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  • When Hollywood does any kind of movie or TV show about counterterrorism, about spying,

  • they tend to have Jack Bauer doing something dramatic.

  • They have James Bond doing something dramatic.

  • They have Carrie Mathison doing something emotional and dramatic.

  • You said you had information about an attack.

  • But it’s, like, one person, in one dangerous place, doing one powerful thing.

  • And that’s not the way the world actually works.

  • In reality, the US relies on a web of intelligence-sharing agreements with other countries.

  • The best known is the Five Eyes agreement between the US, Canada, the United Kingdom,

  • New Zealand, and Australia.

  • But the US also gets intel from countries that are geographically closer to terrorism

  • hot spots.

  • Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates , Turkey, Israel,

  • These countries often have agents undercover inside groups like ISIS.

  • They get something valuable, they trust us with it.

  • That could be an intercept of a phone call, drone imagery showing somebody that one country

  • is looking for.

  • It could be a plot.

  • This was the case in 2010, when intelligence sharing between the US and six other countries

  • stopped an al-Qaeda plot to bomb two cargo planes en route to the US.

  • And what makes it all work, what kind of greases that relationship, is trust.

  • They believe that if they tell us a secret, that it’s safe.

  • One of the most important of these intelligence-sharing relationships is the one between the United

  • States and the Israelis.

  • So, when the Israelis found out about a specific threat from ISIS, that they planned to use

  • laptops to bomb airplanes, The New York Times reports that the Israelis

  • shared that information with the US, with the understanding it would stay secret.

  • But the Washington Post reports that President Trump shared that information with the Russian

  • foreign minister during his visit to the US.

  • And in doing so, he seriously jeopardized that relationship with the Israelis.

  • To understand why, you have to back up a little bit and look at what Russia is doing in Syria.

  • President Trump has said Russia is a key ally in the fight against ISIS there.

  • Trump: I say it's better to get along with Russia than not.

  • And if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic

  • terrorism all over the worldmajor fightthat's a good thing.

  • The problem is that, in Syria, Russia’s goal is not to fight ISIS.

  • Russia’s goal is to protect Bashar al-Assad.

  • Russia fights ISIS only insofar as it sees ISIS as a threat to Bashar A\\al-Assad.

  • And one of Russia’s main partners in this objective is Iran,

  • who the Israelis consider to be their greatest threat in the region.

  • The greatest danger that we face

  • of the hatred for the Jewish people and the

  • Jewish state, comes from the East.

  • It comes from Iran.

  • For months, Israeli spies have expressed this fear that any intelligence they shared with

  • the US could end up, via Russia, in the hands of the Iranians.

  • And Now those fears have been confirmed.

  • If they no longer trust the CIA, that means that the plot that might have otherwise been

  • stopped or disrupted potentially happens.

  • Because they don’t trust that if they tell it to us, that it won’t go to an enemy of

  • theirs.

  • And it’s not just Israel.

  • Now other allies may become wary of sharing intelligence with the US.

  • Without trust, these intelligence-sharing relationships break down.

  • And without these relationships, it’s harder for US intelligence officials to do the very

  • thing Trump says he wants to accomplish: defeat ISIS and disrupt terror plots.

When Hollywood does any kind of movie or TV show about counterterrorism, about spying,

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