Washington

A pair of White House officials helped provide Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Donald Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.

The revelation on Thursday that White House officials disclosed the reports, which Nunes then discussed with Trump, is likely to fuel criticism that the intelligence chairman has been too eager to do the bidding of the Trump administration while his committee is supposed to be conducting an independent investigation of Russia's meddling in the presidential election.

It is the latest twist of a bizarre Washington drama that began after dark on March 21, when Nunes got a call from a person he has described only as a source. The call came as he was riding across town in an Uber car, and he quickly diverted to the White House. The next day, Nunes gave a hastily arranged news conference before running off to brief Trump on what he had learned the night before from — as it turns out — White House officials.

The chain of events — and who helped provide the intelligence to Nunes — was detailed to The New York Times by four U.S. officials.

Since disclosing the existence of the intelligence reports, Nunes has refused to identify his sources, saying he needed to protect them so others would feel safe coming to the committee with sensitive information. In his public comments, he has described his sources as whistleblowers trying to expose wrongdoing at great risk to themselves.

That does not appear to be the case. Several current U.S. officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel's Office and was previously counsel to Nunes' committee. Though neither has been accused of breaking any laws, they do appear to have sought to use intelligence to advance the political goals of the Trump administration.

Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, refused to confirm or deny at his daily briefing that Ellis and Cohen-Watnick were Nunes' sources. The administration's concern was the substance of the intelligence reports, not how they ended up in Nunes' hands, Spicer said.

The "obsession with who talked to whom, and when, is not the answer," Spicer said. "It should be the substance."

Jack Langer, a spokesman for Nunes, said in a statement, "As he's stated many times, Chairman Nunes will not confirm or deny speculation about his source's identity, and he will not respond to speculation from anonymous sources."

Cohen-Watnick, 30, is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who served on the Trump transition team and was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser. He was nearly pushed out of his job this month by Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who replaced Flynn as national security adviser, but survived after the intervention of Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, and Stephen K. Bannon, Trump's chief strategist.

The officials who detailed the newly disclosed White House role said that this month, shortly after Trump claimed on Twitter that he was wiretapped during the campaign on the orders of President Barack Obama, Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.

There were conflicting accounts of what prompted Cohen-Watnick to dig into the intelligence. One official with direct knowledge of the events said Cohen-Watnick began combing through intelligence reports this month in an effort to find evidence that would justify Trump's Twitter posts about wiretapping.

Flynn seeks immunity

Former national security adviser Mike Flynn has told investigators that he's willing to be interviewed as part of inquiries into alleged contacts between the Trump administration and the Russian government in return for immunity from prosecution.

A congressional official confirmed on condition of anonymity that Flynn made the offer. The Wall Street Journal reported that Flynn made the offer to the FBI and two congressional committees.

"Gen. Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit," Robert Kelner, a lawyer for Flynn, said in statement late Thursday. "We will not comment right now on the details of discussions between counsel for Gen. Flynn and the House and Senate intelligence committees, other than to confirm that those discussions have taken place."

Bloomberg News contributed to this story.