Live Breaking News & Updates on Nuclear Defense Readiness
Stay updated with breaking news from Nuclear defense readiness. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
the florida property. for context, here s what the post says about what the documents found are typically handled. some of the seized documents u.s. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. only the president, some members of his cabinet or near-cabinet level officials to know details of these special access programs and details of such classified operations require special clearances on a need to know basis and not just top secret clearance. records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key almost always in a secret, compartmentalized facility with a designated control officer on keep careful tabs on their location, but despite the fact that these documents are normally, typically out of reach, totally inaccessible to all, but a teeny, tiny handful of top government officials and kept in the most highly secure facilities that the u.s. government has ever created, these documents were si ....
Programs are kept under lock and key almost always in a secure, compartmented information facility, a skiff, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location. such documents were stored at mar-a-lago, with uncertain security more than 18 months after donald trump left the white house. it was in this last batch of government secrets that the information about a foreign government s nuclear defense readiness was found. what is it that donald trump said about nothing mentioning nuclear? nothing mentioning nuclear? joining us now is carol leonnig, pulitzer prize national investigative reporter for washington post and one of the two bylines on this block blusing reporting. you answered the president s calls, carol, definitively. indeed it does seem like nuclear secrets were found down at mar-a-lago. can you walk us through this whole process? we knew in may, right, that the department of justice maybe was looking for this kind of ....
Have been seen by unauthorized personnel, it does a couple of things, one, it tells individuals what our capabilities are with regard to intelligence collection related to nuclear programs. and that s extremely dangerous. but the other thing it does, more important, is it identifies or exposes our gaps with regard to intelligence collection. the bottom line on this, jim, is that others are going to look at this information and they re going to determine what we know and what we don t know and they re going to make decisions about their nuclear programs based on that information. and that is an extremely dangerous thing and that s why the documents being at mar-a-lago and unsecured location is such a concern for intelligence officials. you know, shan, a bit buried in this washington post reporting but really striking is the fact that this document that they re talking about that had to do with a foreign government s nuclear defense readiness was found in that last batch of documents ....
So concerned that with the appointment of this special master, the fbi s investigation could be delayed because they need to find out who might have had access to these documents as soon as possible so they can take the appropriate mitigating measures that need to be taken. yeah. let me follow up on that really quickly. what risk does this pose? we re talking about information about a foreign government s nuclear defense readiness. you re the former director of the cia. what s the risk there? well, again, i don t know if this deals with ally or adversary. may identify not just what the capabilities are but what the weaknesses are, the vulnerabilities are, the shortcomings are. whether an ally or adversary, that is something that we certainly don t want oured aerer adversaries to find out. we don t want our adversaries to know what we know. having a document like these and maybe other documents as well ....
They absolutely had to go in and recover this material. it s essential to national security. david, regardless of his motivation or those around him for keeping the document, do you think there could be a real impact going forward? i mean, other nations now know, a former u.s. president had these highly sensitive documents at his house. i mean, it s described as a foreign government s nuclear defense readiness. well, you know, it depends in large part on what country it is and how determined they may have been to try to get some of this information, if the information isn t already partly out in the public realm. just because something is classified does not mean it hasn t already been written about. obviously a lot written about u.s. operations against north korea, certainly against iran. but the fact that these documents, which were at least some of them marked sensitive compartmentalized information, some of them, we believe may ....