National securityNSA, worried about Trump's Russia ties, “withheld information” from briefings: Former analyst

The New York Observer, a publication owned until recently by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has reported that leaders of the U.S. intelligence community are withholding the most sensitive intelligence from the White House.

A former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst and counterintelligence officer told the Observer that some of the U.S. intelligence agencies have begun withholding intelligence information from the Oval Office as a result of worries that the Russia “has ears inside” the White House situation room.

An NSA official told the Observer the agency was holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, while one Pentagon worker said: “There’s not much the Russians don’t know at this point. Since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the [situation room].”

Trump has disparaged the U.S. intelligence community, denigrated the quality of its work, and questioned the motives of the community’s operatives and leaders. For example, he charged that the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia orchestrated a broad cybercampaign to helped him win the 2016 presidential was “politically motivated,” and that the intelligence community’s public expression of concern about continued Russian interference in U.S. politics was a “political witch-hunt.”

The New York Observer was one of several media brands which Kushner had acquired, and was the owner of until last month, when he was named a senior White House adviser.