Fury inside Trump administration after classified US intelligence leak minimises Iran airstrike success

Sky News AU

5 hours ago

White House officials are hunting the suspected 'low-level paper pusher' who leaked a preliminary Pentagon intelligence assessment questioning the scale of destruction after Saturday's US airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear sites - as the CIA released its own finding that the attacks set the theocracy's nuke development back 'years'.
The controversial Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment, first reported Tuesday by CNN, stated with a low level of confidence that the US attacks may only have disrupted Iran's progress toward an atomic weapon for a few months.
The DIA report was circulated Sunday, just hours after B-2 bombers dropped 'bunker busters' on the Fordow enrichment site, and says it was compiled without input from other intelligence agencies, sources told The Post.
That suggests the report authors did not use CIA or other assets inside Iran to verify the extent of the damage nor rely on audio or online communications that may have been intercepted by the National Security Agency.
The assessment refrained from making a firm conclusion about the strikes' impact on Iran's nuclear program, but was nonetheless labeled 'top secret', administration insiders relayed.
'It was based on intel from one day, and it was the day after the strike, so clearly it wasn't anywhere near a complete assessment,' one official said.
'The actual assessment admits that it was not coordinated with the intelligence community.'
The leak enraged President Donald Trump by minimizing the impact of the airstrikes, which had a major geopolitical effect, prompting Iran to agree to a cease-fire Monday to end its nearly two-week conflict with Israel.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe released an agency assessment Wednesday afternoon concluding that immense damage was done to the three sites hit by US airstrikes, including the Fordow enrichment center housed beneath a mountain.
'[A] body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes,' Ratcliffe said in a statement.
'This includes new intelligence from an historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.'
The International Atomic Energy Agency's director, Rafael Grossi, similarly said Tuesday the US strikes set back Iran's program 'significantly'.
The FBI is leading the inquiry into the leak, and the Justice Department is expected to throw the book at the person if they're caught.
Neither agency offered comment on this story.
'The president does not tolerate leakers. That's part of what made this operation so successful … no one knew about it,' one official said of the surprise attack.
The mission was the first-ever operational use of America's 30,000-pound bombs - after Israeli 2,000-pound bombs failed to finish off the Iranian sites during the 12-day conflict.
President Trump said Wednesday that he believes 900 pounds of enriched uranium was buried beneath '30 stories' of rubble at Fordow and that Tehran will no longer seek nuclear technology.
The uranium, whose whereabouts remain in doubt, is believed to be enriched to 60 per cent purity, less than the 90-93 per cent needed for nuclear weapons.
The president also said following the annual NATO summit in The Hague that 'scum' in the media were 'trying to make this unbelievable victory into something less'.
'This person is going to get prosecuted,' said one US official of the leaker.
Another source close to the administration noted that many unauthorized disclosures have been investigated since Trump reclaimed power in January, and said they expected this probe to be 'in overdrive' because the culprit 'leaked one early-stage low-confidence report in hopes to undermine a successful mission and bet against America'.
It's unclear how many officials had access to the report before its contents were shared.
Administration officials suspect the leaker of acting out of anti-Trump bias - rather than whistleblowing - and have taken note of the fact that the story was broken by Natasha Bertrand of CNN.
Bertrand, then at Politico, also first reported in October 2020 that 51 intelligence agency veterans claimed Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop, which contained evidence of Democratic candidate Joe Biden's involvement in his family's foreign business dealings, could be Russian disinformation.
The story allowed Biden to fend off Trump's debate-stage attacks on alleged corruption involving China and Ukraine.
Most major news outlets eventually corroborated The Post's reporting on the laptop files, but only after Biden narrowly defeated Trump in that year's election.
Originally published as Fury inside Trump administration after classified US intelligence leak minimises Iran airstrike success