Thread by @NPR

1/ The whistleblower complaint says that White House officials tried to "lock down" records of President Trump's call with Ukraine's president by loading the rough transcript into a classified system meant for highly sensitive information. n.pr/2nJAwMQ

2/ If this allegation is true, former National Security Council officials say it would represent a highly unusual misuse of procedures that were created to keep America's most important intelligence secrets safe.

3/ "I have never seen it done in my time in the White House," former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told @hereandnow. "The only reason to do that is to possibly obstruct justice." n.pr/2nJAwMQ

4/ "This seems to be nothing more than an abuse of the classification and the information security system to safeguard not the information, but to effect a cover-up," said Ned Price, who was a senior director for strategic communications at the NSC during Obama's administration.

5/5 "George W. Bush was getting phone calls after 9/11, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Michael Green, another former NSC official.

"And so even in that context, I had never heard or witnessed what we're seeing now." n.pr/2nJAwMQ