cozie No we don’t know it was trump who called bannon in the sense that we weren’t there to witness it happen (I’m assuming 
) but it is being reported in the media that it was (eg foreign policy have said ”President Donald Trump personally made the decision to curtail the testimony of former chief White House political strategist Steve Bannon before the House Intelligence Committee, according to two people with firsthand knowledge of the matter.” ( foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/18/trump-ordered-bannon-to-limit-testimony/ ) .
That’s similar to how other revelations in this long saga have been sourced, which I’ve generally accepted to be true (although obviously there’s no guarantee that it is, being anonymously sourced, but as all other many, many “shoes to drop” have also been anonymously sourced, and I see nothing that distinguishes it from any of the other numerous bombshells, I’m going to work on the assumption that it too is true).
Natasha Bertrand
@NatashaBertrand
“American officials suspect China then shared that information with Russia, which employed it to expose, arrest and possibly kill American sources in that country.”
<a class="break-all" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/amp/cia-china-turncoat-lee-may-have-compromised-u-s-spies-n839316#click=t.co/uBFmcSnfSB" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.nbcnews.com/news/china/amp/cia-china-turncoat-lee-may-have-compromised-u-s-spies-n839316#click=t.co/uBFmcSnfSB
The arrest last week of a former CIA officer suspected of spying for China exposed one of the most significant intelligence breaches in American history. But the damage is even worse than first reported, sources familiar with the matter tell NBC News.
A secret FBI–CIA task force investigating the case concluded that the Chinese government penetrated the CIA's method of clandestine communication with its spies, using that knowledge to arrest and execute at least 20 CIA informants, according to multiple current and former government officials.
American officials suspect China then shared that information with Russia, which employed it to expose, arrest and possibly even kill American spies in that country, said the current and former officials, who declined to be named discussing a highly sensitive matter. The possible sharing with Russia has not previously been reported.
Those sobering findings, sometime after the inquiry began in 2012, led the CIA to temporarily shut down human spying in China, and to overhaul the way it communicates with its assets around the world, according to former government officials familiar with the case.
It was a shocking blow to an American spy agency that prides itself on its field operations. There was also a devastating human cost: Some 20 CIA sources were executed by the Chinese government, two former officials said — a higher number of dead than initially reported by NBC News and the New York Times. Then an unknown number of Russian assets also disappeared, sources say.
[...]Soon after the task force concluded the Chinese had penetrated covcom, it got an even more troubling report: That after a joint training session between Chinese and Russian intelligence officers, the Russians "came back saying we got good info on covcom," as the former official put it.
Investigators began examining cases of U.S. assets in Russia who had disappeared. Officials concluded they had to change their system for agent communications.