“Nobody knows where this really goes from here,” the White House official said. “Everyone is walking around saying, ‘What is next?’”

In interviews, multiple White House officials indicated they feel under siege – unsure who in the intelligence community was leaking, how much damaging information was out there, when the next proverbial shoe would drop and what Trump might say.

Staffers shuttled back and forth among West Wing offices debating what to say without divulging confidential material or getting anything wrong. A deflated and exhausted Sean Spicer, who continues to read reports that his job is in jeopardy but is working 12 hours every day in his office, huddled in his office with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

There was a pervasive sense, another official said, that “we are kind of helpless.”…

But White House officials, one person said, are becoming increasingly leery of putting their names on statements in the immediate aftermath of stories – because Trump often contradicts them publicly or on Twitter.