Trump leakers could prove elusive targets
In President Trump’s White House, not even private conversations in the Oval Office stay secret for long.
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Trump had revealed sensitive information to the Russians about an ISIS plot that Israeli officials had asked him to keep secret, the Post reported. And Trump had called Comey a “nut job,” saying that Comey’s firing had eased pressure on the administration from an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to the Times.
The journey of information from the Oval Office to the front-pages was set in motion by an American note taker — either from the National Security Council (NSC) or the State Department — on hand to document the proceedings with the Russian diplomats.
That raw data was drafted into a memorandum of conversation — or “memcon,” for short — which was then sent through an editing and approval process by senior officials on the NSC. The memcon is then logged and registered as the official U.S. record of the meeting and kept on file either at the NSC or State Department.
The memcon is distributed — sometimes as a hard copy, to limit circulation — to relevant officials at the Department of State, Department of Defense, CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other agencies within the intelligence community.
Along the way, officials’ assistants can often see the material as well. Those with appropriate clearances can also view the memcons at the repositories where they’re kept.
At each step, the potential grows for confidential information to “jump the gap” into the press through leaks — a phenomenon that has exploded since Trump came into office.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/335363-trump-leakers-could-prove-elusive-targets
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