Washington Post reporter: White House 'playing word games'

Washington Post

A Washington Post correspondent agreed with his story Monday night when the White House tried to declare it "false."

"I think the White House is playing word games," Greg Miller said on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront."
The Washington Post story, written by Miller and Greg Jaffe, cited current and former US officials and said President Donald Trump told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russia's ambassador to the United States , Sergey Kislyak.

National Security Adviser H. H. McMaster, who also attended the meeting, said of the White House after the publication of the story that the story "is reportedly false."

"I was in the room," McMaster said. "It did not happen."
Miller said he thought the White House was trying to "thwart the impact" of the story.
"If all this was so important and not problematic in any way, why did the National Security Council that left this meeting feel it necessary to get in touch with the CIA director and the director of the National Security Agency, What did Trump just say to the Russians? "Miller said.
McMaster said that during the meeting, "at no time were the sources or methods of intelligence discussed."

The Washington Post story did not say that specific sources or methods were discussed, but did cite officials who said Trump revealed the city within ISIS territory, where the US ally had spotted the threat Trump had discussed.
CNN had previously broken the intelligence story that Trump would have discussed - that ISIS had been devising ways to plant explosives in large electronic devices and defeat screening systems designed to keep them away from aircraft.
At that time, CNN agreed to withhold key details, including the name of the city where the threat was detected, at the request of US government officials, who were concerned that if revealed, it could also reveal sources and methods of intelligence .
An American official in Post's story said that of the information Trump gave in the Oval Office, Russia "could identify our sources or techniques."

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