lauren@vortex.com
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2017 08:11:05 -0700
NNSquad https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/17/britains-gchq-breaks-its-silence-to-slap-down-claim-it-was-involved-in-trump-wiretap/
The Daily Telegraph, a right-leaning British newspaper, said on Friday
that intelligence sources told the paper that Spicer and Lt. Gen. H.R.
McMaster, Trump's national security adviser, have apologized for the
claims. "The apology came direct from them," a source told the paper.
There was no immediate comment from the Trump administration. Meanwhile,
a spokesman for Theresa May, the British prime minister, did not confirm
that an apology had been made. But he did say that the White House had
given assurances -- to the British ambassador in Washington and the prime
minister's national security adviser -- that the allegations that GCHQ had
spied on Trump won't be repeated. Analysts said that GCHQ's unusual
reaction was an attempt to distance itself from the raging debate in the
U.S. "They really don't want to get drawn into the toxic contest going on
between the administration and the intelligence agencies in the U.S.,"
said Ewan Lawson, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services
Institute. "They want to put some pretty clear space between them." He
noted that the agency's quick, robust statement was unusual, but to stay
silent "would give space to conspiracy theorists."