Scoop: Trump to limit sharing classified info with Congress after leak on Iran bombing damage
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The Trump administration plans to limit sharing classified information with Congress after someone leaked an internal assessment suggesting that Saturday's bombings of Iran's nuclear facilities weren't as successful as President Trump claimed, four sources tell Axios.
- The FBI also is investigating the leak, the sources said.
Why it matters: The leaking of the preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency's "Battle Damage Assessment" outraged Trump and top U.S. officials, who said it was incomplete and that its release was aimed at undercutting Trump's claims that Iran's nuclear sites had been "obliterated."
- "We are declaring a war on leakers," a senior White House official said Wednesday.
- "The FBI is investigating the leak," the source said. "The intelligence community is figuring out how to tighten up their processes so we don't have 'Deep State' actors leaking parts of intel analysis that have 'low confidence' to the media."
Zoom in: The administration sources say they're planning to limit posting on CAPNET, a system the administration uses to share classified information with Congress.
- The DIA's assessment on the Iran bombings was put on CAPNET late Monday. The next afternoon, CNN and then the New York Times reported snippets of the assessment.
- The early media reports indicated that Iran's nuclear program had been set back only by a matter of months, instead of being "obliterated."
Zoom out: Democrats in Congress already were upset at the administration for refusing to brief some members before the bombings, and the White House's plans to further restrict the sharing of classified information are likely to provoke a fresh round of criticism.
- Administration officials are unmoved, however.
- "Go figure: Almost as soon as we put the information on CAPNET, it leaks," an administration source said. "There's no reason to do this again."
Between the lines: The sources who spoke with Axios said they couldn't disclose more details of the DIA assessment, but emphasized three aspects of the report:
- It was put together in the 24 hours after the bombings and was based on a review of satellite photos and not on-the-ground witnesses to the damage.
- It was just one early "snapshot" of information from only one of the 18 agencies in the intelligence community.
- The report self-acknowledged the "low confidence" of the assessment, which was to be used as a tool to guide whether the administration wanted to bomb the facilities again.
- Then there's the early assessment by Israeli intelligence services, who said the U.S. and Israeli strikes caused "very significant" damage.
The big picture: Since his first run for president in 2016, when his campaign was investigated for its ties to Russia, Trump has been deeply suspicious of the intelligence community. Tuesday's disclosures only increased that sense of paranoia.
- "Trump knows the IC [intelligence community] has spooks who hate his guts," one adviser said.
What they're saying: At a NATO press conference in Europe on Wednesday, Trump criticized the coverage of the DIA leak, as did Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser.
- They said the U.S. hit Iran's three nuclear sites with so many Tomahawk missiles and massive bunker-busting bombs that the country's program was set back significantly, echoing the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
- "All this stuff about the intelligence: This is what a leaker is telling you the intelligence says," Rubio said.
- "That's the game these people play. They read it and then they go out and characterize it the way they want to characterize it."
