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US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland's cell phone call to President Donald Trump from a restaurant in Ukraine this summer appears to be a shocking security breach that raises significant counterintelligence concerns, according to several former officials, who told CNN there is a high probability that intelligence agencies from numerous foreign countries, including Russia, were listening in on the conversation.

"If true, the cell phone call between Ambassador Sondland and President Trump is an egregious violation of traditional counterintelligence practices that all national security officials -- to include political appointee ambassadors such as Sondland -- are repeatedly made aware of," according to Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and Russia before retiring this summer.

"I cannot remember in my career any time where an ambassador in a high counterintelligence environment like Kiev would have such an unsecure conversation with a sitting president. This just should not happen," he said.

Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, revealed during the first public impeachment hearing Wednesday that a member of his staff, who was accompanying Sondland to meetings in Kiev, saw the ambassador call Trump from his cell phone and overheard the President asking about "the investigations."

Taylor confirmed that he had come to understand the term "investigations" meant matters related to the 2016 election and to probes of Joe and Hunter Biden and Burisma.