>> that's right. this context is important. the end of the obama administration, going back months before, u.s. intelligence officials had already expressed concerns about the safety of this spy and other russian assets, given the length of their cooperation with the u.s. this according to a former senior intelligence official. those concerns grew in early 2017 after the u.s. intelligence community released its public report on russian meddling in the 2016 election, which, of course, said that putin himself had ordered the operation. the intelligence community also shared a classified version of that report with the incoming trump administration. and that classified version included information about the sources and methods behind the asse assessment. they considered extracting at least one russian asset at the time, but did not do so, according to the former senior intelligence official. the meeting with the russians and the oval office raised new concerns in the intel community which continued to grow. i should note this as well,