Donald Trump appears to have confirmed the existence of a classified CIA programme - in a tweet.

Donald Trump appears to have confirmed the existence of a classified CIA programme - in a tweet.

In a series of posts last night the President took aim at a report on Syrian rebels in the Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos.

The article detailed Trump’s apparent decision to “end the CIA’s covert programme to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia”.

US officials told the newspaper in the story published 19 July that ending the secret programme was related to Trump’s concerns about re-establishing a working relationship with Russia.

Trump, apparently just catching up on last week’s news, obviously took umbrage at the report and unleashed a volley of angry tweets including this one which appears to confirm the existence of the classified program.

The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad..... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017

Which did not go unnoticed.

If the media reports are true, the President of the United States just confirmed a CIA covert action program. On Twitter. https://t.co/fEmuqHDWN9 — Ned Price (@nedprice) July 25, 2017

CIA: We can neither confirm nor deny any covert program.



Trump: That's right cuz I ended it!



CIA: 🤦🏼‍♂️ https://t.co/DBrNak0zg7 — Jermaine Spradley (@MrSpradley) July 25, 2017

Today in Trump

-refers to "17 years of Obamacare"

-boasts of Electoral College win to Boy Scouts

-confirms covert CIA program

-it's Monday — Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) July 25, 2017

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders declined at the time to discuss cessation of the program, telling reporters she didn’t know if it had come up in discussions that Trump had with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

Trump just leaked classified info on Twitter about covert CIA program in Syria.



For our national security, @twitter pls suspend his account — Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) July 25, 2017

Jacob Parakilas, deputy head of the US and the Americas Programme at Chatham House, told HuffPost UK the tweet was “highly unusual”.

He added: “I can’t think of a comparable incident with another president.

“The issue, as it has been for example with his disclosure of counter-terrorism intelligence to the [Russian foreign minister and ambassador in May] is he seems not to understand the reason why classified information is usually declassified in a more considered fashion.

“The impression it gives is that the President is making decisions about intelligence on an arbitrary basis and whether or not that’s true, the impression that sends makes it more difficult for the people who engage with American classified programs to trust that they will be dealt with in a consistent fashion.”

Trump continued his tirade against The Washington Post and Bezos, accusing them of lobbying

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

So many stories about me in the @washingtonpost are Fake News. They are as bad as ratings challenged @CNN. Lobbyist for Amazon and taxes? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017

Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon no-tax monopoly? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017

The tweets appear to have been timed to distract from yesterday’s real story - his son-in-law.

View photos Kushner speaks outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, July 24. (Photo: Joshua Roberts / Reuters) More

Story continues