President Trump on Thursday condemned “leaks of sensitive information,” responding to a complaint by Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, over disclosures of details from the investigation into Britain’s deadliest terrorist attack since 2005.
“The alleged leaks coming out of government agencies are deeply troubling,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “These leaks have been going on for a long time, and my administration will get to the bottom of this. The leaks of sensitive information pose a grave threat to our national security.”
He added: “I am asking the Department of Justice and other relevant agencies to launch a complete review of this matter, and, if appropriate, the culprit should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Unauthorized disclosures have dogged Mr. Trump, who has regularly and angrily criticized leaks from his government. In his first month in office, he called for a Justice Department investigation into what he said were “criminal leaks.” But two dimensions of the latest controversy are new: The disclosures in this case are about a terrorism investigation led by a foreign ally, and the British government has brought its complaints to a receptive audience.
In a statement, Mrs. May’s office said she would bring up the matter at a NATO gathering in Brussels on Thursday evening and would “make clear to President Trump that intelligence that is shared between our law enforcement agencies must remain secure.”
Mrs. May’s statement followed expressions of outrage by top law enforcement officials after The New York Times published images on Wednesday of the shrapnel, backpack and battery used by Salman Abedi, the 22-year-old bomber who killed 22 people and injured 64 outside the Manchester Arena as a pop concert ended Monday night. The Times did not disclose the source of its information.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council in Britain called the leaks a breach of trust, adding: “This damage is even greater when it involves unauthorized disclosure of potential evidence in the middle of a major counterterrorism investigation.” The disclosure of potential evidence “undermines our investigations and the confidence of victims, witnesses and their families,” it added.
In addition, the BBC reported that the Manchester police would no longer share details of the investigation with American counterparts. The city’s top police official, Chief Constable Ian Hopkins, joined the chorus of criticism on Thursday, saying that the disclosure “has caused much distress for families that are already suffering terribly with their loss.”
In a sign of the tensions between the two longstanding allies, which are regular information-sharing partners, the top American diplomat in Britain said that Washington would investigate the source of the leaks.
“These leaks were reprehensible, deeply distressing,” said the diplomat, Lewis Lukens, the United States chargé d’affaires. “We unequivocally condemn them.”
Asked by the BBC where the leaks were coming from, Mr. Lukens said he did not know and added: “The United States government is launching an investigation into these leaks and will take appropriate action once we identify the source of the leaks, if they are in the United States. The U.S. government absolutely condemns these leaks. It is a tragedy that people’s attention is being taken away from the victims and the investigation on this issue.”
He said he hoped that the leaks would not detract from the “very long history of very strong cooperation on intelligence sharing, on law enforcement cooperation.”
The Times said in a statement:
The images and information presented were neither graphic nor disrespectful of victims, and consistent with the common line of reporting on weapons used in horrific crimes, as The Times and other media outlets have done following terrorist acts around the world, from Boston to Paris to Baghdad, and many places in between.
Our mission is to cover news and inform our readers. We have strict guidelines on how and in what ways we cover sensitive stories. Our coverage of Monday’s horrific attack has been both comprehensive and responsible.
We cover stories about terrorism from all angles. Not only stories about victims but also how terrorist groups work, their sources of funding, how they recruit. Acts of terrorism have tremendous impact on how we live, on how we are governed and how we interact as people, communities and nations. At times the process of reporting this coverage comes at personal risk to our reporters. We do it because it is core to our mission.
The first disclosures came on Tuesday, when American television networks, in particular NBC and CBS, revealed the name of the Manchester bomber, citing American officials. (The name had also been circulating on social media.)
Then, on Wednesday, The Times published crime scene photographs of a possible switch to initiate the explosion and parts of the bomb itself. The Times report also pointed out precisely where the bomb had been placed. The Times did not cite its sources, but it attributed its account to “preliminary information gathered by British authorities.”
On Wednesday morning, before The Times published its disclosure, Home Secretary Amber Rudd told the BBC that she was irritated by the disclosure of the bomber’s identity against the wishes of the British authorities.
Roy Greenslade, a professor of journalism at City University in London, said that “the messenger is blamed for the message.”
“Our business,” he said, “is the business of disclosure.” He added, “If facts exist in the public domain, especially over sensitive matters, then our job is to publish them.”
The “first position of the authorities is always secrecy,” Professor Greenslade said. “They oppose the disclosure of secret information, sometimes for operational reasons.”
While Britain and the United States are liberal democracies that both guarantee press freedom, there are nonetheless major historical and cultural differences regarding the press, said John Lloyd, co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University.
While in the United States, the First Amendment protected the press as “an ally of independence and a developing free society, in Britain and the Continent, it was treated more as a threat to good order,” Mr. Lloyd said.
The British establishment still has a closed view of the press; key ministries, especially in policing and intelligence, are effectively run by civil servants, not by politicians. In the United States, there is a freer and more open relationship between officials and journalists.
“I’m always impressed how the U.S. government is open to briefings and explanations to journalists, even if hostile,” Mr. Lloyd said. In Britain, he said, “if someone is openly critical, it’s hard to get anything, but if you’re trusted, not necessarily a sycophant, but trusted, then fine.”
The system of “lobby” journalists in Britain — reporters who cover Westminster, the home of Parliament, and Whitehall, the civil service — also serves as a kind of policing mechanism; trusted reporters who abide by the rules of anonymity are briefed regularly by government officials, while outsiders have a much harder time.
In the Manchester case, many British journalists knew the name of the bomber but were asked by police and government officials not to reveal it, to preserve the integrity of the investigation. It was only after the name was leaked by American officials to American journalists on Tuesday that the police confirmed the name.
