https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/06/25/iran-intelligence-sharing-gabbard/

The White House plans to limit classified intelligence sharing with Congress after leaks to the press of an early assessment undermined President Donald Trump’s claim that U.S. airstrikes obliterated Iranian nuclear facilities, a senior Trump administration official said, setting the stage for a contentious classified briefing before senators Thursday.

Amid a political battle over what the intelligence shows, the White House is expected to send four of its top national security officials to brief lawmakers: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, administration officials said.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who testified in March that U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, will be notably absent.

“Ratcliffe will represent the intelligence community,” the senior Trump administration official said of Gabbard’s absence, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet made public. “The media is turning this into something it’s not.”

Trump has called Gabbard’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear program “wrong” and largely sidelined her in navigating the United States’ role in the war between Iran and Israel, current and former U.S. officials and people close to the White House told The Washington Post. White House officials have insisted that she is doing critical work.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) on Wednesday called on the White House to “immediately undo” its decision to limit classified information sharing.

“The administration has no right to stonewall Congress on matters of national security,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now abroad.”

Axios first reported the White House plans to limit classified information sharing.

The initial U.S. intelligence assessment, first reported by CNN, found that the airstrikes ordered by Trump against Iran’s nuclear facilities set back Tehran’s program by months but did not eliminate it. Trump and White House officials have since adamantly pushed back against the assessment and maintained that the B-2 bombers and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles fully destroyed the sites.

Ratcliffe, however, released a statement Wednesday saying the airstrikes had “severely damaged” the nuclear program — previewing a refined White House posture that the administration might offer senators Thursday.

Nonpartisan military officers, including Caine, have been more restrained in their assessments so far, describing significant damage but stopping short of saying the facility was “obliterated.” Caine, speaking Sunday, said that final battle-damage assessments will take time to develop but that initial reviews indicated “extremely severe damage and destruction.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) echoed Ratcliffe’s assessment Wednesday. “There’s no doubt that Iran’s nuclear program was severely set back,” Thune said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”

The Trump administration’s tour to convince lawmakers and Americans of the mission’s success will include a Thursday morning stop at the Pentagon, where Hegseth and unnamed “Military Representatives” will hold a “Major News Conference” to “fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots,” Trump announced on Truth Social on Wednesday.

“These Patriots were very upset!” Trump said, without offering any evidence.

The president erroneously said that pilots had endured “36 hours of dangerously flying through Enemy Territory” — conflating the length of the entire round trip, including over the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, with time over target — and lambasted media reports about the initial intelligence assessment.

Democrats on the Hill have been sharply critical of the Trump administration for failing to brief lawmakers on Iran — with multiple members pointing to the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and provide a classified briefing. Trump on Monday sent a memo to lawmakers saying that the U.S. military had carried out the strikes under his constitutional authority to “protect the United States citizens both at home and abroad as well as in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests.”

The classified briefings for Senate and House lawmakers were initially scheduled for Tuesday. They were postponed to Thursday for the Senate and Friday for the House as Trump worked to negotiate a ceasefire and to accommodate travel schedules, the senior Trump administration official said. Hegseth and Rubio spent Wednesday at The Hague with Trump.
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>>1416174 (OP)
Booze is a tongue-loosener. Hegseth is an alcoholic.
QED.

>>1416204
Actually they say it was one of the Republicans in Congress who were briefed on the bombing, or their staff, who leaked it.

>>1416212
Wait I don't get it; they're denying the leak is true but also saying they should go after the people saying it and, well you know, calling it a fucking leak? So is it true or not?

Also, why would you lie about the effectiveness of your own strike?

>>1416306
If you believe this Rolling Stone article, Trump and Hegseth are furious at anyone reporting on it.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-hegseth-melt-down-leaked-iran-strike-intel-1235373030/

>The chaotic scene today at the Pentagon, and on Trump’s Truth Social feed, is part of an administration-wide effort to defend the strikes, discredit the leaked intelligence report, and inflate the president’s ego while chastising or threatening those casting the strikes as anything short of a historic success.

>The president has been especially sensitive about the prospect of Iran having moved uranium ahead of the strikes. In recent days, a person with direct knowledge of the situation tells Rolling Stone that the president has been sensitive about any reporting suggesting stockpiles had been moved, in part because Trump essentially tipped off the Iranians by teasing that the U.S. could take action.

>“It really pisses him off when people say that,” this source says, noting that would undermine Trump’s assertion of how “perfectly” this operation was conducted.

>>1416313
So he's pissed at the idea he fucked up, but instead of acknowledging that he's getting pissed on anyone who points out even the POSSIBILITY he wasn't successful?

I mean, par the course for this fucking admin, but still fucking pathetic.

>>1416314
Shoot the messenger, the press is the real enemy not the democrats. It's classic Trumpian(?) politics.

>>1416314
A normal, functional human being would simply come out and say "We're still assessing the scope of the damage. Available data tells us it was substantial and the bombing campaign was a success, but we will continue collecting information and act accordingly."
But we don't have a functioning human being in the White House, so we get "IT WAS PERFECT THE SITES ARE COMPLETELY OBLITERATED AND ALL OF THE URANIUM WAS DESTROYED AND THEY'LL NEVER EVEN TRY TO ENRICH URANIUM AGAIN AND ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE IS A BIG STUPID LIAR!"

>>1416316
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Trumpian

>>1416313
>Hegseth even went after one of his former colleagues, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News, who asked about the administration’s confidence that Iran did not preemptively move uranium from the sites of the strikes, which the Pentagon’s preliminary report indicated was likely. “Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most, intentionally, what the president said,” he said.
He used to work there less than 6 months ago, now they're the liberal media.

>>1416313
Ted Cruz accidentally leaked this before anyone else

>>1416412
>Fox News is liberal media
Man, the shit you freaks come up with...

>>1416534
https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-hegseth-jennifer-griffin-iran-bombing-19718d81d8780d49c50f8e8a1dc50b59
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth criticized his former Fox News colleague Jennifer Griffin as “about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says” in a Pentagon news conference Thursday.

Griffin, Fox’s chief national security correspondent, said that “I take issue with that” and defended her reporting on the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Hegseth, a Fox News anchor before President Donald Trump appointed him defense secretary, repeatedly criticized the media and questioned its patriotism for its reporting on an initial assessment of the weekend’s bombing that questioned how much damage was done to Iran’s nuclear program.

The attack on Griffin was notable because, less than a year ago, she and Hegseth shared the same employer — a news network that has seen its reputation in Trump’s eyes rise and fall haphazardly over the past decade.

>>1416482
"accidentally"

>>1416541
Yeah, and?