CIA cast doubt on Israeli intel about Iranian threat that led Trump to swap planes — report

CIA analysts expressed skepticism to the Trump administration about Israeli intelligence regarding an Iranian assassination plot that led the US president to secretly switch planes while departing Turkey last month, according to the Washington Post.

Citing current and former US officials familiar with the intelligence, the report says that Israel told the Central Intelligence Agency about the threat, but that analysts there didn’t find it compelling.

One of the officials who spoke with the newspaper dismisses the intelligence as “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence,” while another says that “the Secret Service has had three near misses with this president, so they’re not taking any chances.”

“They did what they had to do,” that official adds.

A former official, meanwhile, is quoted as saying the incident “fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some officials see as designed as much to shape presidential decision-making as to inform it.”

The Washington Post says the White House wouldn’t comment directly, though an anonymous US official tells it in response that “as the president has said, he has faced numerous threats on his life, including ones from Iran, and every measure is taken to ensure his safety.”

“The United States Secret Service’s core mission is protecting the president, which they achieved,” the official adds.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that US intelligence picked up “multiple streams of information” regarding the threat to Trump in Ankara: “They knew that there was a specific threat of a surface-to-air missile against Air Force One, meaning whichever plane was carrying the president, and that someone in the vicinity of the NATO summit had been spotted with a shoulder-fired missile,” the Times reported.