CENTCOM foreign disclosure expert Bill Tierney says it’s perfectly legal for a U.S. President to give classified information to Russia if there is a clearly defined benefit to the U.S. in doing so.
The recent leaked documents attempt to make the argument that President Trump gave classified information to the Russians, but what virtually no one reports is that even if this were true, President Trump would have done nothing illegal since such an action falls under the Intel subculture of “Foreign Disclosure.”
DOD Directive 5230.11 states in 4.1:
Classified military information is a national security asset that shall be protected and shall be shared with foreign governments only when there is a clearly defined benefit to the United States. Disclosures of such information shall be made only when authorized by officials designated under this Directive and then only when all requirements of this Directive are met.
Section 4.3 states:
The Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense are the only
DoD officials who have original authority to grant exceptions to the policy contained in
this Directive.
Who could possibly argue that the Secretary of Defense and his deputy have more authority than their boss?
As to “clearly defined benefit,” if we see bushels more of jihadi dead in the near future, that is a “clearly defined benefit.”
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Source: Bill Tierney, CT, who worked Foreign Disclosure for a year when at CENTCOM
