesperson.
A former administration official said that despite the code word protection, you didn't
necessarily need a special clearance to view the records and there was a
process for officials to access the calls they wanted.
Trump's
relationships with both Prince Mohammed and Putin have come under scrutiny over
the past several years. Both are strongmen with dismal human rights records.
After
Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2018,
Trump vowed to get to the bottom of the matter. But he has repeatedly said he's
unwilling to break off US-Saudi ties -- including military and trade — as a
result.
With Putin,
Trump has regularly worked arduously to guard his conversations, including
asking for notes taken by his interpreter after their first encounter in 2017.
He remains sensitive to accusations he's too cozy with the Russian leader
who
oversaw an election interference effort to get him elected.
source: CNN
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