Trump Posted Classified Satellite Imagery On Twitter As President

According to documents recently declassified by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), former President Donald Trump posted a classified satellite image of a failed rocket launch in Iran on Twitter in 2019. NPR reports: Now, three years after Trump’s tweet, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has formally declassified the original image. The declassification, which came as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by NPR, followed a grueling Pentagon-wide review to determine whether the briefing slide it came from could be shared with the public. Many details on the original image remain redacted — a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the U.S. government’s most prized intelligence on social media, says Steven Aftergood, specialist in secrecy and classification at the Federation of American Scientists. “He was getting literally a bird’s eye view of some of the most sensitive US intelligence on Iran,” he says. “And the first thing he seemed to want to do was to blurt it out over Twitter.” “[A]erospace experts determined the photo was taken by a classified spacecraft called USA 224, believed to be a multibillion-dollar KH-11 reconnaissance aircraft,” adds Gizmodo. “The spacecraft is similar to the Hubble Telescope, but instead of getting a closer look at the stars, it views the Earth’s surface.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Trump Posted Classified Satellite Imagery On Twitter As President