A longtime CIA source's name apparently was accidentally leaked during a testy online exchange between House Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy and the ranking Democrat, Elijah Cummings, over the sensitivity of information in former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton's private email inbox, reports say.
Politico reports a March 18, 2011 email posted Sunday on the House panel's website included the name of Mousa Kousa, a former Libyan government spy chief and foreign minister, in a subject line — but was redacted in the body of a forwarded message to Clinton.
The leak was first reported Monday by
Yahoo news.
The email was released Sunday at the South Carolina Republican's discretion "so the American people could decide for themselves regarding concerns about sources and methods,"
Gowdy said in a statement atop a letter to the committee's ranking Democrat, Maryland Rep. Cummings.
But the initial online email document was replaced with another version in which Kousa's name doesn't appear, Politico notes.
Benghazi committee spokesman Jamal Ware blames the State Department for clearing the release of the initial email containing the spy's name.
"The State Department failed to redact a name in a subject line, so the committee took steps to remove this information so it was consistent with State Department's redaction of it in another subject line," Ware tells Politico.
"The committee will not confirm the name in question is the alleged source.”
The State Department didn't immediately respond to Politico about the matter.
According to Politico, Cummings disclosed Sunday that the CIA hadn't requested the deletion of the source's name and didn't consider the information classified.
Cummings declared that information undercut Gowdy's claim that Clinton had endangered national security by having such information on her private server and by forwarding the message to one of her aides.
But Gowdy responded to that challenge, saying he wanted to protect the source's identity, even if the CIA didn't.
"Sources and methods of intelligence are among the most closely guarded information our government has," Gowdy wrote to Cummings. "We will continue to redact that information and treat it with the highest level of confidentiality and sensitivity, and we would advise you to do the same."
Politico reports Kousa's contacts with U.S. intelligence have been publicly acknowledged for years. It's unclear how much information he was giving to Western officials at the time the email was sent, Politico reports.
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