Pompeo Says Reports US Extracted Spy From Russia 'Factually Wrong'

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 11th September, 2019) US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday dismissed media reports that the United States had to extract a top covert source from inside Russia as factually wrong and inaccurate.

"The reporting is materially inaccurate...The reporting there is factually wrong," Pompeo said during a press briefing at the White House.

On Monday, CNN reported that the United States extracted one of its highest-level operatives from Russia in 2017 after President Donald Trump exposed highly classified intelligence about the Islamic State terrorist group (banned in Russia) at a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.

Some media then reported that the person in question may have been Kremlin staff employee Oleg Smolenkov, who went missing while on a family vacation in Montenegro in 2017.

The New York Times reported there was no evidence that Trump had endangered the source and that media scrutiny of CIA sources alone was the impetus for the extraction.

The Kremlin said that Smolenkov had worked in the presidential administration but was fired several years ago.