The New York Times and NBC News said the classified intelligence US President Donald Trump divulged to Russian officials last week was provided by Israel.

The Times cited current and former US officials familiar with how the US obtained the information about an ISIL plot.

Trump is set to travel to Israel next week on his first foreign trip abroad. In a statement, Israel’s Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer said Israel has “full confidence in our intelligence sharing relationship with the United States” but he did not comment specifically on the veracity of the Times report.

Pushing back against allegations of damaging intelligence disclosures, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser insisted Tuesday that Trump’s revelations to Russian officials about the terrorist threat from the ISIL group were “wholly appropriate” and amounted to a routine sharing of information.

H.R. McMaster added that none of the US officials present for the president’s Oval Office meeting with the Russian foreign minister last week “felt in any way that that conversation was inappropriate.” He used the words “wholly appropriate” nine separate times.

Trump himself claimed the authority to share “facts pertaining to terrorism” and airline safety with Russia, saying in a pair of tweets he has “an absolute right” as president to do so. Trump’s tweets did not say whether he revealed classified information about ISIL, as published reports have said and as a US official told The Associated Press.

McMaster, in a White House briefing, said: “In the context of that discussion, what the president discussed with the foreign minister was wholly appropriate to that conversation and is consistent with the routine sharing of information between the president and any leaders with whom he is engaged.”

He cast some of Trump’s revelations as information that was available from publicly available “open-source reporting” and added that the president did not know the precise source of the intelligence he had shared, suggesting that Trump could not have compromised confidential sources.

Still, the White House has not expressly denied that classified information was disclosed in the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Russian diplomats last week. The Kremlin dismissed the reports as “complete nonsense.”

The news reverberated around the world as countries started second-guessing their own intelligence-sharing agreements with the US.

A senior European intelligence official told the AP his country might stop sharing information with the United States if it confirms that Trump shared classified details with Russian officials. Such sharing “could be a risk for our sources,” the official said. The official spoke only on condition that neither he nor his country be identified, because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans alike expressed concern about the president’s disclosures. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the reports “deeply disturbing” and said they could affect the willingness of US allies and partners to share intelligence with the U.S.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the intelligence uproar a distraction from GOP priorities such as tax reform and replacing the health care law.

“I think we could do with a little less drama from the White House on a lot of things so that we can focus on our agenda,” he told Bloomberg Business.

Trump shared details about an Islamic State terror threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak, a senior US official told AP. The classified information had been shared with the president by an ally, violating the confidentiality of an intelligence-sharing agreement with that country, the official said.

Trump later was informed that he had broken protocol and White House officials placed calls to the National Security Agency and the CIA looking to minimize any damage.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly, would not say which country’s intelligence was divulged.

The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have declined to comment. CIA Director Mike Pompeo was to brief members of the House intelligence committee later in the day.

The US official said that Trump boasted about his access to classified intelligence in last week’s meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak. An excerpt from an official transcript of the meeting reveals that Trump told them, “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,” he said.

On Monday, McMaster told reporters: “The president and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries including threats to civil aviation. At no time, at no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed and the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known.”

The revelations could further damage Trump’s already fraught relationship with US intelligence agencies. He’s openly questioned the competency of intelligence officials and challenged their high-confidence assessment that Russia meddled in last year’s presidential election to help him win. His criticism has been followed by a steady stream of leaks to the media that have been damaging to Trump and exposed an FBI investigation into his associates’ possible ties to Russia.

The disclosure also risks harming his credibility with US partners around the world ahead of his first overseas trip. 

(Source: AP)