Former CIA Director James Woolsey said the federal officials who are leaking national security information about the Trump White House are "traitors to the country," and defended the administration's reported outreach to the Russian government.
"Well, there are a lot of things that I think have been disclosed too much, and I think that is the real scandal here — that so much has been disclosed," Woolsey said Tuesday night on CNN. "It makes it hard for the secrecy that's essential to the operation of the U.S. government in these areas to continue, and I think the people who have broken these tacit and formal agreements and taken classified information and turned it loose are basically traitors to the country."
Woolsey led the CIA for two years during Bill Clinton's second term, although the two were not close — they never met privately during his tenure atop the spy agency. He joined Donald Trump's campaign in September, but resigned from the presidential transition team after contradicting Trump's denials that the Russians conducted cyberattacks against the Democratic party during the 2016 elections.
He made those comments while defending Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whoreportedly tried to establish a secure "backchannel" with the Russian government that would be sheltered from the eyes of U.S. intelligence agencies. A contrary report says that it was the Russians who proposed the backchannel. Either way, Woolsey was not concerned.
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"I don't see anything untoward about having backchannel communications as long as you're doing it accurately and within the confines, essentially, of what your superiors have asked of you," he said. "People have backchannel communications all the time."
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