Last week, Donald Trump appointee and FBI Director Christopher Wray warned against revealing the name of a closely guarded intelligence source, saying it would strike a blow to the safety of the American people.
"The day that we can't protect human sources is the day the American people start becoming less safe," Wray told the Senate Appropriations Committee during testimony. "Human sources in particular who put themselves at great risk to work with us and with our foreign partners have to be able to trust that we're going to protect their identities and in many cases their lives and the lives of their families."
The Washington Post finally published the name of American academic Stefan Halper Tuesday after both it and the New York Times had spent weeks (if not far longer) dancing around naming the source who—far from being embedded in Trump's campaign—met with several members of Team Trump in 2016 after the FBI launched an investigation into the campaign's Russia ties.
The source at issue is Stefan A. Halper, a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and an emeritus professor at Cambridge University in England, according to multiple people familiar with his role. [...] Now that his name has been revealed by multiple news organizations, including the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine and Axios, The Post has decided to publish his name. [...]
In the summer of 2016, Halper met with Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis for coffee in Northern Virginia, offering to provide foreign policy expertise to the Trump team. In September of that year, he reached out to George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy adviser for the campaign, inviting him to London to work on a research paper. He also had multiple contacts with foreign policy adviser Carter Page for talks about foreign policy.
We've heard a lot about Papadopoulos, the now-cooperating witness who bragged to an Australian diplomat about the Russians having "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. And the FBI has suspected Carter Page of being recruited to be a Russian spy since 2013. Clovis has been a little less visible, but he actually assembled Trump's foreign policy campaign team of five—at least two of whom went on to make significant contacts with the Russians. Last year, Clovis testified before the grand jury in the Russia probe, a revelation that unnerved the White House.
Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has confirmed Halper is the source in question but both the Post and the Times have done deeply reported pieces on the so-called "implanted" informant Trump has been railing against.
But GOP Rep. Mark Meadow is pretty proud of the way he, House Intelligence chair Devin Nunes and Trump have bent the Justice Department to their will, ultimately forcing out the name of an intelligence source who contributed his patriotic best to a completely legitimate FBI inquiry of the unprecedented number of contacts between Team Trump and the Russians—right as the Kremlin unleashed a massive effort to elect Trump president.
“It’s a good day for transparency, and I appreciate the president’s leadership,” Meadows said of an impending meeting to reveal more intelligence that Trump has now forced on FBI and DOJ officials.
That guy's a stain on the conscience of America, and he, Trump, Nunes, Jim Jordan and Paul Ryan will all have blood on their hands the next time U.S. intelligence agencies fail to stop a terrorist attack targeting Americans.