The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is launching a probe into a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report leaked to CNN assessing damage from President Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday.
Hegseth announced the probe during the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, saying that the media’s reporting on the leak was spun “to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.” The report was first leaked to CNN, which reported that the preliminary findings suggested that the strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan nuclear facilities on June 21 did not completely destroy Iran’s nuclear program as Trump claimed.
“We’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes, battle damage assessments,” Hegseth said.
CNN cited seven anonymous sources who were briefed on the report, who said that Iran’s nuclear program would only be set back months. However, the White House and a senior DIA official pushed back on the reported findings, saying that the assessment was incomplete and did not reflect the full picture of the damage to the nuclear sites.
Additionally, the Iranian Foreign Ministry admitted that the nuclear sites were “badly damaged” despite the reports.
“This is a preliminary, low confidence report & will continue to be refined as additional intelligence becomes available,” the DIA official said in a statement posted by Pentagon Spokesperson Sean Parnell. “We are working with the appropriate authorities to investigate the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”
The FBI told the Daily Caller News Foundation that it could not confirm or deny any specific investigation.
“Based on everything we have seen — and I’ve seen it all — our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons. Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target—and worked perfectly,” Hegseth told the DCNF in a statement. “The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”
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