In the aftermath of a leak of an internal intelligence assessment suggesting that the bombings of Iran's nuclear facilities weren't as successful as President Donald Trump claimed, the administration plans to limit sharing classified information with Congress, four sources told Axios on Wednesday.
The leaking of the preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency's "Battle Damage Assessment" enraged Trump, who said it was incomplete and that its release was meant only to undercut his claims that Iran's nuclear sites had been "obliterated."
"We are declaring a war on leakers," a senior White House official 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."
The administration sources said they are planning to limit posting on CAPNET, a system the administration uses to share classified information with Congress, according to Axios.
This came after the DIA's assessment on the Iran bombings was put on CAPNET late Monday. The next day, CNN and The New York Times reported parts of it, indicating that Tehran's nuclear program had been set back only by months, instead of being "obliterated."
An administration official said that "almost as soon as we put the information on CAPNET, it leaks. There's no reason to do this again."
At a NATO press conference in Brussels 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.
"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."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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