Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a frequent opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to the Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. Follow her on Twitter @fridaghitis. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author. Read more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) It's tempting to file away the news that the US urgently removed one of its most valuable spies from Russian President Vladimir Putin's office as just another astonishing development of the Donald Trump era. But this one deserves closer attention. This was not just another covfefe moment, not one more instance of bizarre events that would trigger national shock in any other administration but now land on the growing pile of daily outrages. This is different.

CNN reports that US intelligence agencies -- who had cultivated a secret source in the Kremlin for years, decades by some accounts, until the agent had grown so close to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he could send the CIA photographs of the documents on Putin's desk -- made the decision to pull him. They did so partly because they grew alarmed at the President's mishandling of state secrets, worried that the risk to the source was so great that the benefits he provided to US national security would have to be sacrificed in order to save the agent's life.

Frida Ghitis

This means that the President's behavior is such a clear threat that the country is having to, in effect, weaken its own security to protect itself from the fallout of Trump's actions.

The administration calls the story "incorrect," and the CIA describes parts of it as, "misguided speculation." In addition, the New York Times said its sources say that the agent was extracted because of fears that media speculation about how US intelligence learned that Putin had personally directed the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Trump win the presidency, could expose the spy.

CNN reporter Jim Sciutto said he spoke with five different government sources, including some with direct involvement in the discussions. All the reporting concurs that concerns for the agent's safety emerged in 2016, and he was exfiltrated in 2017. By then, Trump already had a stunning track record of revealing classified information to precisely the wrong people, including a man known as a top Russian spy to US intelligence officials, then-Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak.