Carly Fiorina And Ted Cruz May Have Revealed Classified Information During GOP Debate

Two Republican presidential candidates in attempting to prove how good they are at protecting America’s security may have weakened it a little bit.

During the Republican presidential debate Tuesday night, Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina may have revealed classified information to millions of people watching CNN on live TV.

During a heated exchange in which Ted Cruz was defending a vote he made in favor of the USA Freedom Act, the Texas Tea Party Senator blew up at fellow Senator Marco Rubio, who accused him of voting for a bill that shut down the NSA’s metadata program, “a valuable tool that we no longer have at our disposal,” the Florida Senator accused.

Cruz then went off.

After accusing Rubio of making “knowingly false” and “Alinsky-like attacks like Barack Obama,” Cruz retorted, defending the reason for his vote as “simple.”

“What [Rubio] knows is that the old program covered 20 percent to 30 percent of phone numbers to search for terrorists,” Cruz countered. “The new program covers nearly 100 percent. That gives us greater ability to stop acts of terrorism, and he knows that that’s the case.”

Rubio, who sits on the U.S. Senate’s Intelligence Committee, interjected nervously.

“Let me be very careful when answering this, because I don’t think national television in front of 15 million people is the place to discuss classified information. So let me just be very clear. There is nothing that we are allowed to do under this bill that we could not do before.”

UPDATE: BREAKING: Intelligence Committee Chair To Investigate If Ted Cruz Released Classified Info In Debate

Roll Call just after the debate finished, posted an article asking, “Did Sen. Ted Cruz disclose classified information on national television?,” and notes that “As the exchange happened, Becca Glover Watkins, the communications director for Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., tweeted simply: ‘Cruz shouldn’t have said that.'”

Meanwhile, Carly Fiorina also may have revealed classified information during the same debate.

“Soon after 9/11,” Fiorina said during the debate, “I got a phone call from the NSA. They needed help. I gave them help. I stopped a truck load of equipment and I had it turned around. It was escorted by the NSA into headquarters.” 

Gawker notes that Fiorina told the same “tale in an September interview with Yahoo! Politics.”

In that interview, Fiorina discussed that, when CEO of Hewlett-Packard, then-NSA director Michael Hayden, just after 9/11, called and asked her for 50 servers “so the NSA could implement ‘Stellar Wind’ — the controversial warrantless wiretapping program, including the bulk collection of American citizens’ phone records and emails, that had been secretly ordered by the Bush White House.”

“Carly, I need stuff and I need it now,” Hayden recalled telling Fiorina.

Fiorina acknowledged she complied with Hayden’s request, redirecting trucks of HP computer servers.

Gawker’s report says “Last month, Motherboard reported on leaked NSA documents that seemed to indicate this exchange was still under classification.”

That Motherboard report, from October, is titled, “Carly Fiorina May Have Revealed State Secrets by Bragging About Helping the NSA.”

Bottom line: Cruz and Fiorina both have wrongly attacked Hillary Clinton over her emails, and lied in their attacks to boot, but are more than willing to (maybe) reveal classified information to millions of people on national TV.

 

Image: Screenshots via CNN/YouTube