Listening from Budapest to the Washington debate on whether President Trump leaked intelligence secrets to the Russians in a White House meeting attended by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as alleged in a Washington Post report, I’m struck by the extraordinary number of people who have been jumping to conclusions — as from an ideological circus’s trampoline while also performing somersaults — in the discussions.
Jonah is an experienced performer on the trampoline when he’s in the mood, but I’m starting with his most recent commentary — because he’s not in that mood on this occasion. In fact, his is the most sober and persuasive analysis so far of what happened and why from a Trump-skeptic standpoint, though that’s not as flattering a compliment as I would like it to be.
The “why” is important — and Jonah raises it by asking if the Post story is “plausible.” He concludes rightly that it is because Trump has shown on a number of occasions that he is boastful, impulsive, and anxious to display his mastery of affairs. And what better occasion to do this than when he is seeking to impress the Russians — an adversary he apparently wishes to win round — by claiming that he has lots of good intelligence that would help them if they were willing to join the U.S. in a fight against their common enemies, ISIS and terrorism?
Might Trump have gone too far in describing just how much he knew and how U.S. intelligence services had acquired the information? Of course, from what we know of the president, he very well might have done. That’s why the report is plausible. And the credibility of Jonah’s argument is enhanced by the fact that he stops there, dismissing as “resistance paranoia” the idea that Trump was engaged in some sort of treasonous covert operation for the Kremlin. Again, rightly so.
Now, we come to the question. Okay, so the Post report is plausible. Is it true? And here Jonah and others have to confront the firm and outright denials the report has received from the three leading U.S. national-security officials. These denials — they appear below — both flatly deny the overall story and dismiss particular points in it. It’s therefore elicited from skeptics two responses: that they don’t clear up the many unanswered questions that the story raises and that therefore the denials, though sweeping, may well be (or for some people, probably are) carefully worded lawyerly evasions.
Jonah raises a reasonable version of the first response and asks four questions about, in particular, the most comprehensive denial from National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster: “Why not take any questions? Why not address the details of the story? Why deny things not alleged? Why did intelligence officials urge the Post to withhold key details if this is ‘fake news’?”
My off-the-cuff replies are: (a) to avoid complicating the clear denial with endless extraneous points; (b) see previous reply; (c) to forestall criticisms that he hadn’t addressed obvious points; and (d) because the Post sources were wrong in saying that Trump had revealed these things but these things were nonetheless intelligence secrets they wanted kept secret. Admittedly, my replies to Jonah’s questions are highly speculative, but that’s because neither of us know for certain what the accurate answers are. I’m merely suggesting that there may be innocent answers to them.
I think we can be more confident, however, in rejecting the criticism that the final words of McMaster’s denial — “I was in the room. It didn’t happen.” — were a lawyerly evasion. Admittedly, in the post-Watergate era, journalists have got used to playing linguistic philosophers when parsing political statements. The simplest technique on these lines is to ask: “Well, that’s what he said; but what didn’t he say?” It’s a useful technique for keeping a story alive, moreover, because it sometimes seems as if there is an infinite number of things he didn’t say.
But we shouldn’t confuse logical possibilities with political realities. As a practical political matter, McMaster has said that the story is false, there’s nothing in it, and Trump didn’t reveal intelligence secrets to the Russians. You can’t spin “I was in the room. It didn’t happen.” into a denial of something far less than that. If it turns out Trump did reveal intelligence secrets to the Russians, then McMaster will have lied to the country and his resignation will be just a matter of time — as also that of his two fellow-deniers, Dina Powell and Rex Tillerson.
Late-breaking new, however! According to half the reporters and commentators in Washington, Trump has admitted exactly that and revealed his subordinates to be lying gamely on his behalf. Trump today tweeted in two linked tweets as follows:
“As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining…. …to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.”
