President Trump’s top intelligence adviser condemned the spate of leaks that have bedeviled his administration as a threat to national security on Tuesday, while saying he won’t comment on reports that the president asked him to tamp down reports of collusion between the campaign and Russia.
“Lives are at stake in many instances and leaks jeopardize those lives,” Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain during a hearing on worldwide threats.
Coats applied that principle to his own conversations with the president. The former Indiana Republican senator refused to confirm a report that Trump asked him to make a public statement that there is no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign.
“As the president’s principal intelligence adviser I’m fortunate to be able and need to spend a significant amount of time with the president discussing national security interests and intelligence as it relates to those interests. we discuss a number of topics on a very regular basis,” Coats said. “I have always believed that given the nature of my position and information which we share it’s not appropriate for me to comment publicly on any of that, so on this topic as well other topics, I don’t feel it’s appropriate to characterize discussions and conversations with the president.”
Trump asked Coats and another senior intelligence official “to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government,” as a Washington Post report put it Monday. Both refused, saying it would be inappropriate to do so, the report said.
Trump’s team has responded to various Russia-related stories by condemning the leaks that have plagued his administration and Coats concurred with those complaints. “Leaks have played a very significant negative role relative to our national security. The release of information not only undermines confidence in our allies about our ability to maintain secure information that we share with them, it jeopardizes sources and methods that are invaluable to our ability to find out what’s going on and what those threats are,” he said.
