Retired CIA counter-terrorism chief Douglas London warned that it's still not even known the extent to which Donald Trump taking documents from the White House has impacted the world. There are some items included in the docs that can't even be reported in court without redactions because they're top secret.
"There is classified information for reason," London explained. "The controls on those documents are meant to protect the way it is collected, more than the information itself. And, clearly, from the affidavit we've seen released, it was human information, meaning it was information from human sources. That means that the clues that might be in the intelligence or classified pieces of information that the president took with him to Mar-a-Lago provide clues and pointers that adversaries might use to identify the means of that information getting out. It's serious business. But really, we don't even know how the depth of it. We've talked a lot and heard a lot about the searing formation but we don't know with the names of those programs were because they were so sensitive. The names themselves are classified."
Last year, the CIA revealed that over the years, dozens of informants were either killed, compromised or misled the U.S., the New York Times reported. It led to serious problems within the intelligence community. Incidents like what happened with Trump has lead to fears about other informants coming forward with details that could threaten global safety.
"Intelligence reporting tends to be very clinical," London explained. "President Trump was hard to support. His attention was hard to secure and maintain. We found ourselves using a lot of graphics and images just to get his attention."
He recalled the meeting Trump had with the Russian ambassador and the intelligence he gave to them. Such behavior compromised the relationship and there was a fear that Trump may have exposed a sensitive CIA source.
Host Mehdi Hasan criticized Republicans for spending years attacking Democrats over Hillary Clinton's emails. Trump, by contrast, took classified documents to his golf course, the purpose of which is still unknown.
See the full conversation below or at this link.