news reports this week alleged had been at the heart of vladimir putins government setting off frantic speculation in russia over who the mole could be but following the reports russian media outlets brought to light an article from september 2017 about an official in the presidential administration who mysteriously disappeared along with his entire family in june 2017 cnn and the new york times on monday both reported that the us had helped a highvalue spy inside the kremlin flee russia in 2017 fearing that he was about to be exposed according to the times us officials reportedly decided the source was in danger of being exposed after the intelligence community published its findings about the russian operation and media outlets began reporting details they feared could identify him i know the cia put out a statement neither cnn nor the new york times named the agent citing requests from us officials to protect the spys safety abc news has not been able to independently verify the russian reports mladen antonovafpgetty images file recruiting spies in russias government has long been considered exceptionally difficult due to the countrys extensive counterintelligence defenses and closed nature of its administration newscom i dont know whether he was an agent sources quoted by the times said there was no public evidence trumps behavior affected the decision and that it was taken exclusively because of media scrutiny of the agencys sources cnn and the new york times both reported that the anonymous agent had played an instrumental role in informing american intelligence about russias operation to meddle in the 2016 presidential election he did really work in the presidential administration but several years ago he was fired over internal regulations peskov told journalists during his daily briefing call more what we know about trumps alleged disclosures to russian officials the times citing anonymous officials described the source as the american governments best insight into the thinking of and orders from mr putin all this us media speculation about who urgently extracted who and saved who from who and so on this is more the genre of pulp fiction crime reading so lets leave it up to them i cant confirm that the source initially rejected the offer to flee then the paper reported but eventually accepted several months later after barack obama had already left office another publicly available state department document showed the man had served for a time in the russian embassy in washington the informant was outside of mr putins inner circle but saw him regularly and had access to highlevel kremlin decisionmaking according to the article since then some of russias leading media have reported the official as the possible mole in 2018 the former russian doubleagent sergey skripal was poisoned with a nerve agent in the british town salisbury peskov on tuesday denied that the kremlin is aware of the officials current whereabouts they reported that the sources information allowed the intelligence services to confirm that