And he gives me several hundred pages and says this lays out the decisions we made, why we made them. Read them and then call me up. That's what I would call an institutional leak, somebody representing an institution disclosing information to further the interest of the institution and believing they are doing the right thing in telling the truth. Personal leaks are much rarer - I would say very small percentage - where somebody actually has a personal antagonism towards someone else, where somebody is angry or wants to tear down some part of the government. And the only time I really saw a lot of those was early in the Iraq War and in the run up to the Iraq War. First, the intelligence community was very upset by the way the Bush administration was disregarding any intelligence that went against its view that we should go to war with Iraq. And then later, as the Iraq War gets underway, a lot of senior officers were very upset with the way Donald Rumsfeld clumsily handled the war in their view and kind of almost walked away from it and said that's not my problem and didn't pay it much attention. And I get phone calls from generals who were just venting about Rumsfeld and were, you know, really seriously unhappy with him. GROSS: Well, there are things that Donald Trump has said and tweeted that have antagonized the CIA and the FBI. He just fired the head of the FBI. So do you think - do you suspect that there's a lot of leaking now from within those organizations because they're - because they don't trust the president or because they want to, you know, get even with him for things that he said about them, for ways that he's denigrated them? RICKS: I think - basically the Trump administration exists in a state of permanent crisis. So where the leaks are kind of both personal and institutional - this big leak that The Washington Post wrote about recently where Trump, talking to the Russians, disclosed very sensitive intelligence information LED Filament Bulb and, perhaps, according to some people, may have burned a very important source in the war against ISIS, the terrorist organization. That struck me as both personal and institutional. One of the big rules in the intelligence organizations is you don't disclose sources of information. And, by the way, you especially don't disclose it to Russians in the Oval Office who have cameras rolling. And I'm sure that phone calls have gone out the next day from Russian intelligence organizations saying here's what Trump said yesterday in the Oval Office. So I think there was a personal feeling but also a feeling institutionally. That's a very bright line you just crossed, Mr. President. You don't do that. And we need to send him a signal, and they did. GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Tom Ricks. He covered the Pentagon for many years at The Washington Post. He's written five books about the military and the wars that we've fought. One of those books is about the war in Iraq, published in 2006. It was called "Fiasco." It was a best-seller. Now he writes a column called The Best Defense for Foreign Policy magazine, and he has a new book called "Churchill And Orwell: The Fight For Freedom." Let's take a short break, and then we'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is Tom Ricks. He has a new book called "Churchill And Orwell: The Fight For Freedom." He covered the Pentagon for many years for The Washington Post, covered the war in Iraq, wrote a book about that war called "Fiasco," which was a best-seller. And now he writes a column called The Best Defense for Foreign Policy magazine. I'm just wondering did you ever get a leak that you thought like - which - somebody gave you like a hundred pages of documents, and you thought, like, wow.